Global Warming Brownshirts

Such tolerance for differing opinions. It's one thing to pawn off junk science on a gullible public and Hollywood nitwits. Quite another when a group begins receiving death threats because they dare expose The Goracle for the fraud that he is. Drunk with power, the environmental extremists want to shut down any debate and force their lifestyle upon us.

Religious intolerance is associated in the minds of many today with Islamic radicalism. Yet, there is a Western variety on the rise that has to concerns us greatly as well -- and no it is not climate change orthodoxy. Challenge the belief that the Earth is warming dangerously due to human activity, or criticize any of its high priests, and the wrath of true believers will be visited upon you.

This troubling fact was brought forcefully home recently to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a smallish think tank dedicated to energy research and located in Nashville, former Vice President Al Gore's hometown. After watching the over-the-top acclaim according Mr. Gore so-called documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" at the Oscars, staff members had the bright idea of checking on the Gore family's energy usage. As it turned out, the Gore mansion interestingly uses 20 times more electricity than the average American home.

Little did the staff anticipate that by posting the facts of the Gore family's bloated and certainly hypocritical energy consumption on their Web site, they would create an international firestorm, become the subject of death threats, vicious verbal abuse and almost see their Web site shut down because of the onslaught. According to the center's spokeswoman, Nicole Williams, a deluge of calls and e-mail have flowed in from all over the world, as far away as Germany, Australia, Turkey and Latin America.

"Conspiracy theorists have made up all sorts of stories about us, who we are and who we are backed by," Ms. Williams says. "Our president once had an internship at AEI, and now they say we are funded by AEI. Personally, I have been asked 'whose whore are you?' I have been called 'a stupid redneck,' 'liar,' [and some profane names]. I have also been told that I 'had better watch out.' People have posted personal information about us individually on the Web." The facts that led to Mr. Gore deserving "a gold statue for hypocrisy" are these: Despite the fact that Mr. Gore in his movie hyperbolically calls climate change "the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced," his sentiment has not spurred him or his family to change their lifestyle.