Al Gore is, apparently, fat

It is amazing how, for the Right, the entire issue of climate change and industrialization's effect on it comes down to their hatred for Al Gore.

Have you seen this Rasmussen poll? Only 24 percent of Americans consider Al Gore an expert on global warming, 47 percent say he isn’t.

Hmm. Is the famous Gore effect about to kick in? You’ll recall that, as soon as Al decided that Howard Dean was an unstoppable force and announced he was endorsing him, Dean imploded, went berserk in Iowa, and that was that. Could it be that Gore is about to do to “climate change” what he did to the Dean campaign? Another week or two of Al’s proselytizing and that polar bear on the ice floe will be like Mad How in the New Hampshire primary – adrift and heading south and howling incoherently.

Of course, Al Gore is not an "expert on global warming," he's an extremely interested citizen who's done a lot of investigation into it. He's not, however, a climatologist. But never mind. That sure is a funny image, about the polar bear, though.

What Steyn doesn't mention is that if the public is deeply uncertain about global warming it is because Al Gore has been competing with industry bank-rolled campaigns to blur distinctions, aided by a press that must give voice to all opinions on the subject, regardless of the scientific consensus.

But Steyn is emblematic of the current conservative campaign to fight the proof of global warming with everything at their disposal.

How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It's certainly true that many of them are. Leading global warming skeptic Representative Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), for instance, was the subject of a fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. The bottom line is that his relationship to the energy industry is as puppet relates to hand.

But the financial relationship doesn't quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.

The truth is more complicated--and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement.

Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.

National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.

Meanwhile, Republicans who do believe in global warming get shunted aside. Nicole Gaudiano of Gannett News Service recently reported that Representative Wayne Gilchrest asked to be on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio refused to allow it unless Gilchrest would say that humans have not contributed to global warming. The Maryland Republican refused and was denied a seat.

Representatives Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), both research scientists, also were denied seats on the committee. Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global warming panel, it would kill the party's strategy of making global warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood lefties.

Steyn's post is clear -- there's no point in engaging Gore on the issue; they have no interest in doing so. But trying to make Gore look ridiculous, now that comes as natural to them as breathing.

Now, I don't know who the "Mad How of New Hampshire" is, but I do know something about Howls...