MSNBCer: Gore Should Debate Palin and All Climate Change Deniers

Nobel Laureate Al Gore should debate former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and all those who don't believe man is responsible for global warming.

So said MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe Friday in an appearance on "Countdown."

This was in response to substitute anchor Lawrence O'Donnell bringing up Palin's answer to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham's question concerning the former Governor debating Gore about climate change. 

What followed was rather comical if you understand how many people from around the world have challenged the Global Warmingist-in-Chief to a head-to-head without him once accepting (video embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, relevant section at 3:50):

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, HOST : Now, there is something she might be right about when she was talking to Laura Ingraham on the radio show about the -- in her war of words with Al Gore. Is she right? Would Al Gore not want to, as she put it in her words, "lower himself" to debate her? And if he did, is she also right that he would -- that she would, in her words, "get clobbered" if they had a debate?

RICHARD WOLFFE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, now, here`s the skill of Sarah Palin -- setting expectations so low that it`s easy to say, "I`ll buy them." Even where there to be this crazy hypothetical debate between the two of them, let`s face it, Sarah Palin didn`t get clobbered in her debate against Joe Biden. She doesn`t answer the questions. She doesn`t even refer to the question.

In fact, whoever the commentators or the hosts are or whatever debate she has in mind, it`s irrelevant, because she will talk about precisely what she wants.

Would Al Gore do it? I would love to see Al Gore debate the whole array of deniers of climate change. Put them all up. Let`s have a whole sort of Oxford Union style debate and let them have at it. It would be great TV.

What a fabulous idea, Richard. Make it happen!

After all, since Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" came out in 2006, he has regularly been asked to debate by climate realists from across the globe. 

Christopher Monckton, former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, issued the following challenge in March 2007:

In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous."

Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide." [...]

Monckton calls on the former Vice President to "step up to the plate and defend his advocacy of policies that could do grave harm to the welfare of the world's poor. If Mr. Gore really believes global warming is the defining issue of our time, the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced, then he should welcome the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue before a worldwide audience of billions by defining and defending his claims against a serious, science-based challenge."

The arena of the glittering "Second Great Debate" will be the elegant, Victorian-Gothic Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for the "Great Debate" between the natural scientist T. H. Huxley and Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce on the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Lord Monckton says he chose this historic venue "not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate but also because I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism."

Gore didn't accept.

Dennis Avery, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, challenged Gore the following month:

April 16, 2007

Honorable Albert Gore
2100 West End Avenue, Suite 620
Nashville, TN 37203

Dear Mr. Gore:

You and I each have books on global warming at the top of the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list.

Your book, An Inconvenient Truth, claims that the earth's recent warming is humanity's fault, and that society must give up most of its current energy supply in order to prevent climate catastrophe.

The book I co-authored, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years, assembles historic writings and physical evidence of the planet's past warming/cooling cycles, and experimental evidence showing how variations on the sun can affect the earth's always-varying temperatures. My book says our warming is natural, unstoppable-and not very dangerous anyway.

These books represent the two leading explanations for the earth's recent temperature changes-and they conflict. If global warming truly is the most important public policy issue of our day, then it is high time the public got to hear the arguments from both sides matched up against each other. How else can people make informed decisions? Therefore, I formally challenge you to debate me at a public event, preferably to be televised or carried by a radio station, sometime in the coming months.

Please contact my office at 540-337-6354 or contact me by email cgfi@hughes.net so we can begin discussing details as to the time and location of the debate.

Sincerely,

Dennis T. Avery, Senior Fellow
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. 

Gore didn't accept.

Months later, a Wharton marketing professor offered Gore a $10,000 bet about who could best predict what would happen to global temperatures in the next ten years.

Gore didn't accept.

In August 2007, Avery reiterated his challenge:

Best-selling author Dennis Avery is the next prominent figure to challenge the facts Al Gore is promoting in his global warming crusade. Mr. Avery is co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years. [...]

The list of Al Gore detractors continues to grow as his extreme rhetoric and conclusions get dissected by scientists, economists, and researchers. Avery joins Lord Christopher Monckton (former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher advisor), Bjorn Lomborg (Danish economist), author Michael Crichton, Prof. S. Fred Singer (former director of the U.S. National Weather Service), Tim Ball, Ph.D. (historical climatologist), Prof. Ian Clark (University of Ottawa), and Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT) among others. [...]

Gore has refused all debate challengers to date. Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, noted, "Maybe it's because climate alarmists tend to lose when they debate climate realists. Or because most scientists do not support climate alarmism." The Heartland Institute has run more than $500,000 of ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times promoting a debate.

Not surprisingly, Gore has ignored all of these challenges as well as one from Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus in May 2008.

Just how adament is the Nobel Laureate against appearing with folks who don't agree with his views concerning this issue?

Well, in April, Monckton was supposed to appear with Gore at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on climate change. At the last minute, Monckton's invitation was rescinded by House Democrats because Gore refused to attend if Monckton was allowed to speak.

More recently, Gore turned down an invitation to discuss global warming on the premiere episode of John Stossel's new FBN program.

With this in mind, Mr. Wolffe, if you and your friends at MSNBC can actually get Gore to debate this issue, please do, for the list of folks happy to attend is long and distinguished.

Of course, readers are advised not to hold their breath.