In the American Thinker, John Berlau wonders if global warming hysteria has jumped the shark. He also zeroes in on Al Gore’s recent reference to Bob Dylan in a Rolling Stone interview, and the irony therein, considering that Dylan himself jokingly deflected the question of global warming in his own recent Rolling Stone interview.

Yet Dylan’s latest statement may signal that in the global warming debate, the times are changing. Even independent-minded celebrities are now questioning the establishment media orthodoxy that the debate over global warming and its effects are all but over. In a phrase familiar to those who study pop culture, it appears that the global warming scare may have “jumped the shark.”

“Jump the shark” refers to the precise moment at which a TV program loses momentum or begins the process of losing the element that made the show popular. The phrase comes specifically from an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie jumps over a shark with water skis. Fans argue that the show became less realistic after that. The web site JumpTheShark.com is dedicated to fans debating the precise moment their favorite programs “jumped the shark.”

But “jumping the shark” can also refer to a trend or even a line of argument. And as a post on the web site Moonbattery.com has noted, environmentalists’ sky-is-falling global warming rhetoric is jumping the shark because of its inconsistencies and contradictions. Bob Dylan has always been something of an iconoclast and has strayed from the party line more than his liberal fans would like to admit (for a list of examples see the web site RightWingBob.com.). But I think on a basic level, it’s hard to convince a man who grew in the bitter cold climate of Hibbing, Minnesota that a few degrees of warming over the next century will be that much of a problem.

Other rock stars are questioning the very purpose of the concert. Bob Geldof, who put together the “Live Aid” concerts of the ’80s to combat starvation in Africa, asked: “Why is [Gore] actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? … We are all [expletive] conscious of global warming.”

Gore has been doing TV interviews to promote his extravaganza. I’ve seen a couple of them. I haven’t seen or heard of any interviewer confronting him with any of the serious flaws in his man-made global warming arguments, or any of the alternate theories as to what the chief influence on the Earth’s climate may be (e.g., that burning globe that is sometimes spotted in the noon-day sky.)

Gore becomes a more and more preposterous buffoon every day, even while his own opinion of himself seems to soar ever higher into the stratosphere. There is no doubt, at least in my mind, that he will seize any apparent opening to sweep into the Democratic race for president as a conquering hero — e.g., if the frontrunners wound eachother too grievously. The degree to which he is relishing and wallowing in his false, puffed-up modesty on this subject is clear when you see him in these soft-ball TV interviews.

Some have anticipated that should he grab the Democrat nomination, and should Fred Thompson pull out the G.O.P. nod, that we would have an all-Tennessee presidential contest. That’s not all we would have, however: we would also see a contest between the world’s chief man-made-global-warming guru and the one major candidate on the Republican side who happily maintains a skeptical outlook on the whole subject.

Meanwhile, Al Gore continues to invoke Bob Dylan. He is quoted today as saying:

I remember when I was quite young, and the civil rights movement was beginning, listening to Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind. It was unbelievable in its impact. And a lot of the music being written and performed for Live Earth is hopefully going to have the same kind of impact.

Just one of the countless ways in which Al Gore manages to be absurdly, hilariously and spectacularly wrong. Yet, it will slow him down not one little bit.

(By the way, Blowin’ in the Wind may have been “unbelievable” in its impact on young Al, but apparently not so much in its impact on his father, Senator Albert Gore, Sr.)

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