Greens Going for the Green

Even with the human tragedy of Cyclone Nargis still unfolding in Burma,
environmentalists aren't wasting any time linking the disaster to global
warming. Or at least one isn't: Al Gore. Citing the deadly Burmese storm and
recent storms in China and Bangladesh, he declared on National Public Radio:
"We're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be
associated with continued global warming."

There's just one problem -- it's not clear there's any link between climate
change and hurricane numbers or intensity. The number of big storms has been
falling, not rising. As for intensity, researchers led by Christopher Landsea
of the National Hurricane Center have found that earlier generations of
hurricane-watchers using inferior satellite imagery incorrectly classified
many storms as weaker than they actually were. After correcting for this
mismeasurement, the "increase" in storm intensity since the 1970s nearly
disappears.

But Mr. Gore is perhaps too busy these days to follow the science closely. In
April, a London-based company he chairs began selling shares in its so-called
Global Sustainability Fund to small investors in New Zealand, following a
similar offer to investors in Australia (interestingly, out of sight of the
U.S. press). He was also a conspicuously invoked presence when the Silicon
Valley firm Kleiner Perkins this month announced a new $500 million "green
growth" fund in partnership with Mr. Gore's London firm. Asked by the San Jose
Mercury News if Mr. Gore had been helpful in raising money, co-manager John
Denniston replied: "That's not been his primary responsibility."

Uh huh. Mr. Gore's primary responsibility, from the looks of it, is to spread
alarm about global warming and create the political conditions (subsidies,
mandates) without which Kleiner's "green" energy ventures are unlikely to
flourish. Expect the payoff to come next year as a new Congress and President
debate global warming policy.

--
"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem.
Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an
overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a
predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and
how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."
-- Al Gore acknowledges exaggerating the dangers of "global warming"
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