All hell is breaking loose in Iraq and U.S. presidential wannabes are popping up like dandelions in the spring but that doesnt diminish the headlines in many newspapers on the topic they appear to have decided is of equal importance: Global warming.
The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in Paris was presented as an explosion of new data on global warming as threatening to life as we know it as the explosion assumed to have destroyed the dinosaurs by wiping out the environment they needed to survive.
The emphasis on convincing Americans that we must cut back our use of gasoline and industrial output to reduce greenhouse gases that could contribute to the melting of the ice cap and flooding of large parts of Washington State has succeeded in restoring Al Gore to credibility as a presidential candidate in 2008.
Hes running around the country promoting his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which has been nominated for an Oscar. His stature is increasing to the point, say an increasing number of pundits, that the person Hillary fears most as a challenger for the Democratic nomination for president is not Barack Obama but Al Gore. And on the basis of his recognition as an environmental policy maker praised as the author of the book Earth in the Balance.
But what did Dixy think of Al Gore? Gores credentials as an expert on the environment are self-administered but Gov. Dixy Lee Ray was a professor of zoology and author of the books, Trashing the Planet and Environmental Overkill.
The latter has a chapter titled The Gospel According to Gore, in which she describes his book as a severe case of very expensive environmental overkill.
Gore is an extremist, she wrote. It would be fair, she said, to state that a greater danger to the American people (than the Love Canal toxic waste dump) is a key senator and now a vice president who not only predicates his policies and actions on rumor, unsupported charges and unscientific reports, but ignores the truth because it could counter his political aspirations.
Dixy blasted Gores references to the scientific community without identifying them or providing proof they really were scientists rather than representatives of extreme environmental groups. In many instances, she said, Gore the author sounds more like a woolly-minded dreamer who wants to use government power for unproven and even fanatical ends than a dedicated public servant.
Do we want civilization reorganized by environmental evangelists like Gore, she wrote, who approach vital issues from gross prejudice rather than real science? The prospect is frightening. Gore repeats the unfounded contention that global warming will cause the seas to rise and drown millions.
Dixy said global warming was natural and came and went over time.
Gore gathers all his hopes and beliefs in a Global Marshall Plan, said Dixy, with global environmental regulations and financed by Japan, Europe and the oil-producing nations but implying the U.S. must play a major part. Odds are the U.S. could wind up picking up the largest part of the tab in any global plan as we almost always do, she said. It would drain billions from the U.S. for reasons that have nothing to do with science, but a great deal to do with political ambition. And the already heavily burdened American taxpayer would have to pick up the check for a meal he didnt order.
Ah, Dixy, how I miss you.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA, 98340.