Gore on the Rocks

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AEON

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I have always disagreed with Adam about mixing music and politics, sports and politics...etc. This is a good article about the danger of mixing science and politics.

Gore on the Rocks
Consensus is reached: Gore’s global-warming alarmism is overblown.

By Steven F. Hayward

As international celebrity and film star Al Gore prepared to testify about global warming on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, it was already apparent that the hot air may be leaking out of the global-warming balloon.

After a year of concentrated effort that includes a multimillion-dollar p.r. campaign on top of An Inconvenient Truth and slavish media coverage parroting the climate-alarmist line, recent polls show that public opinion has barely budged. Only about a third of Americans, according to a recent Gallup survey, are agitated about climate change, and even people who say the environment is their most important issue rank climate change behind air and water quality in importance.

Meanwhile a backlash in the scientific community has begun. Last week, New York Times veteran science reporter William Broad filed a devastating article about scientists who are “alarmed” at Gore’s alarmism; Gore’s account of global warming goes far beyond the evidence. The dissents from Gore’s extremism, Broad explained, “come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists” who have “no political ax to grind.” It appears Gore refused to be interviewed directly for the article; he responded to e-mail questions only.

This backlash has been quietly building for a while. In November, Mike Hulme, director of Britain’s Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, expressed his unease about climate alarmism to the BBC:

I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric. It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the [catastrophe] skeptics. How the wheel turns. Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the observable physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging which surrounds science’s predictions? To state that climate change will be ‘catastrophic’ hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.

Then in December, Kevin Vranes of the University of Colorado, by no means a climate skeptic, commented on a widely read science blog about his sense of the mood of the most recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where Gore had made his standard climate presentation. “To sum the state of the climate science world in one word, as I see it right now, it is this: tension,” Vranes wrote. “What I am starting to hear is internal backlash. . . None of this is to say that the risk of climate change is being questioned or downplayed by our community; it’s not. It is to say that I think some people feel that we’ve created a monster by limiting the ability of people in our community to question results that say ‘climate change is right here!’”

Gore and other climate extremists have been hammering away at “consensus” science for years now — especially the assessments produced by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). So it is a highly inconvenient truth that the latest IPCC scientific assessment undermines many of Gore’s most spectacular claims. The IPCC says the worst-case sea-level rise this century would be 23 inches; Gore portrays 20 feet or more in his horror film. Ditto for Gore’s claims about hurricanes and melting ice caps; the new IPCC fails to bolster Gore’s alarmism. Already climate alarmists are starting to mutter under their breath that the IPCC is now “too conservative,” but having built up the IPCC as the gold standard of “consensus” science, the alarmists are in the awkward position of being hoist by their own petard. It could be an inconvenient moment for Gore on Wednesday if someone asks him why he is so far outside the scientific consensus on so many aspects of the issue.

A new anti-alarmist documentary from Britain’s iconoclastic Channel Four, The Great Global Warming Swindle, is attracting Internet viewers by the millions. And the most significant blow to climate alarmism came last week in New York, where in a formal debate MIT’s Richard Lindzen and author Michael Crichton decisively defeated the alarmists in an audience vote. You know there is something fundamentally weak about the case for climate catastrophe when you see an alarmist attributing the skeptics’ victory to Crichton’s height rather than the substance of the arguments.

The biggest blow to the climate catastrophists is not any scientific problem, but the hypocrisy of Gore and his Hollywood cheering section, whose profligate energy use cannot be mitigated in the popular mind through “carbon offsets,” even if such offsets worked as advertised. Liberals in the 1960s and 1970s never comprehended how damaging “limousine liberalism” was to their cause. They seem even more oblivious to the self-inflicted wounds of “Gulfstream liberalism.” Whatever the intricacies of climate science, middle-class citizens understand that Gore wants them to use less energy and pay more for it, while he and his Hollywood pals use as much as they want and buy their way out of guilt, like a medieval indulgence. In the companion book to An Inconvenient Truth, Gore writes that “a good way to reduce the amount of energy you use is simply to buy less. Before making a purchase, ask yourself if you really need it.” Gore decided that he does need it — for all four of his homes and his pool house.

