A Debate I'd Pay To See

Czech President Vaclav Klaus wants to debate global warming junk science proponent and former Vice President Al Gore. Gore is ducking him thus far. I can't imagine why.

Klaus was speaking a the National Press Building in Washington to present his new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?, before meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday.

"My answer is it is our freedom and, I might add, and our prosperity," he said.

Gore a former US vice president who has become a leading international voice in the cause against global warming, was co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Gore's effort was highlighted by his Oscar winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth.

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

"Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he said.

"In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet," he added.

Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he oppposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

"It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda," he said.

Maybe it has something to do with the inconvenient science that suggests that man has little, if anything to do with global climate patterns. A fiery ball of gases at the center of our little corner of the galaxy has something to do with that - and it goes through various short and long term phases regardless of what man does.

Whatever the case, I hope Klaus continues to press Gore to engage in a debate on the facts. I'd be real interested to see what Gore comes up with since he's peddled a whole lot of alarmism without actually engaging in any substantive reduction to his own global emissions.