I wonder if I’m wrong all the time, but does Al Gore? In his heart of hearts, doesn’t he occasionally think to himself he might even be a bit off about the anthropogenic global warming thing? When he’s making a speech that is so “upbeat about the climate bill” to a crowd in Madison, WI, does he consider that it’s only 41 degrees outside in early October and that a baseball game has just been snowed-out in Denver?
I know, I know – climate has nothing to do with weather (or so I’ve been told ad nauseum). But what does it have to do with? Somebody’s computer model? According to the BBC, the world has been cooling since 1998, although some claim the warming is only in hiatus. What do we make of that? The issue has been so politicized that it is hard to find rational scientific judgement. For someone like Gore – a non-scientist – to be so adamant about it feels almost off-putting. It makes me want to believe in global warming less. He’s the exact wrong person to be delivering this kind of message, especially since there are scientists who write well (many better than Gore). But his narcissism and greed have placed Al out front.
If the science starts to turn solidly against him, will he admit it? Will he have a breakdown? Will he return his Oscar and Nobel? Do we care? Not really. But it should be a warning that when politicians talk about science, we should beware. But on a more complicated level, this presents a dilemma for our democracy as society becomes more technological. Who will make the judgements?
UPDATE: Since October temperatures in Montana are already down to single digits, maybe Newsweek was right back in 1975.
If I was ever offered the opportunity to ask Algore one question it would be: “if your wild claims are ever proved wrong, would you have the courage and humility to admit it?” Of course, I would never get the chance to ask him a question because Gore refuses to take questions.
Unfortunately, the entire philosophy of science is under assault because too many people are science illiterates. The simple fact is that most of science is done to prove a theory wrong – not that a theory is right (See Galileo, flat earth, the ether, etc.)
Any honest assessment of Gore’s ridiculous claims can be easily debunked if you take the money and politics out of the so-called “science” that Mr. Gore practices. He’s simply a fraud – why anyone takes him seriously is a mystery. I’ve got to go shovel snow now.
Here’s what I think. I think right after the climate change guys wrung all the money and magazine covers out of their global cooling/new ice age hustle that they could they took a look at the sunspot cycle and its history and said “Aha, Temps are going to rise for the next few years. If we play our cards right we can keep getting our gov’t grants and maybe keep those magazine covers coming. If we are lucky nobody will remember how we came a cropper on the GC/NIA deal and most of us can retire rich and famous. I mean $55 billion ain’t chump change. Anyway that’s what I think.
Money quote from Algore: “Never before in human history has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions.”
Gore is already a wealthy man. He doesn’t need more money. But look at the narcissism of his statement. My goodness, it reeks. The boomers’ last great cause, until they find another one.
Shivering in NorCal; Blue Angels can’t fly on what used to be one of the warmest weekends in the Bay Area.
Gore will never admit he was wrong, no matter what the evidence confronting him. He still is convinced that he was president from 2001-2009.
The irony in all this is the fact that the evangelical proponents of AGW are really no different in their attitude towards nature than the 19th century industrialists who saw the natural world as something to be exploited to the nth degree with no thought to the consequences. Needless to say, that attitude is despised by Gore and his groupies, but their own hubris leaves the old-time polluters in the dust. The notion that we control the temperature of the planet is so vain and ridiculous I don’t know what to compare it to. But the economic consequence of what these nitwits are up to is deadly serious and demands opposition.
He will never admit he is wrong. It is not in his nature. He is nothing more than a snake-oil salesman, persuasive and wrong.
It’s bad enough that Gore never explores any possibility, but it’s sadder to me that organizations like The Nature Conservancy, with hundreds of scientists on board, have bought into this as fact and foregone conclusion. And it’s using it as a fundraising ploy. It’s all very shocking.
No question about it. Global warming is a polarizing issue. And no, Gore can’t admit he’s wrong any more than Clinton, Obama or any other preening narcissist can. Apologizing, thanking others, and admitting error are three things that classic narcissists are unable to do. The brilliant Nancy McWilliams has a fine essay on this subject—narcissists, not global warming.
-” If the science starts to turn solidly against him, will he admit it? Will he have a breakdown? Will he return his Oscar and Nobel? Do we care? Not really. “-
Pardon, but..G*ddam right we’ll care.
Not about any of the silly participation trophies he’s won, but about the millions he’s made on this sham, and the billions we’ve lost, the laws passed in the name of ‘AGW’, jobs lost, etc..etc..
If the non-politicized science exposes him as a scam artist, and the public becomes convinced of his thievery; then there are those who will want personal payback from him and those like him.
Not that I endorse such actions, of course.
I know this. If AGW was conclusively proven to be nonsense today, tonight the CBC would show excerpts of An Inconvenient Truth and have Peter Mansbridge interviewing Al Gore in support of the theory. Inconvenient Truths go down the memory hole in the Orwellian universe.
