The Gore effect, a joke that just keeps giving.

Humour and just what is funny really depends upon where you stand and what it is that rocks your boat. But nothing makes something more unfunny than being the butt of the joke. Which surely explains just why the Warministas are so incensed by any evocation of the “Gore Effect”. There are two ways to deal with this sort of mockery, In the first instance you could just get with the program and accept the irony of advocates for a theory of rampant global warming being repeatedly frozen in their attempts at activism is innately funny. Or you could try to find a pseudo scholarly reason that explains just why making jokes about this is very bad indeed.

The “Gore effect” in action (photo from Tim Blair)

THERE were two storms in the US capital yesterday, and one blew away the other.

Global warming activists had stormed Washington for what was billed as the nation’s largest act of civil disobedience to fight climate change, only to see the city almost shut down by a major winter storm.

As Washington was blasted with its heaviest snowfall of the winter, politicians cancelled appearances and schools and businesses were closed.

The storm also buried under 15cm of snow any hope of global warming activism.

Reports said the activists had hoped to swarm Washington in an effort to force the Government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

Fox News said the scene was reminiscent of a day in January 2004, when Al Gore made an address on global warming in New York — on one of the coldest days in the city’s history.

In a press release supporting the protest against the coal-fired plant, Greenpeace wrote that “coal was the country’s biggest source of global warming pollution” and “burning coal cuts short at least 24,000 lives in the US annually”. But Fox News said it might be worth noting the US Government’s own stark numbers: pneumonia kills twice as many each year.

The storm was more serious elsewhere, paralysing most of the east coast yesterday.

For the first time in five years New York City cancelled school for its 1.1 million students.

The thing is, I have never come a cross a single sceptic (about the AGW theory) who sees the ” Gore effect” as being anything more than a delightfully humorous irony and a great way to undermine the “sky is falling” rhetoric of the Waministas. Not with science but with well deserved mockery. Although the AGW enthusiasts dress their faith in scientific vestments it is in essence a religion that seeks to do with activism what it just can’t achieve with actual evidence. That the forces of nature can be seen to smite their efforts not just once, but repeatedly, makes their claims to be acting for Gaia look as ridiculous as any other millenarian cult who have to explain, the morning after their predicted demise of humanity, why we are still here.
Finally I shall explain for the benefit of those wilfully ignorant Waministas that if you hear anyone talking about “the Gore effect” in any context it is a joke, always a joke, and you and your fellows are the butt of that joke. By all means pretend that it is cited with anything other than a comedic purpose because that gives we sceptics even more reason to enjoy the catharsis of laughter.

Until next time comrades