Al Gore's Global Swarming

h/t Ace who has more of the text. In my opinion, the Times does its best to soften the blow. Let's keep in mind the consequences here. It is irresponsible to turn the US and world economies upside down without certainty when it comes to Global Warming. The human costs alone are too great.

Should we really tell Africa and other nations they must not develop, thereby costing them years off their lives and actual lives because they will not have adequate services? Should we saddle everyone with hidden and seen taxes to combat a thing we don't really know is there? Reading between the lines of the Times piece, the answer has to be no.

Add these excerpts up. Slice it any way you want, when it comes right down to it, the Ch4 Global Warming Swindle film is the more accurate - and that's Al Gore's ultimately inconvenient truth.

In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases.

The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

Richard S. Lindzen, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, who has long expressed skepticism about dire climate predictions, accused Mr. Gore in The Wall Street Journal of “shrill alarmism.”

Some of Mr. Gore’s centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe’s warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore’s message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — ... Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet

“Climate change is a real and serious problem” that calls for careful analysis and sound policy, Dr. Lomborg said. “The cacophony of screaming,” he added, “does not help.”

So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.

Roy Spencer, ... But the June report, he added, shows “that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years.”

The truth, he (Gore) said, was that virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits. But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act.

“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”

Comments

[Jeff]

Minor facts would get in the way of Gore's major opinions.

[Buzzy]

Minor facts get in the way of AlGore's profits from scammy carbon offsets.

[benrand]

Remember, Al is a tobacco farmer, he was carbon offsetting with people's lives.

[Doug Ross]

I'm guessing the carbon offset market just took a major dump.

[Buzzy]

I'm thinking that with even the NYTimes calling BS on this AlGore may be truly and finally done for. I think what did him in on it was his drasticly overstating the problem and then providing a cure that only the brain dead could accept as an answer. The fact that he lived exactly in the manner he preached against was bad enough but when people found out that he had set himself up to make money from the hype he himself created nobody could really support him.

[Fred Beloit]

Glory, glory. Even a 40-watt bulb lit at the NYT is cause for celebration.

[templar knight]

Where are all your liberal commenters, Dan?

[ajacksonian]

Perhaps the NYT will be reaching into the realm of reliability of the stopped clock: right twice a day.

The data just has not backed the hypothesis on global warming, not on carbon dioxide, methane... some of it is true, yes. To get out of being a snowball planet volcanic activity actually did help to get enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to help it warm up, and even that fluctated up and down as the carbon dioxide got pulled into calcium carbonate deposits once liquid water had returned. Getting life started was a near thing on Rock 3 from star Sol, which was going in and out of a deep freeze. But that takes looking at the entire planetary history, not just the last century or so. The numbers do not stack up against the long-term data and the burden of proof in science is always upon those proposing the change to demonstrate the outcomes of it in their data and predict what will happen next and explain more than previous work has explained. Those each give means to falsification via evidence. Global warmingy hypotheses have failed on the data, the reasoning, explaining of interactions, and being able to accurately predict anything either especially by long-term models. That all indicates basic assumptional flaws and lacking a root understanding of what the driving mechanisms for planetary climate actually *are* on Rock 3.

Yes, its back to the books, back to taking measurements in far off places and gathering lots more data for a few more decades, if not longer! Get those lazy bone scientists out of the global warming conferences and back into the field where they belong.

[LOL]

I love the bold and the bold-red for the functionally literate conservatives. You should instead read the whole article guys which shows a pretty balanced reaction to Gore's film.

One point--as there is no purpose in debating science with someone who arrogantly misunderstands simple concepts like "standard deviation"--you said: "Let's keep in mind the consequences here. It is irresponsible to turn the US and world economies upside down without certainty when it comes to Global Warming. The human costs alone are too great."

This gets the truth exactly backwards. One does not balance environmental concerns against the economy. Environment first, then economy. What can humans live without, after all? What is the actual foundation of the economy? It's the environment. Global warming is too great of a risk to wait for unanimous support.

[iftheshoefits]

So LOL, are you a big proponent of nuclear power, deployed on a large scale world-wide? Because that's what's coming if we can't wait.

Of course, if we can wait, there will be more time for the non-nuclear fossil-free sources to be deployed on a significant scale, which they can't at present.

