Alexander Cockburn Fearlessly Decries Al Gore's Ties to Big Nuke

Last week I alerted H&R readers to Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn's newly minted climate change skepticism. To remind readers, just a tidbit from thst first Cockburn column below:

There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution–and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.

The redoubtable Russell Seitz also points out at his fascinating blog Adamant that Cockburn disbelieves not only man-made global warming but also the first law of thermodynamics.

Now comes Cockburn's second column peddling climate change denial in which he accuses Al Gore of shilling for the nuke industry. To wit:

The world's best-known hysteric and self-promoter on the topic of man's physical and moral responsibility for global warming is Al Gore, a shill for the nuclear and coal barons from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oak Ridge National Lab. White House advisory bodies on climate change in the Clinton/Gore years were well freighted with nukers like Larry Papay of Bechtel.

As a denizen of Washington since his diaper years, Gore has always understood that threat inflation is the surest tool to plump budgets and rouse voters. By the mid-'90s he'd positioned himself at the head of a strategic alliance formed around "the challenge of climate change," which stepped forward to take Communism's place in the threatosphere essential to political life.

Whole feisty Cockburn column, "Who Are the Merchants of Fear?" here.

Disclosure: I accept the IPCC conclusions on the possible ranges of future man-made climate change-some are disastrous and some are not. I also must confess that I am enjoying Cockburn's left-wing fulminations against the climate change conspiracy.