The irony: As negotiators from
nearly 200 countries met in Cancun to strategize ways to keep the planet from getting hotter, the temperature in the seaside Mexican city
plunged to a 100-year record low of 54° F. Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun's
weather the latest example of the "Gore Effect" — a plunge in
temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a
Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the
climate. Although Gore is not scheduled to speak in Cancun, "it could be
that the Gore Effect has announced his secret arrival,"
jokes former NASA scientist Roy W. Spencer.