Admit that he’s wrong, ha! He doesn’t even act like he’s right considering the jet-setting around, the inherited family mine, speeding tickets, and mansions that he inhabits.
Gore was my Senator. He has got to be the most vain, self-righteous, and arrogant politician I have ever seen. Its like Fonz from Happy Days who had trouble saying “I was wwwwwrong…” Gore is also a major hypocrite-YOU live green and I will live in the mansion…
“…when politicians talk about science, we should beware.”
When politicians talk about ANYTHING, we should beware.
When Carson’s water didn’t run out by 1964, Paul Erlich shouted “Look over here at Ozone”.
When the Ozone layer closed by itself (since shown to be cyclic) even before R12 and Fleurocaron got profitably (for him) retooled, the whole chorus sang “Ooops! Look over there. It’s Global Cooling.”
When the fresh evidence looked like a warming cycle instead, they all screamed, “Look over there, it’s Global WARMING!”
Now it’s equivocal, so they shout “Climate Change” to win either way.
Why don’t supposedly educated people remember the panics of water-ozone-cooling-warming-climate that these simple minded demogogues have used? Why must we pay the consequences in taxes and ruinous policies?
Roger, I think he flipped out when he lost the election.
Planet fever alarm is a monument erected to the glory of idleness. If it gets to you, it means you have already fallen into the trappings of boredom. Climb out of it before it feels comfortable.
Al Gore is counting in on an argument that is the mathematical equivalent of betting odd or even at the roulette wheel. Even if he is wrong, his odds of being right are good enough that he can profit by taking sides. If he doubles his bet on the odd number each time at the wheel, he will come out ahead each time an odd number comes up. The only way he can lose in this scenario, is if he can’t keep doubling his bet. Unfortunately for big Al, he has to keep up the betting until the odd number finally turns up. This is how all environmental issues get argued, in my opinion. Of course, it is possible that the house discovers what he is doing in time to chase him off.
Of course Gore will never admit he was wrong. Global cooling/warming/change is not science, it’s religion.
“The issue has been so politicized that it is hard to find rational scientific judgement.”
Yeah, the scientific community is really divided on this. And you should hear them argue about evolution!
I wonder how many millions of dollars will he get from Capitalist Pig Soros billion dollars iinvestement in green technology?
I wonder how cold it would be now if we didn’t have increased CO2 in the atmosphere? Would we be in the early stages of an Ice Age? Maybe CO2 is saving us???
15. pelaut:
Al and his cohorts are now arguing that AGW now will cause the earth to combust around 2030 or 2050 or something, when none of us presumably will be around to see how the predictions went down.
If the whole movement loses momentum anyway, I wonder what the next catastrophe will be? Some sort of oceanic trauma is my guess. Desalinization, cooling, boiling? Or perhaps some deadly noise pollution caused by the roar of automobile engines, the rata-tat-tat of jackhammers and riveters, and the hum of factories — but oddly unaffected by megastar rock bands playing ear-splitting concerts to help the cause of noise abatement.
20. biblio44: “Yeah, the scientific community is really divided on this.”
Take the sarc out, and you’re right — http://tinyurl.com/2jorjm and http://tinyurl.com/5laabm
“And you should hear them argue about evolution!”
Yes, you should — http://tinyurl.com/yjfpybw
I will continue to believe that Gore and his buddies are full of crap until they quit harping on “human activity” and address the undersea volcanic vents and undersea earthquakes at both poles and all points along the pacific coast.
Take 10 minutes to see this PBS program from last year’s Oregon Field Guide.
http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/videos/view/67-Antarctic
It just gaming the system
When scientific theory is linked to monetary gain, there’s no amount of “proof” that will dissuade believers from their “theories.”
Keep in mind all of the theories that now define our world: the Theory of Evolution, the Theory of (Man-made) Global Warming, etc. There are too many research dollars, too many careers, too many professionals (politicians and scientists) who would lose if their beloved pet theories were concretely proved wrong. Even if the theories were disproved, we’d not hear about it from those who profit from them. Scientists can’t fully grasp that the coelacanth isn’t extinct & really has been around for all of the years they thought it was gone – and what that means to their edicts on extinction! That little fact is neatly swept under the rug & not discussed. :\
We could be buried in snow from the Philippine tropics to Prince Edward Island and “global warming” would still be a “valid theory” and its side effects would be ones that we were responsible for creating and unleashing on an unsuspecting world. 0_o
No, he will never admit his wrong/sinfulness; Al is like the Sister Falconer evangelist in “Elmer Gantry”, truly believing they are essential to God’s work and surronded by Elmer Gantry con men who exploit their blind faith. Actually, I blame Tommy Lee Jones, Al’s Yale roomate for this mess; Al was flunking out and would have had to live a normal life if Tommy Lee had not “hepped” him “achieve” the grades that got Al where he is. Damn you, Tommy Lee…
On Drudge today ……. The Chill is in the air .
