Are Liberals Getting Smarter? Let's Hope So

By Alan Caruba

Something quite extraordinary happened on Saturday, January 3rd. The Huffington Post.com, a bastion of liberal thought, published a commentary by Harold Ambler that demanded an apology from Al Gore for all the lies he’s been telling about “global warming” or, as the alarmists now call it, “climate change.”

Ambler’s lengthy commentary was jam-packed with solid scientific data about what actually warms or cools the Earth, neatly dispatching the “climate change” verbiage by noting that climate change is a redundancy. “The climate has always changed and always will.” This was followed by a list of the many known periods of warming and cooling that have occurred during the Holocene period that had marked the rise of human civilization. “The lie is that the climate has ever been stable.”

“The theory that carbon dioxide ‘drives’ climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a ‘flat-Earth’ mentality,” said Ambler, turning the accusation that global warming critics are “flat-Earthers” or just “deniers” into a description of Gore and his associates.

Ambler then launched into a serious explanation of the forces that actually impact the Earth’s warming and cooling cycles. He noted, for example, that “Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years” in which there will be little or no sunspot activity.” This always correlates to a colder Earth.

Ambler’s commentary (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html?v) is extraordinary for two reasons. First, he used the same data that has been available for years on the numerous Internet sites visited mostly by conservatives and he holds Al Gore up for the scorn he richly deserves. He does this for a politically and socially liberal audience of readers.

There are cracks in the liberal wall of lies beginning to appear in other liberal media. On the same day Ambler’s commentary appeared, the Star Ledger, the largest circulation daily newspaper in New Jersey, published an editorial, “End ethanol experiment.” The push to require that gasoline include ethanol as a way to reduce dependency on oil imports (some 60% at this point) has always ignored the fact that it requires that food products, primarily corn and soy, be turned into fuel and that drives up the cost of food and animal feed worldwide while simultaneously reducing the mileage from every gallon of a gasoline/ethanol mix.

As the Star Ledger editorial noted, “Americans loved the idea of a clean, green fuel that could take the place of petroleum.” The problem was that ethanol could never replace gasoline, a petroleum derivative. The environmental impact of the ethanol mandates imposed by Congress was to encourage deforestation elsewhere in order to plant more corn.

The editorial noted that “environmentalists will have a major influence on the incoming Obama administration. New Jersey residents have reason to hope that influence will be sufficient to overcome the influence of the corn states in Congress.” That is wishful thinking because the ethanol and biofuel problem was created by environmentalists who hate oil with a passion.

The real hope is that enough liberals will begin to be exposed to and seriously examine the lies they have been told by environmentalists and will begin to reject congressional bans on exploration and extraction of oil in ANWR and the continental shelf off our vast east and west coasts. They need, too, to reject the lies about “dirty” coal or “dangerous” nuclear power.

Perhaps when liberals get cold enough and electrical power become unstable, they may conclude that conservatives were telling the truth.