Gore allegedly afraid to debate Klaus on climate

Czech Republic’s President Vaclav Klaus addresses the plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels February 19, 2009.

ČTK | Mar 6, 2009

Prague, March 5 (CTK) – Former U.S. vice-president Albert Gore allegedly feared a direct confrontation with Czech President Vaclav Klaus at a conference on global warming, and this is why Gore’s presentation was rescheduled for another day, Lidove noviny (LN) writes Thursday, referring to Klaus’s spokesman.

Klaus will take part in the two-day international conference in Santa Barbara, the United States, on Friday, March 6 when he was to get involved in polemics with Gore, one of the main supporters of the global warming theory, which Klaus is sharply challenging.

However, Gore, a Nobel Peace prize winner, will speak at the conference Thursday. The organisers have changed the programme at the very last moment, LN writes.

“A dialogue (between Klaus and Gore) was to take place on one stage. We accepted the U.S. proposal positively. But the organisers reassessed the idea in the end,” Klaus’s spokesman Radim Ochvat told the paper.

“Gore might have feared such a clash,” he added.

However the reason was allegedly more pragmatic, LN notes.

The organisers decided to change the conference programme to attract the maximum attention on both days as Klaus and Gore are the key speakers at the conference, LN writers, referring to a source close to the organisers.

Klaus will also touch upon global warming in his 30-minute speech titled “Europe, Global Warming and the Current Economic Crisis: As Seen from Prague” at the Columbia University in New York on Monday, Ochvat told LN.

Klaus has repeatedly criticised Gore for not being willing to listen to other climate theories.

Most recently, Klaus commented on global warming at the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, in early February. In his speech Klaus said “the environmental militant approach to global warming” was challenging human freedom.

Klaus also presented his stances on climate change theory in his answers to the questions of U.S. Congressmen two years ago, and in his latest book “Blue, Not Green Planet.”