Al Bore was in the House

As you might have heard, Al Bore delivered his testimony to the US Senate Environment Committee overnight -- that is, he delivered his oral testimony; the written testimony which he is obliged to make available has still not been delivered, violating a Senate rule. (More on that here at Senator Inhofe's blog).

Perhaps it's because he's too embarrassed at the nonsense he's peddling that he'd rather it isn't too widely read? Harvard physicist Luboš Motl has a run down on some of the worst nonsense delivered by what he calls "the mad megalomaniac":

• Gore praised Europeans because "they're not talking about the science." If this were true, is it really something to be proud about?
• "The Earth is shaking because of glacial earthquakes in Greenland," we learned. I haven't met or read a person who would have any idea what he talks about.
• The CO2 regulation is like the Marshall plan, he said - no clue where the similarity comes from. The Marshall plan was a plan that [is considered by some to have] helped to spark the post-war boom in Europe, while the Gore plan is a plan to create a worldwide recession.
• We face a "planetary emergency." Wow. To show how certain we are that we face a "planetary emergency", he enumerates several of his comparably mad friends from various science journals etc. - quite many crazy people are walking around. One of them argues - and Gore apparently agrees - that only the existence of gravity is more certain than the catastrophic global warming. It's just such an incredible stupidity - or lie or whatever it is - that they should have stopped him on the spot. But you know, it's Al Gore. Even if the hypotheses about the dominant greenhouse effect are true, global warming certainly doesn't belong among 100,000 most certain scientific insights we have. He seems to have no idea what certainty is. Even the IPCC activists say that the probability that the observed recent warming is caused by the mankind is around 90%.
• Al Gore says it is wrong to have political people who have no scientific training altering the words of scientists. Apparently he does not recognize this is exactly what he has been doing for years.
• He even has the courage and stomach to argue that alarmist scientists are those who are discriminated against the skeptics.
• That's all very painful but there are apparently even more insane people than Gore: parts of the Capitol - such an impressive building - have turned into a kind of asylum. Senator Lautenberg argues that Gore has proven that carbon emission limits won't hurt the economy - wow - and even describes Gore's opponents as "Luddites". Quite an irony

I think it's fair to say that Motl is not awfully impressed. Can't say I am, either. Anybody else felt "the earth shaking" from all those "glacial earthquakes"? If you want more from a more laudatory perspective, this guy live blogged the session, and he's more sold on the Bore. Bjorn Lomborg's testimony, as you'd expect, was delivered on time, and consequently is already available on the net [pdf].

UPDATE 1: Peyton Knight was another at the hearing, and he reports (with a YouTube link) that Al Gore showed up late to the hearing, the reason being that he refused to hear opening statements by Republican committee members. When it came to the questioning, Knight says "Thank God for Senator Inhofe."

Senator Inhofe did a masterful job of presenting the many, many scientists who specialize in climatology who disagree with Gore. He also noted a recent New York Times article that took Gore to task for over-hyping global warming. Gore never actually countered any of Inhofe's assertions, but only pleaded with him like a religious zealot who pleads with a non-believer to join the faith.

UPDATE 2: Cafe Hayek's Russell Roberts think Gore is channeling Mao.

[Gore] said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information.

As Russell relates, his "foresight" paralleled the similar "foresight" of Mao Zedong on the subject of small-scale steel production of the 'Great Leap Forward,' a leap that was neither forward nor successful, and that led inexorably to a shortage of steel and to widespread impoverishment. Concludes Russell,

If Al Gore thinks energy can be produced the way information is produced, he either doesn't understand energy or he doesn't understand information.

In fact, it's quite possible The Bore doesn't understand either. It's worth reading the whole piece.

RELATED: Global Warming, World Politics