Now maybe all of this - and there’s lots more - isn’t enough for Gore, but it is producing results, many of which could be important for anti-pollution, oil-conserving purposes beyond any possible curtailing of global warming, and we have meanwhile learned from the Kyoto Protocol that ill-considered grandiosity doesn’t produce anything but braggadocio about good intentions that pave the road to nowhere.

Supposedly, there’s a “scientific consensus” that human-induced warming will deliver a series of enormous catastrophes if left untreated, but the extent of concurrence has never been what it has mostly been made out to be. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) recently released a list of 400 of the growing number of reputable scientists from all over the world who have voiced serious doubts about one aspect or another of the thesis.