Al Gore: "We Cannot Allow The Coming Ice Age To Take Our Focus Off Global Warming"

VAIL, CO - Taking a break from some early-season October skiing, former vice-president Al Gore met with reporters this morning to discuss the looming global crisis with respect to global warming.

Despite recent data that suggests that the earth's temperatures peaked in 1998 and have been steadily moving downward since and despite gathering proof that we are in fact entering another ice age, Mr. Gore stressed that it is very important that we do not allow the coming ice age to take our eyes of the ball of the real problem confronting us long-term - global warming caused by human activities such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation.

Labeling the coming ice age a "temporary inconvenience", Mr. Gore expressed his concern that the ice age would cause Americans to "relax" and lull them into a false sense of security. Mr. Gore went on to say that he is very concerned that the colder short-term weather (brought about by the ice age) would in fact cause Americans to burn fossil fuels at even a faster rate. This, states Mr. Gore, would have disastrous long term consequences.

"What Americans have to understand," said Mr. Gore, "is that when the glaciers begin receding from our major Northeastern cities 40,000 years from now, they will see a rapid rise in global temperatures. Unless we begin taking steps today to fight that warming (by reducing greenhouse gas emissions), our descendants are going to have one hell of a global disaster on their hands. It is therefore incumbent upon us to take action today."

Meanwhile, other scientists shared Mr. Gore's concern that the coming ice age may have the effect of taking the nation's focus off the global warming problem. Furthermore, there is the concern that Americans will, in an effort to keep warm, burn fossil fuels at even a faster rate.

"Many Americans are not aware that ice ages are a normal part of our climate," stated Dr. Alfred Bertinberger, director of the Stop Global Warming Project (SGWP).

"At least several times over the past million years, most of North America was encased in sheets of ice up to a mile thick," Dr. Bertinberger went on. "Each and every time, those ice sheets eventually receded and this is a normal climactic event. However, never before has the planet had to contend with man-made global warming - this is the real problem we ought to concern ourselves with today."

Other politicians and scientists agree that the coming ice age might lessen the incentive for Americans to grapple with the problem of global warming and that, they all collectively agree, would be a colossal mistake.

Charlton Heston Speech on Global Climate Change:

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

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