Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) religion high priest and fat, corrupt moron Al Gore shows his “smarts” on science ‘n’ stuff:

Conan: Now, what about…you talk in the book about geothermal energy…
Al: Yeah, yeah.
Conan: and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that’s generated from the core of the earth …
Al: Yeah.
Conan: …to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?
Al: It definitely is, and it’s a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot…

Derbyshire corrects the hapless, clueless buffoon:

The geothermal gradient is usually quoted as 25–50 degrees Celsius per mile of depth in normal terrain (not, e.g., in the crater of Kilauea). Two kilometers down, therefore, (that’s a mile and a quarter if you’re not as science-y as Al) you’ll have an average gain of 30–60 degrees — exploitable for things like home heating, though not hot enough to make a nice pot of tea. The temperature at the earth’s core, 4,000 miles down, is usually quoted as 5,000 degrees Celsius, though these guys claim it’s much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9,000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6,000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees.

If the temperature anywhere inside the earth was “several million degrees,” we’d be a star.

Ahh, but wait, it gets even better:

John, it’s even worse than you think. The prospect for “hot rock” geothermal isn’t very good because, in many locations, the drilling activity causes seismic problems. One early pilot geothermal project in Switzerland recently caused an earthquake and had to be shut down. People who worked on this and other projects (a friend of mine was involved in the Switzerland project) are very pessimistic about the whole idea. At best, geothermal will only provide a tiny fraction of our energy needs, at a very high cost. Drilling those deep wells is hugely expensive.

Now the irony here is that enviros, who are raising red flags about the risks of “fracking” (hydraulic fracturing) to extract natural gas from shale and coal beds, haven’t uttered a peep about the seismic risk of geothermal drilling. Funny how selective the green risk aversion is. In any other area, Gore would be leading the charge against it. And there’s another geothermal test well going in soon in an earthquake zone in northern California. The only way Gore will come out against geothermal is if they accidentally find oil and gas along the way.

I’ll let Steyn land the coup de grace to the Goracle’s empty, bulbous head:

It makes you wonder whether even he believes any of this stuff.

He believes in his ability to make money and garner power from it, at any rate. Anything more amounts to proof that he’s even dumber than we’ve always thought. And the same goes for the rest of the warmal coldening religious acolytes, too. (NOTE: can’t remember where I ran across that “warmal coldening” line, but I like it.)