Al Gore continues to avoid debate over manmade global warming

Steve Huntley of the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Seven hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend to try to get someone to talk to you and not get an answer.

That's how much the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based libertarian think tank, has forked over in six months for advertisements in national newspapers trying to persuade Al Gore to debate one of its experts on global warming issues. "We have tried, repeatedly, to contact Gore directly, with registered letters and calls to his office, and have never received a reply," says Joseph Bast, Heartland president.

A spokeswoman for Gore told me by e-mail that Heartland is an oil-company-funded group that denies that global warming is real and caused by human activities.
"The debate has shifted to how to solve the climate crisis, not if there is one," said Kalee Kreider. "It does not make sense for him to engage in a dialogue with them at this time."

The issue is a bit more complicated than that. What Bast wants is for Gore to debate one of three authorities who dispute the former vice president's assertion that global warming is a crisis that requires an immediate, hugely expensive response potentially damaging to the U.S. and world economies.

Notice the Gore-team response: cynically claim the opposition has alterior motives and then say that the debate has already been settled. More background about Al Gore's track record of avoiding challenge:

But the point is that Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" aren't the last word. In March, the New York Times reported that while they praise Gore for raising awareness about warming, a number of scientists see exaggerations and errors in some of his assertions. "They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism," the Times wrote. For example, Gore forecasts sea levels rising up to 20 feet, flooding parts of New York and Florida. But the U.N. panel's actual estimate is that seas will rise 7 to 23 inches in this century.

As for the Gore camp's statement about Exxon funding, Bast says those contributions are too little to control Heartland policy and amount to "far less than what Heartland spends speaking out on climate change."

The Heartland case is not the first time Gore has ducked a forum. Earlier this year he canceled an interview with Denmark's largest newspaper when he learned it would include questions from Bjorn Lomborg, respected author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. "Gore's sermon is not one that will stand scrutiny," says Christopher C. Horner, another one of Heartland's debate candidates, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.

It's a good tactic, in principle: decide for yourself that the debate is finished and then dismiss any further protests that come from the opposition! If only we all had that solipsistic luxury.

This tactic of Al Gore's will become ever more viable as legitimate debate is steamrolled by political pressure, especially if he wins the 2007 Nobel Peace prize, as numerous reports suggest.

Gag.