As an environmentalist myself, I'm intensely frustrated by global warming hypers who refuse to acknowledge that there may be massive adverse environmental (and therefore, human) consequences that will likely result from rushing too fast, to address the wrong problem. Nuclear proliferation is just one of them.

And no, one does balance environmental concerns against the economy. You do it yourself whenever you get in a automobile, unless you walk and bike everywhere (and what was the carbon footprint involved with manufacturing that bicycle, anyway...) I don't assume that you live in a straw hut, either, and eat only raw food to avoid using gas heat of any sort.

If I'm jumping to conclusions here, my apologies in advance, please correct my assumptions.

[LOL]

Your argument is pretty stupid, in that I somehow have to use zero technology in order to put the environment first. The economy can't function without the environment, this is indisputable fact. In terms of solutions just look at what the Republican governor of California is doing... there are literally thousands of little solutions such as replacing incandescent bulbs, having higher fuel standards for automobiles, better insulation on houses, reforestation, eating less meat, driving less, the list really could go on for ever.

Of course many of the Riehls of this world will be disgusted at some of those suggestions, because they're like children being denied their toys.

[LOL]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/broad-irony/

"Among the worst, is this one

Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.

This is dishonest in at least two different ways. First of all, Broad conveniently forgets to mention that the 2006 Hurricane season was accompanied by a moderate El Nino event. It is well known that El Nino events, such as the 2006 El Nino, tend to be associated with stronger westerly winds aloft in the tropical Atlantic, which is unfavorable for tropical cyclone development. The season nonetheless produced a greater than average number of named storms in the tropical Atlantic (10), 3 more than the typical El Nino year. But El Nino's come and go--more or less randomly--from year to year. The overall trend in named tropical Atlantic storms in recent decades is undeniably positive. We can have honest debates about the long-term data quality, but not if we start out by misrepresenting the data we do have, as Broad chooses to. Additionally, this is a clear misrepresentation of what Gore actually stated in his book. Gore indicated that it is primarily Hurricane intensities which scientists largely agree should be expected to increase in association with warming surface temperatures, and specifically notes that

There is less agreement among scientists about the relationship between the total number of hurricanes each year and global warming. "

[iftheshoefits]

"Your argument is pretty stupid, in that I somehow have to use zero technology in order to put the environment first."

You know, setting up straw men just to burn them down doesn't help with our CO2 problem...

I was simply refuting your point, "One does not balance environmental concerns against the economy. Environment first, then economy." Suggestion: don't make categorical statements like that if you don't really mean them, which you've just conceded that you don't.

And of course there's lots that can be done, as you mention. It won't be enough to offset the imminent predicted catastrophes, though, unless there's a lot of mass coercion involved (which seems to be the real objective, IMO). Real voluntary reductions won't cut it, because there's not enough people of any political persuasion that will get sufficiently on board to make a difference. Al Gore has already demonstrated that point, in spades.

[LOL]

I didn't burn any strawmen -- you criticized the creation of a bicycle, cooking food, and living in anything more than a "hut" as somehow being indicative of putting the environment first. Your triumphalism is amusing however. You have rejected nothing, and indeed were guilty of burning strawmen in that post. One does not have to use zero technology to put the environment first.

What has Al Gore demonstrated? The truth is that he uses green energy to fuel to his house, so the size of his electric bill is a small concern. This is a truth Dan has supressed on this website, so it's not a surprise you would be ignorant of it.

[LOL]

http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm

FOX News Poll
82% believe warming exists
of that 82% -- 41% thinks its entirely anthropogenic and 38% think it is anthropogenic and natural. I.e. 79% of 82% = 65% of US

CNN -- 57% believe it is "fact" and not merely Theory.

CBS -- 70% say it is having a serious impact now

NBC/WSJ -- 25% say "We don't know enough about global climate change, and more research is necessary before we take any actions."

It is always important to remind the wingers how alone they are in the world. I believe, espeically after the summers of 2007 and 2008, Global warming with start to play a large roll in electoral politics. Even the Republican candidates will likely be advocates of doing something about it. One already sees Bush, Robertson, and Giuliani believing in it.

[LOL]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

"The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

[iftheshoefits]

Jeez, where do I begin...

"you criticized the creation of a bicycle, cooking food, and living in anything more than a "hut" as somehow being indicative of putting the environment first."

