The Englishman on "Saint Al"
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Link: An Englishman's Castle: Balance on Channel 4.
I have said this often to my friends and colleagues, but have never published it. The Englishman's post stimulated to me to write it in a comment over at his Castle, so I reproduce it here (with apologies for quoting myself);
Al Gore is the 21st Century's Karl Marx. His influential presentation of pseudo-scientific gobbledegook and its adoption as gospel truth by the gullible masses (of intellectuals) will kill millions of the real masses and ensure that hundreds of millions more live their whole lives in unnecessary poverty because of arrested economic development. His ideas justify ruthless centralisation of state power on "humanitarian" grounds and are therefore irresistibly attractive to politicians of a certain ilk, who will live high on the hog behind closed doors while their subject peoples suffer and die. Stupid mug punters will fall for the spiel because it's "for a better future." It will all collapse in chaos, with only Guardian journalists and British academics still believing in it when the scales have fallen from everyone else's eyes. The parallel is exact.
There. I have it off my chest. Now the anthropogenic climate change fanatics can use their sophisticated debating skills (i.e. calling names which draw parallels with neo-Nazis) on me. See if I care. History, I fear, will prove me right. I am sorry to disappoint Osama bin Laden, who no doubt covets the title, but Al Gore may just be the most dangerous man alive.
I sent a copy of your comments to a friend who worships Al Gore (as well as Ted Heath and George Galloway!). In the ensuing correspondence he has come up with this memorable line:
"I expect history will regard Al Gore as Moses arriving at the edge of the Promised Land but being remembered for his part in making it attainable."
That's what we're up against.
Posted by: The Laughing Cavalier | Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 01:00 PM
"Now the anthropogenic climate change fanatics can use their sophisticated debating skills (i.e. calling names which draw parallels with neo-Nazis)"
That's about it... AGW proponents on sceptical blogs never seem to "debate" the science, relying instead on the power of abuse to sway opinion, whereas sceptics having the temerity to question "the concensus" on pro-AGW sites such as "realclimate" simply have their efforts deleted.
The concept of empirical science appears to have been consigned to the dustbin of orthodoxy.
Posted by: pogo | Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 10:36 AM
And to add insult to injury they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize. I will never get over that one!
Posted by: JMB | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 07:52 PM
Agreed. But thanks to his film he is a lot richer than marx ever was.
Posted by: Rob | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 01:30 PM
Absolutely, spot on. Curiously - or maybe not so curiously - I said something similar about George Monbiot this morning.
Posted by: Longrider | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 12:17 PM
Could not be put better, Tom.
Posted by: jameshigham | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 10:25 AM