Who Is Al Gore To You?

About this story: Al Gore in line for honorary doctorate from UT

I've always been of two minds on Al Gore. First, he served as a publicly-elected official representing Tennessee, he was elected into the White House as VP, and he has received international recognition - all of these point to positive contributions he has made; on the other side, he is not his father and has always projected a wooden public personality or a personality he copied from Clinton, partly, I think, because he was never a true Tennessean politician, traveling throughout his youth in his father's shadow, and thus never able to establish his own public persona (which I bet would have been more like a primary/secondary school teacher or smalltown journalist, if there had not been pressure on him to follow in his father's footsteps).

What do they say about a person never getting respect in his hometown?

I think the carbon "cap and trade" concept is sound but is hard to sell during this economic downturn because people tend to view the concept as anti-growth (or worse).

So, all the best for Al, who represents Tennessee and, despite controversy, deserves an honorary degree for what we'll understand in later centuries about the changes our species has caused to this planet's complex ecosystem. An energy consumption device provided by the Atomic Energy Museum that my father demonstrated to my schoolmates in the late 1970s taught me long ago that fuel=carbon and the megamegatons we have used/released creates longlasting effects, including the permanent heat bubbles our concrete/factory jungles create.

Sure, outer space is a big heat sink but "greenhouses gases" are good insulators. Tip the balance far enough and see what happens! Unfortunately for our species, in 10-20 years, Gore will have the last laugh on this one when the climate change (i.e., "global warming") theories he supported become reality.