The Pot Meets Kettle Lifetime Achievement Ward

Maybe this is what happens when so much of your political base operates on sheer emotion, with so little time for thought. For a minute there, I thought this was from Al Gore's companion book to his recent global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

The Assault on Reason

"Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

The Pot Meet Kettle Lifetime Achievement Award has to go to Al Gore's The Assault on Reason. He should follow-up with The Audacity of Hypocrisy and toss his hat into the ring for President. The Nutroots have to love this guy.

Comments

[nowingker]

I feel another anti polar bear post from Dan coming on....it has been quite a while since an Al Gore attack post, we're definitely due for another global warming denial post.

How bout sumpin on Alberto Gonzales lying to Congress or going to Ashcroft's sick bed to high pressure him? Or maybe even Ashcroft and several DOJ/FBI folks planning to resign over the oh-so-constitutional-legal-all-good-drastically-needed NSA surveillance on Americans plan?

I want to know if John Ashcroft has bcome a terrorist sympathizer and a closet Democrat?

[ET]

Wow. This guy loves the role of chicken little. He puts forth a complex, psuedo-intellectual thesis that a huge problem confronts us (the Nation, in this case, or the planet in the case of global warming). Of course he positions himself as the sage, the wise man capable of leading us, with feigned reluctance, out of the darkenss and into the promised land.

What an act. First he invented the internet, then he revealed that mankind is destroying utopia, now he laments our national ennui. Now the presidential run will begin in earnest. It will be raining bullshit.

Anyone who thinks this creep is sincere is a fool.

[daveinboca]

Ironically, Al Gore's recent return to the world stage is basically a massive insult to the brains of thoughtful people, as he continues his lifelong pattern of dishonesty, exaggeration, and self-defeating U-turns.

He keeps saying he's been on Global Warming for thirty years, and it's just another Lyin' Al exaggeration. The imbecile studied climate around 30 years ago, but at that time Global COOLING was all the rage. He is a liar who eventually will once again get caught, though the MSM will exalt his virtues and ignore his lying, dishonest, silly past. This is a boomlet that the MSM/Hollyweird cabal will inflate to grotesque dimensions.

Clinton/Gore allowed 9/11 to happen after the first 1993 attempt fai1ed. Historians will note this even if the dishonest left-wing MSM will not.

[Hogarth]

The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

Case in point being the head-in-the-sand die-harders that believe that counting ALL votes in Florida as the law required, including overseas military absentee ballots, constitutes STEALING an election.

[Phoenix]

Are all his honorable exigesises on the state of the world written in the first-person? That bit I read was just floundering and whining and a perfect example of solipsistic narcissism.

"We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason."

He's doing the imperial 'we' here, but it's straight from the horses yawp without the slightest understanding that it's his whinnying that's making all the judgments. If he had a clue of 'reason', he'd reason that half the world thinks he's nuts. That alone should propel him to use some reason in place of his relentless self-aggrandizing because he still can't get over the fact he was only a vice-president and no one offered him a bj.

[JJ]

Global COOLING was all the rage

Here's the word from those crazy scientists themselves:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11643

Other questions?

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462

counting ALL votes in Florida as the law required, including overseas military absentee ballots, constitutes STEALING an election.

On the 2000 election:

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1115-02.htm

(Imagine the shoe being on the other foot. You guys would just forget and we'd never hear another word, right? ;)

[Fred Beloit]

Gore: "...pseudo studies known to be false..." Pardon his redundancy. Would this be anything like :...false studies..." one wonders? And this man has access to editors! Just think how bad his style would be if he were blogging. I'm afraid he has finally put his brain in the type of "lock box" he kept talking about for Social Security funds when he was electioneering by speaking to us as if we were small children. I started to read it, thought about making a parody of some of it. No use. One can't make a parody of self-contradictory, wordy, and redundant nonsense.

