Al Gore spoke about global warming here in Madison on Friday. Saturday, it snowed.

Right now, it's 32°. Thanks, Al Gore, for your work in reducing global warming. You can ease up now.

Sorry. It's a cheap joke. I know. There's a difference between weather and climate, but you've got to know that poor Al is sweating out every cold snap. Every time it's not hot, it makes his scheme a harder sell.

"We're very close to that political tipping point," Gore said at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference at the Madison Concourse Hotel. "Never before in human history has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions."...

"I am optimistic," Gore said. "I think there has been a very powerful recognition, not only in this country, but in many countries, that there is a linkage between the climate crisis and the economic crisis and the national security crisis that is in part derivative of the world's ridiculous over-dependence on carbon-based fuels."

Really? I would have thought that the economic slowdown was good for his cause. Less production, less carbon emissions, right? They just don't say that because it would make people mad. It's like the argument that cigarette smoking (with the consequent death from lung cancer) saves the government money. (Social Security payments and so forth.) That upsets people.

Conservative groups led by Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow and Americans for Prosperity held a demonstration Downtown that drew about 200 people, including U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Menomonee Falls, who also participated in the conference's panel discussion following Gore's speech. The demonstrators worried Gore's policies would push American jobs overseas.

200, in Madison?

In what organizers said was a rarity, Gore took half a dozen questions from journalists, including one from Phelim McAleer, an Irish filmmaker who asked Gore to address nine errors in his film identified by a British court in 2007.

I love the name Phelim McAleer. It supports that theory that people go into careers suggested by their names. (All the dentists named Dennis.) How so,  you ask? Phelim — that's how some people pronounce the word "film." My grandfather did. Dear old Pop.

Gore responded that the court ruling supported the showing of his film in British schools. When McAleer tried to debate further, his microphone was cut off by the moderators.

Well, good for Al for opening himself up to debate for 2 seconds. Now, quick, let's all ruin the economy some more the way Al Gore wants us to. As Obama likes to say, the time for debate is over.

ADDED: Video of the McAleer confrontation:



"Treat Big Environment the way you treat Big Business," McAleer advises journalists. Why are environmental journalists protecting the politician and not asking probing questions?

AND: "Gore's claim that the judge found in favor of his movie is ridiculous. The case was brought by a parent who objected to the film being shown to British schoolchildren on the ground that it is propaganda, not science. The judge found that An Inconvenient Truth 'is a political film' that is riddled with scientific mistakes. He held that as such, it would be illegal for the government to require the film to be shown in schools unless it was accompanied by 'guidance' pointing out that the film contains a number of scientific errors." Wow. How weaselly of Gore to point to that decision as making his point for him!