BBC: What happened to global warming?
US CHILL MAP…
Montana cold breaks records…
Record Cold temps in Idaho threaten potato crops…
Austria: Earliest snowfall in history set to break records…
Man has microphone cut off after asking about ‘errors’ in Gore film…
Soros says aims to invest $1 Billion in green tech…
Greenpeace activists clamber on to Houses of Parliament in climate change protest…
Energy crisis postponed, new gas rescues the world…
Yesterday morning in Ashland VA IT was 44 degrees !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicago had the coldest winter and summer since 1937 .
Al Gore already knows he’s wrong.
But he would never, could never, admit it.
Unless he found a way to make another pile of money out changing his tune . . . .
Mmmm, Barrack Hussein Obama . . . mmmmm mmmm mmmm.
I believe that global warming is a hoax to cheat fools out of their money. But……
If the economy continues to spiral down, I expect that we will loose our house. But Al Gore has made over $100 million dollars off of global warming. I drive a ten year old hail dented pick up truck. But Al Gore flies around in a private jet.
Who is the fool?
Years ago, I used to wonder whether Al Gore was a blind zealot or a cynical liar. Whether, in short, he believed his own bs. I stopped caring a long time ago. And I think the truth is, so did he.
Gore is like Barney Frank. Even as the evidence for his blustering claims is continually proven wrong, he will milk his own lies until someone, finally, disgraces him. That day will come.
Al Gore never admits he is wrong; he silents dissent & will not answer difficult questions. Al Gore has his own subversive agenda link to the Global Warming fraud which is to make money. He’s still the muck encrusted goo found on in sewers, damp caves, & other dingy places.
Eric Hoffer, 1951 – “The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”
P.11
“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors , shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the actions that follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
And p.12
“People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement…Their innermost craving is for a new life – a rebirth – or failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both…”
and P. 13
“ It is true that in the early adherents of a mass movement there are also adventurers who join in the hope that that the movement will give a spin to their wheel of fortune and whirl them to fame and power.”
And
Eric Hoffer, 1979 – “Before the Sabbath”
p. 7
“ I am curious about Pechorin, a Russian intellectual of the mid-nineteenth century who wrote a poem on “How sweet it is to hate one’s native land and eagerly await its annihilation.”
I confess I’ve got a signed copy of Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”. I supported him even when he disappointed. But it’s clear that, left without a job in 2001, he’s found a schtick that has kept him in the spotlight and made him quite wealthy. Were he to admit he was wrong, where would he be?
Some 30 years ago, I was standing for my Master’s exam (required before proceeding into the Ph.D. program). I was already pretty skeptical about the direction of war/peace studies and the pursuit of grants to apply statistical analysis to international politics.
I tried to put such efforts into perspective, but suggested there was a trendy orientation of research to where the money was, a “sociology of research”. To say the panel took that suggestion unkindly would be an understatement. (I abandoned those studies a year later.)
It’s fair to say the money today promotes the mantra of AGW. Skeptics are shunned, and a “group think” consensus has taken over. Sounds like something worthy of study. Anyone think I could get a grant?
I doubt algore will admit he was wrong. He used to go around proclaiming that he was the former next president of the United States. If that were true, why did he concede the election in the middle of the night? He knows he didn’t win. He knew he wasn’t going to be president. He unconceded after his lawyers told him they had a good change to steal the election in FLA.
He’s truly a small person.
I liked your comments. Just to add a little more about it however, look up the Kyoto protocol. This protocol has made it hear in Great Britain. It is basically just a treaty wherin the industrialized or industrializing nations agree that they will lower their CO2 levels by 5% form their levels as of 1990. This is a huge undertaking.
Jaques Chirac said of it that Kyoto is “the first component of an authentic global governance.” The goal is to garner strict control over corporate actions and individual behavior.
According to the other half of scientists global warming and or cooling is a cycle. Oh, and according to Al we will go into the next iceage through global warming. Go figure
I have never considered man made global warming as plausible for the simple reason that carbon dioxide is the foundation of life on earth. To claim it is a pollutant means nature has designed a system where the act of breathing is causing harm to the planet and to ourselves. This is nonsense to me. Its madness to me.
There are many other objections based on science rather than common sense. There is also the fact that Al Gore has a financial interest in promoting man made global warming as does many on the radical left. Van Jones gave all of us an education on the benefits to the left of regulating carbon and how it benefits the radical left.
Then why do you and the Instaclutz repeatedly make a comparison which you know is both irrelevant and misleading?
