Yesterday former Vice President Al Gore told House and Senate panels that Congress needs to freeze carbon-dioxide emissions and reduce greenhouse gases in order to head off a "planetary emergency" caused by global warming. "The Earth has a fever," he told lawmakers, urging Congress to do something about it by cutting CO2 and other gases 90 percent by 2050.

Former British journalist Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley says he was not surprised Gore intentionally violated a rule requiring him to submit his written testimony 48 hours before the congressional hearings. Such behavior, Monckton says, has been a feature of how Gore conducts the global warming debate.

"He goes around making extravagant statements, as he does in his ludicrous sci-fi/comedy/horror film An Inconvenient Truth," says Monckton, referring to the former’s VP Oscar-winning documentary. "He says, ’I’m going to tell you these facts, I’m going to hand them down [from on high] like some sort of messiah of the new origin of climate change ... and no, I’m not going to take any journalists’ questions, I’m not going to debate anyone, whether scientist or other, on this. I’m just going to tell you what I think ; and no, I dare not face questions.’"

Monckton says he finds especially "fatuous" Gore’s claim that rising global temperatures are caused by CO2 emissions. According to Monkton, there is "absolutely no credible scientific evidence to prove that proposition true."

The journalist has challenged Gore to an internationally televised debate on global warming. But he says he doubts Gore will "face up to the challenge or the facts" about climate change. Gore, he contends, intends on pushing his global-warming agenda worldwide by inventing his own kind of "gloom-laden scenario" and ignoring what scientists have to say about the matter.

"And an awful lot of innocent people — including school children who are being forced to watch this ludicrous, mawkish movie of his — are gobbling this up as if it were gospel" and believing it "because they don’t know any better," Monkton states. "He produces graphs and charts that look vaguely scientific," he continues. "[Those who he’s talking to] don’t have the access to the scientific journals I’ve been reading which show this whole thing is simply nonsense."

Monckton says Gore has good reasons to agree to an invitation to debate, noting the former VP is the paid advisor to the British government on climate change, and there is no opposition to his global warming crusade in the U.K.