[JJ]

Yes, psuedo studies. Fake scientific studies saying things known to be false. Here's one example, the Oregon Petition on the Kyoto Protocol:

"The article that accompanied the petition was written in the style and format of a contribution to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a scientific journal.[3] Raymond Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Chicago, and (now) member of RealClimate, said that it was "designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article…is a reprint and has passed peer review." Pierrehumbert also said the article was full of "half-truths". F. Sherwood Rowland, who was at the time foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the Academy received numerous inquiries from researchers who "are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them." "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition#Covering_letter_and_attached_article

[Fred Beloit]

jj, cool down, for heaven's sake. Your references to Time Magazine, commomdreams.org ( news and views for Progressives) and Wiki, may impress a few people here, but not many. Science is not something that has elections over an issue and the most votes win. And presidential elections of past years may be of special interest to historians and political scientists (who are also interested in the miselection of John Kennedy), but what about it has relevance now? If you want to convince me of global warming, show me how the temperature of the entire Earth can be taken to an accuracy of less than one deg C.

[JJ]

People on a rightie blog admonishing me to "cool down." Now that's funny.

"show me how the temperature of the entire Earth can be taken to an accuracy of less than one deg C."

No one is saying that they can do this. What they are saying are a few things: 1) They've teased out CO2 as *a* cause of the warming so far. 2) The latest IPCC is saying that they are over 90% certain that CO2 has been the dominant cause of the warming we've seen. 3) The warming is predicted to be between 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius. 4) That that amount of warming will have a range of effects, some easy to predict, some not, but it's serious enough to take more significant action than we're taking (which amounts to no action).

It's really not that complicated. If you change the concentration of a gas in the atmosphere from 280 to over 400 ppm of CO2, you will change the properties of the atmosphere. I think if you're truly "conservative", in the sense that you are wary of the effects of unchecked change, then this would be something that you would care about.

I have links showing all of the above information, but before I post them, I want to see if the people on this blog would be inclined to read through them...

[JJ]

Also, the commondreams page is an archive of a story that ran in the Long Island, NY Newsday. (But I suppose if you're paranoid enough, you don't trust anything not spoon fed by party-approved news orgs. What country was this again?)

[templar knight]

Irony-AlGore writing a book on reason, honesty and truth. Something he knows little, if anything, about.

Hypocrisy-AlGore writing a book on reason, honesty and truth. He says he invented the internet. Thanks, Al.

Truth-AlGore making a killing off liberal idiots who buy his books. A more lucrative deal than carbon credits, I'll bet.

[ET]

--It's really not that complicated.--

That is precisely the problem with you alarmists. You don't accept that the earth's climate is an extremely complex system, with lots of variables, very few of which are under our control. It is not about you, JJ. Fred was right. Cool down and let people smarter than you figure this out. We are all willing to listen if you people would just stop screaming!

I don't mean to be hurtful, but, Al Gore doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about the planet or the future of mankind. Actually, he is not very smart. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you might want to find a new hero.

[Fred Beloit]

Most amusing jj, "It is not very complicated". Hahahahaha. jj, so they may or may not be able to measure the Earth's temp within one deg C, which is what the temperature of the Earth is supposed to have risen in the last 30 years, you know, global warming? But they can measure the parts per million of CO2 over the entire Earth to within .00028% accuracy. That is what it would take to demonstrate the CO2 going from 280 ppm to 400ppm. Unless you are saying they did this in a lab. Now in what way is the nature of the air, a mixture of gases, the majority of which, if I recall rightly is nitrogen, changed by this minuscule change in one of the air's components? Since this issue is not very "complicated" ahaha you may not need any links if you would just answer the above and a few more questions. Carbon dioxide in air is about .03%. So we have .03% x .00028% = .0000084% causing a significant change in air. Unless I have made a mistake, such as, well just for example, saying global warming is man-made. Is this what you are telling us?

[nowingker]

JJ don't bother trying to give these guys any scientific facts.

They'll come back and tell you that (a) the sun is causing global warming (b) Al Gore is a hypocrite (c) there are no SUVS on Mars (d) its' cold outside today.