The ultimate sign that climate change is more about politics than science is the repeated “go-slow” statements of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. If climate change is really the greatest threat in mankind’s history, with the catastrophic tipping point less than 10 years away, why go slow in crafting legislation to save the planet? Perhaps Pelosi and other congressional Democrats have paid attention to the overwhelming consensus of economists — one climate consensus that Gore resolutely ignores — that serious greenhouse-gas emission cuts fail every conceivable cost-benefit test. Faced with the climate-policy equivalent of HillaryCare, Pelosi would prefer to save her majority rather than save the planet.

— Steven F. Hayward is F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of the Pacific Research Institute’s annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators.
 
Whatever the intricacies of climate science, middle-class citizens understand that Gore wants them to use less energy and pay more for it, while he and his Hollywood pals use as much as they want and buy their way out of guilt, like a medieval indulgence.

duel.gif

Touché!
 
AEON said:
I have always disagreed with Adam about mixing music and politics, sports and politics...etc. This is a good article about the danger of mixing science and politics.


Politics effects everyone and everything, the idea that it should be separate from certain aspects of life or that only certain people are elgible I always found ridiculous.
 
This article is bullshit partisan garbage. It's not just Al Gore bringing up this topic. It's the entire science community with the exception of a handful of bought off quack scientists.

Governments around the world are already legislating laws to become more efficient and greener. The costs of not addressing climate change in the future are far greater than the initial costs of addressing it in the present. Will our actions today stop the increase in temperature? Probably not, but it will certainly mitigate the effects.

The U.S used to be the country the world looked to for answers. But thanks to divisive politics, no one expects anything from them on perhaps the greatest challenge facing mankind. Jeez, even our Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to enact green policies (albeit watered down ones) and he didn't even believe in any of it or even talk about the environment until a couple of months ago.

How sad that a handful of people still refuse to see the win-win in all of this.:|
 
BTW Steven F. Hayward wrote 'The Age of Reagan" he's an Ultra Ultra rightwing journalist. He has absolutely no scientific background, in fact he has a reputation of denying science.
 
Oh no, Al Gore is an alarmist! That must mean that there's no such thing as global warming (even though we have no scientific data to back that statement up)! Lets just carry on with our wasteful ways. :|
 
yeah, the article has no scientific credibility whatsoever.

it's more concerned with Al Gore's increasing potential as a presidential candidate than anything else.

just look at the Hollywood jabs. now that the right has failed at all aspects of governance -- not to mention war! -- is this all they have left? is this the new enemy, hollywood people?

grow up.

it's amazing how slanted the article is. a "devastating" article? that article was posted in here, and while some of the scientists disagreed with some of his points, they all thought he's got the big picture right and they lauded his efforts to publicize the topic.

"devastating"? hardly.
 
Irvine511 said:
yeah, the article has no scientific credibility whatsoever.

it's more concerned with Al Gore's increasing potential as a presidential candidate than anything else.

just look at the Hollywood jabs. now that the right has failed at all aspects of governance -- not to mention war! -- is this all they have left? is this the new enemy, hollywood people?

grow up.

it's amazing how slanted the article is. a "devastating" article? that article was posted in here, and while some of the scientists disagreed with some of his points, they all thought he's got the big picture right and they lauded his efforts to publicize the topic.

"devastating"? hardly.
:up:
 
I think the American conservatives haven't yet caught on that this is another losing issue for them. They've in fact already lost, they just don't know it yet. It's a bit like gay marriage: time will defeat their views because of changing social values and it's basically a question of waiting them out.

In Canada, even our Conservatives are quickfast developing environmental policies ever since the former Conservative PM Mulroney told them point blank they would lose if they did not adjust their views on this issue. The US right is just lagging behind, as is usually the case.

So they can print these ridiculous articles from now until kingdom come and the fact still remains that after decades of work by environmental scientists, they have finally crossed that barrier and the public has largely embraced them or is well on the way. There is no more going back.
 
redhotswami said:
The only people making global warming a partisan issue are the conservatives.


More accurately, it's American conservatives. A look at Europe or Canada will show you that their conservatives have woken up and smelled the coffee, for the most part.
 
