Al Gore is back, everybody. The man who told us the polar ice caps would be completely gone by 2014 has crawled out of one of his three mansions to deliver yet another terrifying prophecy: the Gulf Stream is collapsing and we’re all going to freeze to death. Or burn to death. Honestly, with these people it changes every Tuesday.
Quick question — does Al still fly private jets to his climate conferences, or has he switched to a solar-powered hang glider? We just want to make sure the guy warning us about carbon emissions isn’t personally responsible for more of them than most small towns.
So here’s the latest doomsday forecast from Professor Planet. Gore went on the record claiming that climate change is disrupting the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation — that’s the fancy science name for the Gulf Stream, the massive ocean current that keeps Europe from turning into Siberia. According to Gore and his handpicked team of “experts,” the whole system is slowing down and could collapse entirely, which would plunge the Northern Hemisphere into catastrophic weather chaos.
Sounds absolutely terrifying. Also sounds exactly like the plot of that movie *The Day After Tomorrow*, which came out in 2004 and was fiction. But hey, Al Gore has never let a good disaster movie go to waste.
Here’s what the climate doom merchants don’t want you to remember: Al Gore has been wrong about literally everything. In 2006, *An Inconvenient Truth* told us that sea levels would rise 20 feet “in the near future.” Twenty years later, Miami is still above water. He said the Arctic would be ice-free by the summer of 2013. It wasn’t. He said Mount Kilimanjaro would lose all its snow. It didn’t. He said hurricanes would get worse every single year. They didn’t follow that script either.
At what point do we stop treating this man like a scientist and start treating him like the guy on the street corner holding a “THE END IS NEAR” sign? At least that guy doesn’t charge $200,000 per speaking appearance.
But the Gulf Stream claim is a masterpiece of climate fearmongering because it’s designed to be unfalsifiable. If winters in Europe get colder? “See! The Gulf Stream is collapsing!” If they get warmer? “See! Climate change is accelerating!” If they stay exactly the same? “See! We prevented the worst of it, but we need another $50 billion!”
It’s the ultimate heads-I-win, tails-you-lose con job. These people have turned weather into a slot machine where every pull means you owe them more tax dollars.
And let’s talk about who benefits from this endless parade of climate panic. Gore himself is worth an estimated $330 million — a figure that was about $2 million when he left the vice presidency in 2001. Turns out scaring people about the weather is extremely profitable. He co-founded Generation Investment Management, a “sustainable” investment firm that makes money when governments dump cash into green energy projects. So when Al Gore says we need to spend trillions fighting climate change, what he’s really saying is, “Please deposit money directly into my portfolio.”
(But sure, it’s the oil companies that have the conflict of interest. Right.)
The climate zealots love Al Gore because he gives their religion a pope. And make no mistake — that’s exactly what this is. A religion. You’re not allowed to question the doctrine. You’re not allowed to point out that the predictions keep failing. You’re not allowed to ask why the high priests of environmentalism all live in beachfront mansions and fly in Gulfstreams while telling YOU to eat bugs and ride a bicycle to work.
Remember when John Kerry — another climate crusader — got caught flying his private jet to pick up a climate award? Or when Barack Obama bought a $12 million estate on Martha’s Vineyard, right on the ocean that’s supposedly about to swallow the coastline? These people don’t believe their own propaganda. They just need YOU to believe it so the grant money keeps flowing and the government keeps expanding.
Meanwhile, actual scientists — the ones who don’t depend on climate grants for their mortgage payments — have pointed out that the Gulf Stream has been fluctuating for centuries. It speeds up, it slows down, it does what oceans do. The idea that YOUR gas stove is going to shut down a planetary current system that has existed for millions of years is the kind of arrogance that only an Ivy League education can produce.
But we’re supposed to panic. We’re supposed to ban gas cars, shut down power plants, kill farming, ground airplanes, and restructure the entire global economy because Al Gore had another nightmare about the weather.
No thanks, Al. We’ve been hearing your apocalypse predictions for two decades now. The ice caps are still there. The coasts are still there. The Gulf Stream is still streaming. And you’re still wrong.
Maybe instead of warning us about the ocean currents collapsing, somebody should warn Al Gore that his credibility collapsed a long time ago. But hey — at least he’s consistent. The man has been predicting the end of the world for 20 years and getting richer every time it doesn’t happen. That’s not climate science. That’s a business model.
