Trump meets Al Gore. Is he going soft on global warming?

"I found it an extremely interesting conversation and to be continued. And I'm just going to leave it at that," Gore said after the meeting. Gore has circled the globe predicting doom as a result of global warming since his defeat in the 2000 election. He has become the most visible climate activist in the world since being featured in his own 2006 documentary underscoring the alleged dangers of carbon dioxide emissions. While campaigning with Hillary Clinton in October, the former vice president warned that Trump would take us toward a "climate catastrophe." On the campaign trial Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed over energy policy. Trump (correctly) called global warming a "hoax," repeatedly railing against Obama administration global warming regulations and vowing to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate accord. Clinton, on the other hand, embraced global warming as gospel. Perhaps Trump met with Gore to size him up. Remember the old saying, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." But reports that Trump's ambitious daughter, Ivanka, is intent on becoming the White House "climate change czar" ought to worry conservatives.

Politico reported Friday that the nation's future first daughter "aims to use the first lady's lectern to champion liberal causes," and will work "as a bridge to moderates and liberals disgusted and depressed with the tone and tenor of the new leader of the free world." An unnamed source close to Ivanka said she "wants to make climate change one of her signature issues," that she "wants the job of climate czar in her father's administration," is moving her family to Washington and is in the early stages of exploring how to use her spotlight to speak out on the issue. The former fashion model has said she does not consider herself "categorically Republican or Democrat." In 2007 she donated $1,000 to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Climate change is not the first traditionally liberal cause Ivanka has tried preaching about to conservatives. She championed the faux issue of "equal pay for women" and parental leave at the Republican National Convention in July. It's hard to say exactly how much sway Ivanka will hold in a Trump White House. The president-elect is already poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by NASA as part of a crackdown on "politicized science." Nevertheless, Trump may have a problem if he allows his daughter's plans to move forward.

Having a "climate czar" would complicate the incoming president's pledge to roll back federal energy regulations, help coal miners, and stop jobs from being shipped overseas. Trump's supporters are afraid the dealmaker is going to cave in to the radical left and embrace the prevailing "junk" science surrounding manmade global warming. Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh expressed concern about Gore's meeting with the Trumps and warned Monday that the "climate change issue is all of communism wrapped up in one bundle." "There is no empirical data that shows we are warming or cooling based on man-made or man-caused behavior," he said. "Militant environmentalism actually is the new home for displaced communists after the Soviet Union imploded, and if the leftists and the communists promoting climate change--if they were ever able to, via policy, realize their dreams--we would have a worldwide communist government." President Obama has been making the ridiculous argument for years that the supposedly changing climate is a bigger threat to humanity than Islamic State and international terrorism--yet Americans are unmoved. A recent YouGov poll conducted with 18,000 respondents in 17 countries found that only 9.2 percent of Americans ranked global warming as their biggest concern. Only Saudi Arabia ranked lower, with 5.7 percent of respondents there expressing concern about the issue. President-elect Trump would be wise to heed the American public.