Al Gore continues to be the comedic gift that keeps on giving.  First, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) revealed on May 24, 2006, that Gore has used enough hydrocarbons to circle the globe to present over 1,000 Power Point presentations on climate change.  CEI also revealed that he recently used five large SUVs to haul his movie entourage a mere 500 yards at the Cannes Film Festival in France, all the while admonishing others to curtail their own energy use.  Gore's "Saturday Night Live" appearance can't top that kind of comedy. 

On the heels of these embarrassing revelations, Nature magazine now obliterates the core assertion of Gore's new movie and globetrotting global warming crusade -- that climate change is an unnatural and irrevocable phenomenon. 

In case you have been too busy lately -- with such things as making a living, putting food on your family's dinner table, paying your mortgage, or focusing on actual everyday burdens -- to realize that global warming is the "single greatest threat to our lives," Gore has produced a new movie entitled An Inconvenient Truth to dispatch your silly everyday concerns and refocus your attention on what should really matter to you and your family.  Not terrorism directed against Americans, not increasingly-porous borders, not ineffective schools, not crime, not fuel prices, not health care.  Climate change.  Unfortunately, the joke is once again on him. 

In Gore's movie and on the movie's promotional website, he categorically asserts that climate change is unnatural.  According to Gore, "scientists agree that global warming is real, it's already happening, and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence."  (emphasis added)  The movie website also asserts that climate changes are "irrevocable." 

Unfortunately for "Earth Tone Al," this is flatly incorrect. 

In Nature magazine's June 1, 2006, issue, scientists demonstrate in three new studies that the area near the North Pole was a balmy 74 degrees Fahrenheit 55 million years ago.  That was obviously long before the invention of the wheel, let alone the advent of hydrocarbon scares or the internal-combustion engine (which Gore has called to completely eliminate).  So much for Gore's assertion that climate change is "irrevocable." 

Using cutting-edge technology, the scientists removed core samples from beneath the Arctic Ocean to examine the physical evidence and establish their findings.  According to Mark Pagani, a Yale University geology professor and co-author of one of the three studies discussed by Nature, the area surrounding the North Pole was once similar to Florida's present-day topography:  "[i]magine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean." 

These studies reconfirm the fact that the earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming millions of years ago, caused by an unexplained increase in carbon dioxide levels.  According to the Boston Globe report on the studies, "scientists already knew that this 'thermal event' happened but are not sure what caused it."  The possible causes cited by the Boston Globe include "massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions."  Indeed, Kathryn Moran, another co-author of one of the studies, is quoted as saying "it's the first time we've looked at the Arctic, and man, it was a big surprise to us." 

Let's see -- naturally-occurring climate change, with an uncertain explanation.  Does this sound familiar?   

We're confident that Gore has a ready-made rationalization for these studies, such as some sort of dinosaur-operated internal-combustion engine or prehistoric greedy oil conglomerates, and we look forward to the movie sequel to provide it.  In the meantime, however, we can revel in the latest example of Al Gore and his ideological brethren once again running face-first into their own "inconvenient truth."

 (For a hilarious short cartoon spoof on Gore's new movie crusade, click here.)