By Tom Morgan

Al Gore, I bet you $10,000 that you’re full of hot air.
I am serious. I invite Mr. Gore to take a bet with me on global warming. If he loses, he pays the money to the charity of my choice. If he wins he can do whatever he wishes with my money.
The bet would be decided ten years from now. We can make provisions for our estates to handle the bet if we have departed by then.
The bet would be framed around some of the predictions he makes in his new movie. And in the slide show he gives. With both he predicts that within ten years we will see signs that New York City, Washington and San Francisco are headed for submarine status. Gore predicts deadly heat waves, lasting weeks. He predicts Antarctica will turn into a puddle.
He blames all this on global warming. He tells us hurricanes are growing stronger year by year because of global warming. He blames all or most of global warming on human activities like driving cars.
You probably have got the gist of his worries by now. Perhaps you have seen his film or read his book.
I offer to bet Mr. Gore $10,000 that in 10 years his predictions will look silly. And that in ten years the earth’s overall temperature will have fallen. Or stayed the same as it is today. Or gone up less than 1 degree. More, I bet little if any warming will be blamed on human activities.
What gives me confidence I will win the bet? The body of opinion from a number of prominent scientists. One is Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Lab at an Australian university. (I quote from an article by Canadian Tom Harris, director of High Park Group.)
“Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic.” Prof Cook tells us. “It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention.”
Harris writes: “Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing significant global climate change. “Climate experts’ is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore’s ‘majority of scientists’ think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.”
University of Winnepeg climatology prof Dr. Tim Ball also dismisses Mr. Gore’s “experts”. He says they do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change. “They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies.” This “doesn’t make them climate change experts, only climate impact experts.” There is a huge difference in the two.
Harris quotes various scientists from around the world who pooh pooh Gore’s propaganda. Gore says higher CO2 levels cause warming. Eons ago CO2 levels were ten times higher than today. The world was in one of its coldest periods.
One scientist points to hundreds of studies that suggest our temperatures change when the Sun grows brighter or dimmer. Which it has a habit of doing.
A couple of scientists take apart Gore’s dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. It’s normal, they say. One points out that in most of Antarctica more snow is accumulating than is melting off. This excess causes the calving’ of iceburgs that keeps Gore awake nights.
Various scientists refute Gore’s claim of rising temperatures killing off polar bears in the Arctic. Some claim temperatures there are dropping and ice is growing thicker.
Other scientists list various areas of the world that are recording not warming but cooling.
Professor Carter again: “The man is an embarrassment to U.S. science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science.”
I think I’ll lay my money on real scientists. How about it Mr. Gore? We could call it the Chicken Little Bet.
From Tom ... as in Morgan.
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