Would that be the same kind of hysterics that the right gets up to when the subject is say, human rights, tax rules, gay marriage, immigration, the minimum wage or homosexuality? Or how about the hysterics that caring for the air will bankrupt companies?

Alex, I love you man, but, were I to characterize your link as . . . "thinly sourced," would you object unduly?

Have you ever heard of this letter from 60 climatology and meteorology experts?

Just a couple of bon mots from the letter:

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.

While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policy formulation. The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an "emerging science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

"Climate change is real" is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise."

I'm not so convinced that all the data should be unquestioned.

I do agree with Jim Henley that based on what we have so far we can't take it as a given that Gore thinks cigarette smoke is a significant cause of global warming. He may hold that view, he may not. What we have is enough to contact Gore and ask him, but not enough to assign it as part of Gore's world view.

Ah geez, what next, outdoor barbeques?

Another significant contributor to global warming: the heat generated from Al's inexorably expanding girth.

I would say that almost all of the real data is being questioned by climatologists.

Jim,

Alex, I love you man, but, were I to characterize your link as . . . “thinly sourced,” would you object unduly?

I agree it's thinly sourced, but having read the book version of "An Inconvenient Truth" I wouldn't be surprised if he'd made the comment. That said, I probably shouldn't have relied solely on Drudge.

As much as I hate cigarettes and smoking - surely the CO2 released during smoking has been absorbed by the tobacco plants when they were growing. So no different to biofuels. Or have I got it wrong and tobacco is a fossil dug up from the ground like coal?

This speech was a major stumble on the part of dimwitted Al Gore. I think the "global warming" science is a little sketchy but conede that it "could" be true. I am willing to take the "risk" however instead of jeopardizing our national economy. Hence forth we can make Gore's stupidity the center of our anti-warming debate. By making him look like the blundering corpulent fool that he is ("I invented the internet!) we can saddle the rest of the environmentalist extremists with the heavy burden that is Al Gore and render them impotent. Thank you again Al for looking, sounding and talking like a fool. You are the worst advocate for your cause. :)

Where is the evidence that Gore actually said cigarette smoking is a significant cause of global warming? Read Drudge's report. There are no quotation marks around the words "cigarette smoking" in Drudge's report, which leads me to believe that Gore didn't say cigarette smoking was a significant cause of global warming, but rather that something else was.

Drudge has lied many times in the past. Are we going to believe him about this when there are no credible sources to back it up?

Please, don't anyobody exhale.

Mammals that breathe cause significant global warming.

Please don't breathe so we may all survive.

Gore said it to the UN, the reason he said it is political. Oil companies/Tobacco companies are destroying our planet is the message he sends. Why? Because they are large contributors to the Republican party. Hurt them, you hurt the Republicans.

Climate change is scientific, who you blame it on is political.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

I did my Master's thesis on many years of global warming studies. This was a few years ago. I came to the (independent) conclusion that the subject was much too complex for those studies (separately or as a group) to have any real validity in identifying the causes or predicting the future of global warming.