No, I simply pointed out that, short of those extreme behaviors which I caricatured to make a point, that anything else is balancing economics with the environment. I quoted you as boldly asserting that that doens't (shouldn't?) happen. And you seem to agree, to back off from your original statement. Why all the fuss?

"The truth is that he uses green energy to fuel to his house, so the size of his electric bill is a small concern."

No, many of us disagree. Carbon trading may in the end work to some degree, but ultimately someone has to conserve. Carbon Trade Watch (no global warming sceptics, they) are intensely critical of current carbon trading practices. And GeneraionIM doesn't appear to sell carbon offsets. They claim to "cover" their employees, of which Al Gore is apparently one. Bottom line, for all his rhetoric, he hasn't done a whole heck of a lot.

"This is a truth Dan has supressed on this website"
Really? Has he deleted comments to this effect? I've seem some wild off-topic stuff deleted, but everything on-topic seems to stand. I'm not going back in the archives to prove otherwise, but the discussion has been quite lively. If by "suppression" you mean that he hasn't posted enough on his own to support your point of view, well, it's his blog. Have your comments been suppressed?

[LOL]

He uses green energy to fuel his house not carbon trading. I.e. something like windmills are providing his electricity.

And yes he deleted a link where I brought this up.

[iftheshoefits]

Well I'll take your word for it, although I wonder if it was deleted for tone not substance. You tend to be pretty quick to the trigger with insults and all that. You're far from the only one in that regard, but just sayin...

In either event, the notion of Al Gore having purchased green energy credits (and the validity thereof) was for the most part debated ad nauseam all over the place, I'm not sure about here. I've seen very little conservative effort to suppress this fact, if anything it gets played up as a conservative talking point, as apparently he's only been buying credits for the last 3 months or so. You'd think that maybe he would have been doing so for many years.

To me, all the petty arguments don't make much of a difference. We should be doing everything that we reasonably can to switch to less polluting, more sustainable sources of energy. And to encourage developing countries to start off on the right track, without resorting to coercion from those of us who are much more fortunate.

To switch in a mad rush based on claims of apocalyptic consequences, in order to make a virutally undetectable difference in atmospheric CO2, is most likely a mistake. It will have lots of adverse consequences, many of them environmental in and of themselves. Almost no one on the aggressive GW side of the debate seems to dispute this, at least when you take their own personal actions into account.

And actions have this damnable characteristic of speaking louder than words.

[Hard Right]

The belief that the sun revolved around the earth was a scientific consensus. That dinosaurs were cold blooded was of scientific consensus. That the Clovis people were the earliest people to migrate to the Americas was a consensus. We see what happened to them. It's good to see scientists calling Gore on his dishonest claims.

[templar knight]

LOL,

Where did you get your information about Gore's use of windmills to power his mansion, and if windmills were powering his mansion, then why did he have a huge electric bill? I have doubts that wind power would be sufficient to power Gore's mansion, perhaps a small part at certain times of the year in Tennessee. Unless he lived at a high altitude. That's why I'm asking about your source.

[templar knight]

LOL, I live on the plains of W. Texas, and I know a little bit about windmills, as I have two of them operating as we speak, both pumping water into cattle tanks. But windmills are basically useless for producing electricity, but we have a number of large wind turbines operating in our area that produce electricity, perhaps that is what you meant. But I have never seen any wind turbines in Tennessee.

[scarshapedstar]

Templar, he's referring to a green energy program enacted by the TVA. Allow me to explain.

He doesn't have personal windmills. He pays for electricity generated by windmills. This costs more money than energy generated by burning fossil fuels. Hence, the wingnut complaint that higher energy bill = ipso facto higher energy consumption is bullshit, but that shouldn't surprise anyone who didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday.

I would link to his source, but as LOL noted, apparently that link was Riehlly offensive because it's been classified, thrown down the memory hole, whatever you prefer to call the practice of highly selective censorship.

[templar knight]

scar and LOL,

I went to the TVA website and found the information you referenced, LOL, on the green energy program. The TVA has 18 wind turbines on a mountain in Anderson County, I believe, and also receives some energy from a methane site at Memphis and a small solar program. The green energy program of the TVA doesn't seem to be significant, but the TVA does produce a lot of hydro power, and that is clean energy.

[LOL]

If you read my post I didn't say that his house was necessarily powered by windmills. I said "something like windmills". Why you jumped all over this to create your non-point eludes me.