I have tried many times, they are true global warming deniers here, no amount of scientific evidence will convince them. They believe the scientists are engaged in a huge international liberal, socialist conspiracy to take over the world via regulations on carbon emissions.

Well, and that in order to reduce carbon emissions we all have to live in huts without electricity.

[nowingker]

This just in:

A new study shows oceans weakening in their ability to absorb CO2, published in SCIENCE.

I predict that global warming is going to be WORSE than the current mealy mouthed predictions and we are going to see serious results in the next 20-30 years, not the end of the century as current predictions stand.

Of course the wingers don't understand that any scientific consensus is going to be watered down to what the most people agree with, meaning its very likely that the global warming proejctions are under estimations.

But, I know, its ALL A LIE, nothing to worry about, just the liberal communists at it again on their quest for world domination.

[Fred Beloit]

I fear I've made an elementary error. Will have to work on it tomorrow, have to go out. Perhaps some astute commenter (in other words someone other than no.....) may show my error and correct it.

[nowingker]

Another, quite independent way that we know that fossil fuel burning and land clearing specifically are responsible for the increase in CO2 in the last 150 years is through the measurement of carbon isotopes. Isotopes are simply different atoms with the same chemical behavior (isotope means “same type”) but with different masses. Carbon is composed of three different isotopes, 14C, 13C and 12C. 12C is the most common. 13C is about 1% of the total. 14C accounts for only about 1 in 1 trillion carbon atoms.

CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases.

Isotope geochemists have developed time series of variations in the 14C and 13C concentrations of atmospheric CO2. One of the methods used is to measure the 13C/12C in tree rings, and use this to infer those same ratios in atmospheric CO2. This works because during photosynthesis, trees take up carbon from the atmosphere and lay this carbon down as plant organic material in the form of rings, providing a snapshot of the atmospheric composition of that time. If the ratio of 13C/12C in atmospheric CO2 goes up or down, so does the 13C/12C of the tree rings. This isn’t to say that the tree rings have the same isotopic composition as the atmosphere – as noted above, plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes, but as long as that preference doesn’t change much, the tree-ring changes wiil track the atmospheric changes.

Sequences of annual tree rings going back thousands of years have now been analyzed for their 13C/12C ratios. Because the age of each ring is precisely known** we can make a graph of the atmospheric 13C/12C ratio vs. time. What is found is at no time in the last 10,000 years are the 13C/12C ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are today. Furthermore, the 13C/12C ratios begin to decline dramatically just as the CO2 starts to increase -- around 1850 AD. This is exactly what we expect if the increased CO2 is in fact due to fossil fuel burning. Furthermore, we can trace the absorption of CO2 into the ocean by measuring the 13C/12C ratio of surface ocean waters. While the data are not as complete as the tree ring data (we have only been making these measurements for a few decades) we observe what is expected: the surface ocean 13C/12C is decreasing. Measurements of 13C/12C on corals and sponges -- whose carbonate shells reflect the ocean chemistry just as tree rings record the atmospheric chemistry -- show that this decline began about the same time as in the atmosphere; that is, when human CO2 production began to accelerate in earnest.***

In addition to the data from tree rings, there are also of measurements of the 13C/12C ratio in the CO2 trapped in ice cores. The tree ring and ice core data both show that the total change in the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere since 1850 is about 0.15%. This sounds very small but is actually very large relative to natural variability. The results show that the full glacial-to-interglacial change in 13C/12C of the atmosphere -- which took many thousand years -- was about 0.03%, or about 5 times less than that observed in the last 150 years.

[JJ]

OK, this will be my last comment, because I can see already from what people have said, that you didn't look very closely the links that I posted. And probably posting any more wouldn't help either.

Yes, Earth is a very complicated system, no doubt. An ordinary frog pond can be a complicated system. But here is the uncomplicated part: If you change the concentration of something, say add salt to the pond, or CO2 in Earth's atmosphere, that has consequences. That's the uncomplicated part.

