Brother Albert Gore, pastor of the Universal Church of Global Warming, was preaching to the choir, but received a standing ovation twice from the thousands who already heard his sermon on environmental gloom and doom.
The former vice president has stayed on the lecture circuit ? even though his presentation about the causes and impact of planetary climate change has been turned into an Academy Award-winning documentary.
“It is among the most compelling PowerPoint presentations you will ever see,” Constellation Energy Chairman Mayo Shattuck told the audience Tuesday night at the Arbutus campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
There was a certain irony that one of the largest U.S. producers of electricity and power ? parent of BGE ? was a corporate sponsor of the event, the fourth part of the Maryland Forum put on by the Annapolis and Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce.
Sixty percent of Constellation?s electricity is “emissions free” from nuclear power, Shattuck said.
“Our position is unequivocal. We believe global warming emissions must be slowed and stopped” and the damage reversed, he said.
The 90-minute show of slides, charts, graphs and videos was a live rerun of Gore?s “Inconvenient Truth,” with some updated data.
The polar ice caps are still melting ? but even faster ? and more polar bears are drowning trying to reach the waning ice flows. The glaciers are shrinking, as shocking before and after photos attest, and the frozen tundra is solid for truck traffic just a quarter of the year, not two-thirds of the year as it was just decades ago.
“We?ve always had tornadoes in Kansas and we?ve always had hurricanes, but they?re starting to get stronger” and more frequent, Gore said.
Think this is controversial media hype? The problem is the media, Gore said, suggesting the press should provide “a little less about Anna Nicole Smith?s funeral arrangements.”
More than half of 600-plus media stories reviewed have called global warming in doubt, Gore said, but none of the more than 900 of the most recent peer-reviewed scientific journal articles question the phenomenon at all.
Alluding to Bible parables, Gore said this is a moral issue, not a political issue, and despite the apocalyptic forecasts, it?s not too late to do something ?- listing a series of measures that could bring global emissions down to 1970 levels. “We have the tools, but lack the political will,” Gore said. “But that?s a renewable resource.”
“President Gore!” shouted a man in the audience at the end of the lecture, but Gore did not acknowledge the remark, and made no reference to any plans.
Gore one-liners:
“I?m Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States.” After the laughter: “I don?t think that?s very funny.”
“I?m a recovering politician ? I?m at the ninth step. You win, you lose some, and then there?s a little known third category.”
“I flew on Air Force Two for eight years, and now I have to take off my shoes to get on an airplane.”
