Al's Weather Report

And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn't it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today. -- Al Gore, July 17, 2008

Like the old-timer on the front porch, he sits there in the rocking chair and nods knowingly like he's seen it all before. It's easy to dismiss his rantings as another in a long line of retired people who can't hear enough of his own opinions. Old people like to talk about the weather. But this is a twist, because now the old timer is saying the weather is worse than it was in the good old days.

He's right as far as that goes. We probably are having more weather than when he was a boy. I can attest to the 95 year flood in central Indiana. I can note that we are under a severe storm watch today, while having dealt with a drought a year ago. And just like the other old-timers sitting on the porch, Al Gore has exactly no chance of ever changing the weather. Zip. Regardless of how many trillions of our dollars he persuades our government to spend.

Yet, here he is, getting all sorts of added attention, movie and book deals, awards, and such just for giving his opinion on the weather (where do I sign up for that gig?). But here's the thing. Weather is a verifiable fact, and Al has no monopoly on that. We can all see the statistics if that sort of thing interests you. What's different is a matter of opinion. Al's opinion -- if you look at it in the context of the old-timer in the rocking chair -- is that (get this) ...the rest of the neighborhood caused the bad weather. Instead of nodding back, pouring him some iced tea, and changing the subject, we literally beg him to go on blathering.

Al will be gone before the damage he creates here will be attributed to him. He is getting a lot of attention for an old-timer, he can say whatever he wants and watch the fun go by. When the US finally figures out that his cause was an enormous ineffective rat-hole that will suck up enough resources to make The Great Society look like a trip to the Safeway, it will be too late to catch up to the rest of the world.

Pass the iced tea.