I used to view Al Gore as a fairly decent sort, honest as politicians go, affable, sometimes a bit clownish in his sanctimony and pomposity, a bit naive from his privileged youth and from never having held a real job in the real world, probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer but generally a well-intentioned guy who would be a congenial doubles tennis partner.
(I viewed his failure to be seduced by the Clinton slimy charm to be much in his favor. It has often been said that he cannot stand them.)
Traumatic events can short-circuit people's brains, and I think this fellow has experienced a personality change, if not a psychotic breakdown as a result of the ego injury of his agonizingly close loss of the election. Until then, his charmed life had had no apparent disappointments or major rejections, unlike most people who toughen up from the hard knocks of life. Strings of luck tend to make people want to believe it's because of them, and not La bella Fortuna.
I am not one for ad hominems. In fact, I am concerned about this guy's stability, specifically about the form of paranoid disorder known as monomania.
Those with a monomania want everyone else to join in their obsession (eg Captain Ahab). People who think their mission is to save the world are insane by definition.
Meanwhile, Old Man Winter just won't give us a chance to shovel the front walk before slamming us again. I often consider how many heart attacks would be prevented if only globalisticalistic warmening were really happening, but I love winter - I'd miss it. But I am not worried. Unlike Al Gore, I was a science major and I can look at data and stats with a modicum of savvy and healthy skepticism, knowing that 99% of it ends up being wrong - including, already, much of the science I learned in college. Among other things, my Ivy League scientist profs taught me that the world would be entirely without oil by 2000 with none left with which to produce medicines, and that the next Ice Age would begin about then, threatening civilization itself. Meanwhile, I plow the snow from my driveway today with relatively cheap gas: they might be right about the latter - the coming Ice Age. I am in it.