Re: Re: Gore on the Rocks

BonoVoxSupastar said:


Politics effects everyone and everything, the idea that it should be separate from certain aspects of life or that only certain people are elgible I always found ridiculous.
Doesn't effect objective reality.
 
There was a much better article in the New York Times on this very issue that I think was balanced, in the last year the term denier has come into play and the old oil industry canard seems to be the only answer to any criticism of apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming scenarios from some quarters; both political ad hominem attacks that ignore the facts and evidence (because many of the criticisms are overturned on the basis of the evidence and sometimes the criticism overturns assumptions within the theory, positive outcomes either way).

Heres the article
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.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “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. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13gore.html?ex=1331611200&en=7867da472294b3c2&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
 
anitram said:


More accurately, it's American conservatives. A look at Europe or Canada will show you that their conservatives have woken up and smelled the coffee, for the most part.



a solid thrashing in 2008 might do much to wake them up, and we're already witnessing some of the Republican superstars -- Giuliani and Schwarzenagger -- publically breaking with the know-nothings of their party, whether the know-nothingism is about global warming or religion.

i, for one, welcome the great Republican crack up. the Giulianis/Schwarzenaggers of the world, if truly freed from the nativist, Christianist shackles of the base of the Republican party, might become a party worth voting for.
 
Giuliani could get the nom

especially with the CA, NJ primaries moved up

and NY and FA may get moved up, too.

The nominations will probably be determined by Feb 6


If this happens, the Social Conservative base could stay away

and let the Dems have the Whitehouse in 08

They believe that would better serve their purposes,
then in 2012 they would get their issues front and center again.
 
Arnold will never go national


he may run for Senate in CA sometime

he is not popular with the Republican Party, not even in CA
 
anitram said:
I think the American conservatives haven't yet caught on that this is another losing issue for them. They've in fact already lost, they just don't know it yet. It's a bit like gay marriage: time will defeat their views because of changing social values and it's basically a question of waiting them out.

In Canada, even our Conservatives are quickfast developing environmental policies ever since the former Conservative PM Mulroney told them point blank they would lose if they did not adjust their views on this issue. The US right is just lagging behind, as is usually the case.

So they can print these ridiculous articles from now until kingdom come and the fact still remains that after decades of work by environmental scientists, they have finally crossed that barrier and the public has largely embraced them or is well on the way. There is no more going back.

Exactly. American conservatives are the laughingstock of the educated free world, in large part because of their ostrich-head-in-the-sand position on global warming.

These are the same people who don't want to teach evolution in schools.

:rolleyes:
 
LyricalDrug said:

Exactly. American conservatives are the laughingstock of the educated free world, in large part because of their ostrich-head-in-the-sand position on global warming.

Not all though, I read something recently about an evangelical Christian conservative who believes in global warming and was criticized for it by some other evangelicals.

Granted that's only one, but surely there are others.
 
deep said:
Arnold will never go national


he may run for Senate in CA sometime

he is not popular with the Republican Party, not even in CA

Yes, I think he even isn't allowed to do so because he is no American.
but still, he runs California. :wink:
 
LyricalDrug said:

Exactly. American conservatives are the laughingstock of the educated free world

They are, that's true, and have been for some time. The good news is that stereotype, a couple of years ago, via it's dominance of American politics and ideas (publicly, to the outside world) had stretched out to be the stereotype of America or Americans, and it is now subsiding rapidly as it's becoming apparent that opposition for Bush, Iraq etc is now the mainstream in the US. The conservative with a gun in one hand, bible in the other, spewing rubbish about Freedom Fries, is, thankfuly, a rapidly diminishing image. Travel around the world a few years ago and everyone thought the US had gone flat out crazy simply because the noise of a few was shouting down the many. Switch on Fox News a few years ago and you were honestly left sitting there thinking "We're all fucked" because you felt that millions upon millions upon millions believed the hype, now you just have to laugh at those still hanging on. The head-up-the-arse attitude towards foreign affairs was scary, but it's all but gone. The head-in-the-sand towards global warming, among other things (particularly 'social' issues), just shows the stupidity of certain beliefs.
 
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