Al Gore’s Gas-Based Admission

(Paul Jacob/Common Sense) – Al Gore gives the impression of someone never willing to acknowledge error if said error happens to be self-serving.

This impression is wrong.

If I have ever suggested that Gore never admits self-serving mistakes, I hereby rescind and repudiate that suggestion. He appears more than willing to retire a dishonest assertion . . . so long as he has another dishonest assertion to replace it with.

Ed Morrissey tells the tale at Hot Air, opining that Al Gore’s revised opinion about the virtue of government subsidies for corn-based ethanol seems just a little too convenient.

Gore now acknowledges that the energy-conversion ratios of first-generation ethanol “are at best very small,” and that corn subsidies probably bid up food prices. He even admits that he pushed for the funding to help farmers in states like Tennessee and Iowa. So it came to pass that taxpayers paid billions, in part to help Gore run for president.

Wait, there’s more.

Having recanted his support for “first-generation” ethanol, Gore now wants to use wood and grass to make ethanol. A new and better way, n’est-ce pas? No. There’s this small detail: Grass etc.-based ethanol is even more inefficient than corn-based ethanol.

Why top a bad blunder at taxpayer expense with an even worse blunder at taxpayer expense? Could this have anything to do with Al Gore’s investment in Abengoa Bioenergy, a firm begging for government subsidies for second-generation ethanol?