All of the work that the IPCC has done has confirmed scientifically that there is a problem, and they've gradually gathered more evidence to increase their confidence. This is what Bush's White House commissioned National Academy of Science reported to him in 2001:

"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising."

http://www.nsc.org/EHC/climate/ccu0701.htm#nas

Also, I didn't say "280 ppm to 400ppm" I said "280 ppm to *over* 400ppm." Because 400ppm is a projected estimate based on today's trends. Right now it isn't that much--it's like 360ppm. 280 ppm were the CO2 levels in 1900, which they probably reconstructed using air bubbles from ice core samples.

Al Gore happens to be someone who has done a good job explaining these things, and is a smart guy on many things. Sometimes he's not quite as smart. I think he makes a better advisor than he would a president. I don't have any special devotion to him. (I would argue that that unconditional regard for your leaders is a rightie thing.)

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say. I'd advise you guys to do some homework. Charging someone with being "alarmist" or whatever isn't very convicing when the person making the charges hasn't done any homework. And no, watching Fox News and hanging out at Tech Central Station, or junkscience.com doesn't count.

[ET]

--They believe the scientists are engaged in a huge international liberal, socialist conspiracy to take over the world via regulations on carbon emissions.--

Well, nowang. there you go again. I have never seen that statement on this blog. I have seen responses to hysterical rants from gore acolytes that take them to task for their junk science and their alarmist agenda.

All I ask for is from your side is an acknowledgement that we don't know what we don't know and that a lot more debate is required before we start setting global priorities because some politician's cause was adopted by the loony left. Of course, since you stand firmly with the loony left, I will never get anything but extreme hyperbole from you, or from JJ.

You don't know what you are talking about. You are a useless mouthpiece for a dying cause. Calm down and let the professionals do their jobs.

[templar knight]

I have seen nowingker make like a fundie Pentecostal and predict global warming is going to destroy the world, yet we all know that the Earth has survived much warmer temperatures than what we have now.

You said it right here, wingie, so don't deny it. End of the world as we know it, 90% of species gone, etc. And you expect to be taken seriously. Please.

[nowingker]

I don't deny it, its in the science text books.

If there is a 10 degree rise in temperature 90% of the speices on the planet will be wiped out, just like the LAST TIME the temperature rose by 10 degrees, except that took 10,000 years, we're looking at a fraction of the time if nothing is changed.

[Fred Beloit]

Well, I guess I have to take jj's answer as a yes. He certainly didn't do anything to challenge my number. All he did was resort to authorities or experts, but only those with whom he agrees. But the experts disagree, both on measurements and on basics, so that is no argument at all. So 0.0000084% more CO2 in the air is a big problem. If this is jj's case, as it seems to be, I disagree.

[Robert]

daveinboca is a moron.

Clinton allowed 9/11 to happen on George W. Bush's watch.
Are you for real?

The party of no accountability EVER (Republican) strikes again.

And to the brain dead idiot who thinks Gore said he invented the internet, that lie has already been dismissed. he never said it. That was just one of the many (Liberal--ha ha ha) Media's lies about what Gore said.

Not to worry. Those lies only put W into office, which is why we are in the clusterfu** known as the Iraq War.

Finally, to hear that Gore is a "chicken little" from the same group who thinks Osama and Saddam were in cahoots to take over America is pretty much the definition of irony.

[JJ]

"0.0000084% more CO2 in the air is a big problem."

I was going to sign off, but I decided to teach you some math.

280 parts per million (Pre-industrial concentration of CO2)

365 parts per million (Concentration in 1998)

This is per the IPCC report, which was approved and signed off on by George W. Bush's NAS panel in 2001 (see my comment above):

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/016.htm

These are not *my* experts that signed off on the IPCC report. They were George W Bush's experts. So let's do some math.

365 - 280 = 85 ppm. To get the percentage increase: 85 / 280 = ~.30, or a 30% increase in CO2 concentration today over pre-industrial levels.

