Goodbye Global Warming: Gore in Panic Mode

Al Gore is now in panic mode, according to a former British government official. Statistics on global climate trends over the last ten years do not support the alarmist contention turned conventional wisdom that the planet faces an ecological crisis because of rising temperatures.

British environmental analyst Christopher Monckton says Al Gore's latest attack on global warming skeptics shows the former vice president and other climate alarmists are "panicking."

On Sunday, CBS News correspondent Leslie Stahl asked Al Gore on the television show 60 Minutes what he thinks of people like Vice President Dick Cheney who doubt that global warming is caused by human activity.

"I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, and those who believe the earth is flat," replied Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."

However, Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy advisor for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, says the former vice president can enjoy his "flat earth fantasies" for a few months, but in the end, the world will be laughing at him.

"The alarmists are alarmed, the panic mongers are panicking, the scare mongers are scared; the Gores are gored. Why? Because global warming stopped ten years ago; it hasn't got warmer since 1998," he points out. "And in fact in the last seven years, there has been a downturn in global temperatures equivalent on average to about [or] very close to one degree Fahrenheit per decade. We're actually in a period ... of global cooling."

I wouldn't fret for Al, though. In addition to being the number one "global warming profiteer" (his Nobel Prize accountin for only a small percentage of his vast fortune) he looks to have a very promising future as a comedian.