39. Lazar,
Yes, climate and weather are not the same thing. But, of the dozens of climate computer models, which ones correctly predicted that warming would cease in 1998 and even cool slightly? I think the answer is none. Computer models are only as accurate as their underlying assumptions. To be trusted, computer models must be verified by testing or by actual observations. These computer models predicted additional warming from 1998 to the present. They failed the test of real life observations. People who insist we radically change our lifestyles and our sources of energy and our economies are making these arguments on the basis of computer models that we know to be flawed. This is crazy.
Yeah, 11 years might be a statistical squiggle but why is 30 years of moderate warming statistically significant? The Little Ice Age lasted far longer than that. It was a temporary natural fluctuation in climate. Many climate alarmists went just as crazy during a global cooling squiggle during the 1970s. And yes, they also trotted out computer models that “proved” that the cooling trend would continue unabated.
On Wikepedia it says that “at Vostok scientists have difficulty breathing because there is no CO2 in the air”.
If this is so how could Al Gore have measured it in the ice cores for his film? I know it wasn’t him, but I’ve wondered this ever since I saw the statement in Wikepedia.
Jim,
Short-term fluctuations are a stochastic process; they are unpredictable.
If you want to understand what climate models were built for, and what they predict;
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
Warming has not ceased. The recent eleven years are consistent with a long-term warming trend.
Suggested reading;
http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Analysis-Interdisciplinary-Introduction-Multivariate/dp/0942154991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255520670&sr=8-1
and more advanced;
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Analysis-Its-Applications-Statistics/dp/0387293175/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255520758&sr=1-2
Has been done, for donkeys years, and is still ongoing. Read the aip link.
Depends on the system. For climate it’s the minimum length of time needed to detect a climate response to typical changes in forcing. For a shorter period noise (internal unforced variability) swamps the signal. That’s what statistical tests show.
It was a response to known changes in volcanic and solar forcing. It was not an expression of unforced internal variability.
A few silly journalists.
No they didn’t
ahem @16 – I agree. I think he lost his mind after he lost the election.
Bill Manuel @19 – Spot on. Belief in anthropogenic global warming is a religion; that’s why we’re now called, “global warming deniers,” instead of skeptics.
Eowyn @24 – You’re absolutely right. Some scientists now express deep skepticism about the Darwinian model, both in terms of origin of life problems and macro-evolution problems; accidents simply take too long and
(apparent) irreducible complexity makes it impossible for things to happen naturally. Anti-Darwinists instead of being termed scientific skeptics are termed religious fanatics. The is the usual leftist approach. When you can’t refute the evidence use ad hominem attacks on those refuting you.
For the record, Jack, and with all due respect, this blogger completely supports Darwin and is entirely unconvinced by intelligent design. In fact, I regard THe Origin of Species as one of the most brilliant works ever written.
I, for one, do care that he return his Oscar, Nobel, and that he issue an apology.
During the course of my lifetime, I have been lied to repeatedly by scientific alarmists;
1) When I was 11, I was told by my teachers that the Earth’s overpopulation was going to force us to eat each other like rats in cages
2) When I was 12, I was told by my teachers that we were headed into an Ice Age which would bring about worldwide famine
3) When I was 17, I was told by politicians and teachers that Reagan was going to start a nuclear war and the scientists told me that a nuclear winter was inevitable
4) When I was 18, my Biology professor told me that we would surely run out of oil by 1989
5) Other science professors (and non-science professors) convinced me we were clogging the Earth with plastics, we were losing forestation around the world, and we were surely going to destroy the Earth
6) For the last 10 years or so, I’ve been listening to the AGW crap.
After having been lied to so many times, I now recognize the lie when it comes at me. I have no doubt AGW is a lie. Any time a politician, backed up by a scientist, tells me there is a problem we have to fix RIGHT NOW, or else the Earth will be devastated, I check my wallet to see if it is still in my back pocket. In fact, I usually move it to my front pocket, when they are not looking.
All of these alarmists scams have been attempted shakedowns by the scientific community, and gradually Leftists have adopted the Green agenda as they’ve learned there is money and power in it.
Green is the new Red.
I live in Jackson, Wy, and three times glaciers have filled our valley, with ice up to 3500 feet thick. All three times the glacial ice melted. It wasn’t because of cattle burping on the planes, or methane gas from their droppings, it wasn’t from coal fired electrical generation plants, or auto emissions, ” IT JUST WARMED UP”! That was was a cyclical phenomenum that has occurred since the beginning of time. The earth is either heating or cooling, and on it’s own, not because of man. We don’t need to make it any worse obviously, however we give ourselves too much credit if we think global climate change (not warming) is an anthropogenic occurrence. Get the scientist involved and the politicians out of the way.