OK, so the IPCC is expecting, based on current trends, for CO2 concentrations to run between 668 and 734 ppm:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/122.htm

668 to 734 ppm would be an increase of between 139% and 162%.

Of course, when I say 365 - 280 = 85, I'm exersizing "hyperbole," because I'm a "loony lefty." So of course you can safely disagree with my "liberal" math. As Karl Rove said before the last elections, "you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to 'the' math."

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Rove_dukes_it_out_with_NPR_1025.html

And how *did* that math of yours turn out last November?

I'm outta here...

[Fred Beloit]

Here's the math: increase of 85 ppm is 85 divided by one million = 0.000085%. But CO2 is only a small component of air (the atmosphere). It makes up about 0.03% of the atmosphere. So 0.000085 of 0.03 = 0.0000025% of air. This is a significant change in the atmosphere? Bye bye jj. Y'all come back now, heah? But I could be wrong. Any real experts around?

[nowingker]

Fred, you cannot really be this stupid.

Even being willfully stupid and ignorant doesn't cover your previous post. JJ laid the math out very clearly.

Your response: continue to post gobbledygook that a freaking 10th grader who got a C in math can see is complete nonsense.

If you REALLY don't understand that going from 380 to 260 is a THIRTY PERCENT increase, then find a tutor and by all means never do your own taxes or balance your checkbook.

You cannot make up your own math rules much as I see you want to. LOL no wonder you retards believe stuff like solar flares and trees are causing global warming. You can't even understand a simple mathmatic equation that you should have mastered in the fifth grade.

PS, your contention that because CO2 is only a small part of the atmophsere is likewise, full of crap. A little poison will kill you as certainly as a lot of poison. The issue is a HUGE increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over a TINY amount of time.

[Fred Beloit]

If a little poison could kill somebody yeswanker, we would all have died from your comments a long time ago. Goodbye and bad luck.

[Fat Man]

nowingker: "your contention that because CO2 is only a small part of the atmosphere is likewise, full of crap. A little poison will kill you as certainly as a lot of poison. The issue is a HUGE increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over a TINY amount of time."

As Parcelius said: There is no poison with a dose. Further CO2 is not a poison, it is necessary for life on earth.

CO2 is a "greenhouse gas", as are all tri-atomic gases. It is not the most prevailant, nor the most important (in terms of maintaining an above freezing climate on earth) such gas. That honor is reserved for water vapor.

What we know is that the earth seems to have gotten a bit warmer over the last century or so, and that the amount of CO2 has increased during that time.

That is a correlation. It not causation. The causation is assumed by the model makers. The problem with the models is that they cannot duplicate reality, because reality is not fully understood. In particular, because warmth increases the evaporation of water, and warm air can hold more water than can cold air, there should be a positive feedback spiral that causes the earth to keep getting warmer until the atmosphere is saturated at a high temperature. That this does not happen is clearly connected to cloud formation, cloud albedo, and precipitation, but the models cannot yet fully encompass those phenomena, so the model makers must rely on kludges.

Furthermore the next step of reasoning -- that a warmer world is a worse world, is even more of a stretch. The world has been both warmer and colder in the past. Both humans and other species has lived in such worlds. As one scientist pointed out. Humans are a tropical species. We can and will adapt to wordls with different climates.

Some GW enthusiasts claim that sea levels will rise as much as 20 feet. But, men have legs, if sea levels rise, they can, and will move to higher ground. They also have hands and can build dykes.

Claims are also made about the spread of tropical diseases. So-called tropical diseases are not truly tropical. In historic times they were found at most mid-latitudes in places like Ohio and Italy. They are transmitted by insects (mostly mosquitoes) that thrive in water. The reason that they are largely found in the tropics now is that the tropics are largely poor and dominated by bad governments. In Europe and North America public works of sanitation, drainage and insect extermination have largely eliminated these diseases, and they could in the tropics, if they were used.

Me, I am going put a pool in my back yard.