Ozone Man Returns

Al Gore, infamously referred to as Ozone Man by former President George Bush, Sr., has raised eyebrows in Copenhagen with his latest doomsday prediction that “there is a 75 per cent chance of the entire polar ice cap melting during the summertime by 2014.”

That’s right. Even though 10% of the world’s land mass is covered in glaciers and some places like Greenland have ice that is two miles thick, all of it will be gone in four years. Finit. Kaput.

That’s quite an attention grabber, isn’t it?

Unfortunately for Gore one of the people most surprised by his prediction is the scientist whose data the former vice president is using to defend his ridiculous claim.

LOL. You can’t write fiction this funny.

Dr Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, stated, “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at.” He then added, ““I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.” Professor Jim Overland, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer, remarked: “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics.”

Gore needs some serious PR assistance. Do environmentalists honestly believe that their cause is helped by silly comments like Gore’s? If they truly believe that the ecological changes we are witnessing are the result of humanity’s actions, then they should follow Professor Overland’s suggestion: “You really don’t need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.”

Perhaps Gore is panicking because of the amount of money he has riding on his ability to convince the world that the sky is falling. Maybe he is nervous because of the “Climategate” e-mail scandal.

Or Gore might simply be following the advice of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”