Sarah Palin Doesn't Want to Debate Al Gore on Climate Change

In an interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell yesterday, former Vice President Al Gore pushed back against Sarah Palin’s anti-Copenhagen conference Washington Post op-ed by saying that “the global warming deniers persist in this air of unreality.” “The scientific community has worked very intensively for 20 years within this international process, and they now say the evidence is unequivocal,” said Gore.

Palin responded to Gore yesterday afternoon on her Facebook page, saying that “he’s wrong in calling me a ‘denier.’” Palin added that she believed “Climategate” proved that the “findings” of “the leading experts” in climate science “are flawed, falsified, or inconclusive.” On Laura Ingraham’s radio show today, Palin continued her attack on Gore. But when Ingraham asked if she would be willing to debate Gore on the issue, Palin demurred, saying that if it was in the wrong “forum” she would “get clobbered”:

INGRAHAM: Would you agree to a debate with Al Gore on this issue?

PALIN: Oh my goodness. You know, it depends on what the venue would be, what the forum. Because Laura, as you know, if it would be some kind of conventional, traditional debate with his friends setting it up or being the commentators I’ll get clobbered because, you know, they don’t want to listen to the facts. They don’t want to listen to some reasonable voices in this. And that was proven with the publication of this op-ed, where they kind of got all we-weed up about it and wanted to call me and others deniers of changing weather patterns and climate conditions. Trying to make the issue into something that it is not.

INGRAHAM: But what if it’s an Oxford-style, proper debate format. I mean, he’s going to chicken out. I mean, if you challenge him to a debate, do you actually think he would accept it?

PALIN: I don’t know, I don’t know. Oh, he wouldn’t want to lower himself, I think, to, you know, my level to debate little old Sarah Palin from Wasilla.