French strike extended even as it sputters

Paris - France's transport strike eased but did not end Thursday, after President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted negotiations while refusing to budge on his campaign-trail promise that cushy retirement benefits must go. Frustrated commuters, many of whom had to walk, pedal or rollerblade to work, urged Sarkozy to hang tough, saying France needs economic reforms to thrive. Rail and transport workers' unions vowed to press the walkout into a fourth day Friday, as the government sought to trumpet figures showing that support was fading.
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Long aricle test...

In case any doubt remains as to who deserves the title of undisputed Globaloney Champion of the World, Al Gore's Rolling Stone interview should put the question to rest.

Interviewed in the magazine's third 40th Anniversary Issue of the year, self-proclaimed planet savior Al Gore warns that:
"It is a mistake to think of the Climate Crisis as one in a list of issues that will define our future. It is the issue. Everything else must be viewed through that lense."
That's right -- The issue. Not the all too real, ongoing struggle against radical Islamic madmen. Not nuclear proliferation. Not even the truly apocalyptic potential fusion of the two, a prospect which recent events in Pakistan have chillingly served to advance.

No - the issue, insists Gore, is his completely conjectural Climate Crisis.

As though to support such an absurd declaration, he then offered these keen observations:
"The north polar ice cap is melting, the fires are burning, the sea level is rising, living species are going extinct. These and many other manifestations, including half the U.S. being in drought last year, are visible to the naked eye. We have got to recognize that even though it's never happened before, it is happening right now." [my emphasis]
Now, virtually every claim in his first two sentences is technically truthful. Until, that is, augmented by the catastrophe-implying qualification of the third. And it is just that dishonest inference -- that these occurrences are without precedent -- that exposes the true measure of this man in oh so many ways.

So, with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, let me count the ways.

Yes, the northern polar ice cap is melting. For the most part, it's been alternately retreating and advancing in reaction to seasonal changes for as long as there have existed seasons. And, while it's true that its dimensions may now be at a record low, Gore somehow failed to mention that the southern polar ice cap recently reached ice levels higher than we've encountered in 30 years. If global warming is alleged, you have to look at the Southern Hemisphere too when talking about polar ice caps.

Nothing new here -- 1 down.

Next up -- fires are burning? Might the Goreacle be alluding to the recent arson, environmental-case-backlash- and Santa Ana wind-induced southern California blazes? Nice try, but wildfires have raged there for hundreds of years. Even the true believers at the LA Times reported that "global warming was not a factor" in the infernos, citing a Science journal study which found that the region suffered "no increase in the frequency of fire as temperatures rose."

Strike 2.

But sea levels are rising, cautions Gore. And that's quite accurate, although not by measures even remotely approaching the map-redrawing 20 feet by the year 2100 he repeatedly portends. Indeed, even his overly hysterical co-awardees at the IPCC have projected a far less catastrophic global mean sea level rise of between 0.09 and 0.88 meters from 1990 to 2100. And once again, it has happened before -- oceans have been ascending at varying rates since the end of the last ice age -- over 10,000 years ago.

That's 0 for 3.

And, what of these alleged extinctions? Are "living species" truly "going extinct," as Al maintains? Of course they are, just as they have throughout history. The cold truth is that The World Conservation Union lists 698 animal species extinctions since 1500 A.D. And, at Peter Maas's Extinction site, he lists 62 extinctions in the 19th century and 86 in the 20th which he attributes primarily to invasive alien species, habitat loss and overexploitation. Implying that this unfortunate yet essential component of natural selection is somehow unprecedented is nothing short of imbecilic. Surely Gore believes in evolution, of which natural selection is the driving force.

Four deeply deceptive assertions in a single sentence certainly do nothing to smooth Gore's reputation for exaggerating. Bu implying in the very next breath that last year's drought was an unparalleled prognosticator of doom verges on incitement to panic.

According to the National Climatic Data Center's U.S. National Percent Area Moderately to Extremely Dry and Moderately to Extremely Wet chart, nascent dryness is far from unprecedented. True - 2000, 2002, and 2006 each had at least one month with over 50% of the country experiencing drought conditions. But the same can be said of 1977, 1981, and 1988. And beginning in 1954 there were 4 such consecutive drought years.

Furthermore, the 1930's were a truly devastating period, enveloped in what the NCDC declares the "most widespread national drought in the last 300 years." For 5 of those years, over 50% of the country was hit, and for 5 months during 1934 that figure climbed to almost 80%. The misery these conditions brought to the Great Plains region -- parched for virtually the entire decade -- made refugees of large numbers of Americans, as chronicled in the classic American tale of dispossessed dust bowl migrants, The Grapes of Wrath.

Ironically, getting reacquainted with Steinbeck's patently pro-socialist masterpiece might afford the alarmist-in-chief a valuable perspective on demagoguery. Casy the Preacher man vowed never to sermonize again until he learned the truth himself: "Preachers gotta know [what they're preaching about]," he confided to Tom Joad, confessing that he did not.

Not a single one of Gore's five examples of what's "happening right now" has, as he persists, "never happened before."

Not one.

So in how many ways does Gore deceive?

Given five deceptions in three sentences in one paragraph in just one interview, who can possibly keep count?

Marc Sheppard is a technology consultant, software engineer, writer, and political and systems analyst. He is a regular contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your feedback.