Lager or Ale?

Are you an alarmist? Perhaps you are a denier? Did you plan on tipping a couple lagers on New Year’s Eve, or perhaps you preferred a dark creamy ale? Tough to choose, isn’t it – bottom fermentation verses top fermentation… Recently, I sipped both styles while watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and the BBC/C4′s “The Great Global Warming Swindle.” Both are fascinating to watch, both reach much different conclusions and both ought to be viewed with a grain of alcohol and a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s great poem, The Gods of the Copybook Headings.

If the global warming issue was a debate over intoxicating adult beverages odds are we would have some serious issues for the local constabulary due to the lack of jail space. There appears to be a drunk on every street corner mumbling something about anthropogenic catastrophic global warming (ACGW). Amazing diction, for a drunk. Then you have this new crowd, the “deniers,” who seem to be tripping over themselves warning that the socialists are coming – Marxists wearing lab coats. We all most likely understand the concept of groupthink, but groupdrink?

Then there are the calls going out to head on down to Al Gore’s Bar and Grill, take a swig, and climb aboard the bus (loaded with Green whapatoolee) headed to Bali, or Oslo, or some other Green Policy Stink Tank. Then you have stunning accusations by people such as Patrick Moore (former head of Green Peace), that the ACGW alarmist crowd is merely a Fabian movement (probably cooked up by Hugo Chavez) looking to implement socialism via environmental activism. The idea being that if they could just implement collectivism via the Green, under the guise of science and ACGW, we would all wake up one day and finally realize that Marx was actually correct and von Mises was wrong (Aristotle, too). That, in fact, A is not A, and that a thing can actually not be itself… Mr. Moore has a point worth considering – the intellectual hops, jumps, and starts needed for cover-charge into Al’s Bar and Grill is stunning, no wonder alcohol is involved.

As I mentioned at the outset I have viewed the BBC/C4 documentary entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle produced by, get this, an avowed right-wing Communist (yes, that incarnation actually exists). Talk about buzz-kill, just when you thought it was hip to agree with the ACGW alarmists out there, and tip a couple of Al’s new Lucky Lagers, along come these notable, intelligent, experienced contrarians smelling of creamy stout and making some very frothy arguments. Bottom line: If you climb onto Al’s party bus, you might want to wear a helmet and buckle up because there are some equally as inebriated characters on the road headed in the opposite direction (driving the newest SUV model, the all-wheel drive Yukon Denier).

Just to add to the happy hour fun, I read in Canada’s National Post an article regarding none other than Dr. Claude Allegre. You might remember Allegre, he is the retired director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre and he was appointed director of the University of Paris’ Department of Earth Sciences (OK, so you don’t remember him but didn’t that sound authoritative?). Allegre is/was one of France’s leading socialists and among their most celebrated scientists, moreover one of the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming years ago implying that it was human contributions of CO2 to blame (one of the original 1500 scientists who rang the warning bell). The National Post wrote:

To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

Even more recently, Dr. Allegre (in his new book, Ma Verite Sur la Planete) has stated that Gore is a “crook” presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. And one could surely go on and on, depending on which flavor you prefer, citing and quoting scientists, economists, politicians and other concerned characters to promote either Lager or Ale.

Clearly, what is important is to calmly, soberly, and rationally get at the truth. In this case it is a scientific search (not a 1960′s beatnik “fight”) embedded in an incredibly complex matter which simply outpaces any individual scientist’s abilities, let alone propaganda pushing politicians and the topic specific ignorant public. It is an inherently complex matter but not an impossible mission. Given time (and we do have time), we are all capable of understanding the real science at work here. That, however, does not fit nicely into Al Gore’s world-view of change.. He wants change now because he knows that many of the changes would be unchangeable even if we were to discover later that the premise was flawed. Very much like the war in Iraq, only far more expensive and insidious. The fact the George W. Bush has apparently fallen off the wagon and has now become a lager drinking Green weenie says more about the end-game than the current state of science. What a loser.

What we ought not do is relegate our economic futures and personal liberty to the status of intellectual slaves to whomever claims authority and the voice of the “scientific community.” To that end, I would submit that docu-dramas such (and particularly) An Inconvenient Truth as well as, to a certain extent, The Great Global Warming Swindle do more of a disservice than a service. Do they raise awareness? Yes. Are they entirely accurate and without bias? No.

The problem with both films is that so much of the science which we do know is not fully understood, is simply not dealt with comprehensively. The science that is, is couched rather conveniently in ways to promote either Pale Ale or Extra Stout. You know it from the first 60 seconds of both films and neither provided any real critical analysis of either’s own thesis while both clearly pandered to their inebriated constituencies (which should have been a dead giveaway to all who have viewed either). One has to admire Dr. Allegre though, he got to drink his lager, and then have his stout too. Of all the deniers I have seen swilling brew, I think Dr. Allegre has a legitimate beef. At the end of the day, in this great global warming beer party, we seem to have too many drunks on both sides and some that are now trying Denier’s Stout formerly only drank Al’s Lucky Lager.

For me, I prefer top fermentation – never did like bottom feeders and, frankly, I just don’t see too many notable Denier Stout drinkers switching back to Al’s Lucky Lager….

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