Yes, It's probably hydro power that fuels gores house, all I know is his house runs on Green energy which is part of the reason his bill is so high. See the cons jumped all over the carbon offsets as proof that Gore's big bill was phony-baloney, but the truth his, his big energy bill doesn't matter--because it's green power! Notice how Dan never brought this up in his many many posts on Gore?

[templar knight]

Oh, and to give you an idea of the scope of the TVA program as opposed to Texas, they have 18 wind turbines, whereas we have over 2,000 wind turbines in W. Texas alone. Us Texas rednecks sure do produce the clean energy, and we have much more coming your way, including wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico.

If we had the infrastucture in place, we could produce a lot more energy.

[LOL]

"I wonder if it was deleted for tone not substance. You tend to be pretty quick to the trigger with insults and all that. You're far from the only one in that regard, but just sayin..."

You're correct that Dan's argument was the offensive nature of the post (I told him to "shut up about Gore"). But it's pretty convenient that he deletes the post that disproves his whole tirade against Gore, don't you think?

I only acted in such a strong manner because Dan never posted this evidence on the subject, which is pretty damning for the argument that "Gore is a hughe hypocrite". You can see why this would upset a reasonable person I hope.

[templar knight]

Actually, LOL, I didn't "jump" all over you, and if you had read my post, even gave you the benefit of the doubt, and supposed you were referring to wind turbines, which in fact did play a part in the mix. A very small part.

But if you would stop the panic, you would notice that clean energy is rapidly growing, and will provide a large part of the nation's electricity very soon. If I remember correctly, Texas is now the # 1 producer of wind energy, and accounted for 1/3 of the growth in the nationwide wind energy output. Hell, man, I have several thousand dollars invested in wind energy, and I don't want to lose that money.

But seriously, I am a believer in wind energy, not so much solar, as it is too expensive, but wind power is now cheaper than coal in some areas of Texas. If you are truly concerned about the environment, and want to make money, and soften your carbon footprint, invest in wind energy. Put your money in it, so that we can use it to build infrastructure. You will be rewarded with money and less pollution.

[Dan Riehl]

You're correct that Dan's argument was the offensive nature of the post (I told him to "shut up about Gore"). But it's pretty convenient that he deletes the post that disproves his whole tirade against Gore, don't you think?

Pretty lazy of you to not to simply report the links without the offensive tone, dont' you think? I wouldn't want to suggest it was out of stupidity - that would be using a poor tone.

[LOL]

It's interesting that you have yet to make a post exonerating Gore, or even hinting that he buys his energy from Green power.

I'm glad we can agree on something. Wind power is the kind of thing greens, gore, and all these other global-warming freaks have been advocating for years. And it lowers pollution that can have localized consequences. And it lowers dependence on foreign sources. I'll never figure out why so many on the right are outraged at environmentalists.

[LOL]

It's interesting that you have yet to make a post exonerating Gore, or even hinting that he buys his energy from Green power.

I'm glad we can agree on something TK. Wind power is the kind of thing greens, gore, and all these other global-warming freaks have been advocating for years. And it lowers pollution that can have localized consequences. And it lowers dependence on foreign sources. I'll never figure out why so many on the right are outraged at environmentalists.

[Buzzy]

Actually Gore didn't even use the TVA green energy program until called out on it by the media.

August 10th, 2006

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm

Much like Gore deciding to use public jets after the press questioned his use of his private jet to hop all over the world.

[iftheshoefits]

"I'll never figure out why so many on the right are outraged at environmentalists."

As a conservative and an environmentalist, I've wondered the same thing, for over two decades. After watching the reaction to Gore being called out on his own personal habits, I'm beginning to understand why.

Offset trading, as a larger scale market mechanism, has it's place, no doubt. It's a quintessential Milton Friedman kind of argument, having the same basic roots as school choice: i.e. let the markets decide. Doesn't make either argument right or wrong, I'm just explaining where it came from.

Conservation (what we used to call it), on the other hand, is about taking responsibility for one's own energy choices. IF the message that goes out is, "consume all you want, just pay here and it's all good", I'm not keen on that having the desired impact in the end. At least if the desired impact is lower total energy consumption, not just lower the per captia consumption. There will be a big impact no doubt, as the money will flow. I just don't know what the end result really will be, nor does anyone else.

But by that time we will have all forgotten global warming and moved on to the next big crisis.