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Has Al Gore given up on global warming?
Al Gore’s purchase of a near nine million dollar Montecito mansion with an almost comical carbon footprint (nine bathrooms!) probably means that he has given up on the global warming movement and decided to become a Hollywood producer (not that he ever made much of a distinction between two).

Montecito is where the creme of the Hollywood creme go when Beverly Hills gets too crowded and nouveau riche. Among others, Michael Douglas, Kevin Costner, Christopher Lloyd, Dennis Franz and Oprah have homes there – and they don’t even have Nobel Prizes. (Douglas and Costner do have Oscars though.)

No word on whether Al is giving up his Nashville manse… or his houseboat. This is turning into opera bouffe. But Al always was a man of appetites. If, as La Rochefoucauld famously said, “hypocrisy is a sort of homage that vice pays to virtue,” then Al is paying more homage on the environment than all the sinners combined paid to all the medieval Popes for all their perversions, real or imagined.

Well, maybe not quite that much, but Al is not alone and we could go down a long list of rich enviro-phonies who, added up, would easily reverse AGW, assuming you believe it. But I have a different suspicion. Most of them don’t believe it anymore. They won’t admit that, of course. But Lindsey Graham’s withdrawal from the latest iteration of cap-and-trade is just a signal of what’s ahead. Get out while the getting is good. ...