And what might be the misunderstandings? What are those “basic cornerstones of the current civilization” that Gore seems to be doubting?

President Klaus made this very clear earlier this Summer, while writing in the Financial Times Journal. In his June essay, Mr. Klaus called into question the hysteria that is the “global warming movement,“ by making the outrageous observation that weather patterns change over time. He also mentioned that during the past century the average global temperature increased only .6 percent. In an additional shocking claim, Klaus stated that, among adults living on planet earth today, “all of us have noticed that even during our life times temperature changes occur (in both directions).”

So German Chancellor Angela Merkel and (former) British Prime Minister Tony Blair and “authorities” at the United Nations and other big and important people around the world obsess about so-called “global warming” and seek to, quite literally, “change the weather.“ All the while, President Klaus has repeatedly been so bold and brash as to remind us that “change” is a natural facet of the weather, and that the global temperature hasn’t increased very much in the past one hundred years.

Most important about President Klaus‘ comments is the fact that he identifies the global warming hysteria for what it truly is: yet another attempt to control human behavior and constrain human liberty. These are threats to civilization with which Mr. Klaus is well acquainted, given that he has lived most of his life under communist dictatorships.

In his Financial Times Journal editorial, President Klaus concluded by saying “I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.”

By every indication it would seem that Al Gore, officials at the United Nations, and the decision markers with the Nobel Prize believe that a “central, global” economic planning is the very force that can lead humankind closer to prosperity, and peace.

Unfortunately, none of these people would seem to have learned the lessons of history, as President Klaus apparently has.