Al Gore at Rice University: More Climate Alarmism, Political Bias in Houston

“Former Vice President of the United States Al Gore will speak at Rice University’s Tudor Fieldhouse at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 23. Gore, who is chairman of the Climate Reality Project and a board member of Rice’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders, will present ‘The Climate Crisis and Extreme Weather.’ The discussion, which will include Gore answering [prescreened] audience questions, is presented by Rice’s Office of the President and the Doerr Institute.”

– Rice University, Former Vice President Al Gore to speak at Rice Oct. 23 , Press Release (October 10, 2017).

The propagandists are hard at work trying to make Houston, Texas, ground zero in the cause of climate alarmism and a carbon tax. The Houston Chronicle, New York-influenced with its ideology, incessantly ran stories of Hurricane Harvey being a man-made anomaly (see my Houston Chronicle: Preaching Climate Alarmism Post Harvey and Charles Battig’s Politicizing Harvey in the Houston Chronicle.)

And in recent weeks, the climate activists, warring against fossil fuels in general, and seeking a carbon tax in particular, are erecting inflammatory billboards in Houston in the wake of Harvey. Reported the Houston Chronicle (October 13) in “Billboard Effort Asks ‘Climate Polluters’ to Help Pay for Harvey;”

Houston billboards, part of a media campaign, are asking energy companies, whose fossil fuel products are blamed for accelerating climate change, to pay their “fair share” for the massive Hurricane Harvey recovery process.

The Center for Climate Integrity and Public Citizen say that man-made climate change is warming ocean waters and strengthening storms like Harvey, helping them to unleash much more rainfall and flooding on communities.

The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that burning coal, petroleum products and natural gas is quickening the pace of global warming by emitting carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

This is just the beginning of a larger national campaign that’s starting in Houston and includes a website, whopaysforharvey.com, said Adrian Shelley, Texas director for Public Citizen.

Rice University Propaganda

The next phase of the Houston climate assault will occur next week at Rice University with Al Gore himself. (The university’s announcement is reproduced at the end of this post.)

As posts at MasterResource have previously detailed [see”Rice’s Baker Institute Climate Embarrassment (Sass’s ad hominem response to Rep. Smith)],” Rice University has blocked climate skepticism and polluted diversity of intellectual thought.

Under gatekeeper Neal Lane, the Baker Institute has refused to allow fair, open debate about natural versus anthropogenic climate forces and has championed sky-is-falling government activism. For example, Lane/Baker:

1. 1. Killed publication of the proceedings of a fair climate-change conference held in 2000 with, for example, Patrick Michaels and James Hansen participating;

   2. Held a high-priced, widely publicized, assume-alarmist-science conference in 2008, Beyond Science: The Economics and Politics of Responding to Climate Change, featuring John Kerry and John Holdren.

   3. Refused to host a climate forum/debate in 2010 between Gerald North (Texas A&M) and Richard Lindzen (MIT), which ended up being co-sponsored by Rice’s Shell Center for Sustainability and the Center for the Study of Environment and Society.

Gore Announcement

The Rice announcement follows:

Former Vice President of the United States Al Gore will speak at Rice University’s Tudor Fieldhouse at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 23. Gore, who is chairman of the Climate Reality Project and a board member of Rice’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders, will present “The Climate Crisis and Extreme Weather.”

The discussion, which will include Gore answering audience questions, is presented by Rice’s Office of the President and the Doerr Institute.

Tickets for the event are on a first-come, first-serve basis. Admission is free, but seating is limited. Security measures will be in effect, so attendees will be required to arrive 45 minutes before the event begins. To reserve tickets, click here.

Gore is the cofounder and chairman of Generation Investment Management. He is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a member of Apple Inc.’s board of directors. Gore spends the majority of his time as the chairman of the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit devoted to solving the climate crisis.

Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980 and 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the 45th vice president of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.

He is the author of the best-sellers “Earth in the Balance,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “The Assault on Reason,” “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” and, most recently, “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.”

He is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the recently-released documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” Gore is the co-recipient, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.”