SOLO-International Press Release: Gore's U-Turn Given Qualified Welcome

February 29, 2008

Two cheers for Al Gore on his about-face on man-made Global Warming, says SOLO Principal, Lindsay Perigo.

"Gore's renunciation of a cause whose Number One cheerleader he has been for so long is a triumph of the scientific spirit. Confronted by mounting evidence that the sceptics were right and he was wrong, Gore has chosen to go with the evidence, and that is admirable."

Up to a point.

Gore acknowledged Thursday that recent cooling trends — manifest in China's coldest winter in 100 years, Baghdad's first snow ever, North America's greatest snow cover in 50 years, record levels of Antarctic sea ice and record cold in a number of countries in both hemispheres — appear set to continue. He cited the fact that all major global temperature tracking agencies (Hadley, NASA, GISS, UAH, RSS) have released data showing that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped dramatically, from between 0.65C and 0.75C — enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year, and the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down. Gore quoted Kenneth Tapping, of Canada's National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun and is convinced the earth is destined for a long period of severely cold weather if solar activity does not pick up soon: "The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850."

But here's the rub: In addition to an end to the Kyoto Treaty, Gore is now calling for a trebling of CO2 emissions by 2015, tax penalties for weak carbon footprints, the mandatory use of coal and the installation of giant heaters above the earth to stop polar bears freezing to death and the oceans turning solid.

"This is the reason for two cheers instead of three," says Perigo. "From warmist he has morphed into freezist. He still demands measures that would kill industrial civilization while having zero impact on climate change. What he needs fully to absorb from his epiphany is that temperature is driven by the sun's activity, not man's ... and the free exercise of man's resourcefulness, not hysteria-driven, freedom-destroying laws, should be relied upon to ameliorate any inconvenience caused by warming or cooling.

"The truth is actually convenient, for Gore and all of us. It means we can get on with enjoying our lives and our freedom untroubled by the apocalyptic naggings of warmists, freezists and all other party-pooping hysterics," Perigo concludes.

ENDS

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Arguably Reassuring: Inspector-General Finds GCSB "Arguably" Legal

Of the 88 individuals:

• 15 cases involving 22 individuals did not have any information intercepted by GCSB.

• another four cases involving five individuals were the subjects of a New Zealand Security Intelligence Service warrant and the GCSB assisted in the execution of the warrants. The Inspector-General is of the view that there were arguably no breaches and the law is unclear.

• the Bureau only provided technical assistance which did not involve interception of communications, involving three of the individuals, so no breach occurred.

• the remaining cases involved the collection of metadata, and the Inspector-General formed the view that there had arguably been no breach, noting once again that the law is unclear.
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