Quick Question
May 6th, 2008 - 5:03 pm
Does Al Gore really want to be remembered as the guy who walked over 50,000 still-warm corpses to drive up the shares of his investment fund?
Does Al Gore really want to be remembered as the guy who walked over 50,000 still-warm corpses to drive up the shares of his investment fund?
My favorite part of these “such-and-such cause is just a scam to make money” posts is that when Democrats do it (“Iraq is just a way to make money for Haliburton”), they’re dismissed as crackpot conspiracy theorists. But attempting to warn the world about climate change and its effects on us and our way of life? Clearly, all about the money. Damn Democrats and their love of filthy, filthy lucre.
Democrats don’t love money?
Right. An entire national political party has been replaced by robots from some other solar system.
Seriously though, Gore loves talking up how going green will get you plenty o’ green. Now if only the science were as sure as his business sense, we’d all be really onto something.
What a crackpot. Next he will try to capitalize on the epic Australian drought, the drought in the U.S. Southeast, the Western drought, the rapidly melting ice over the Artic Ocean, the unusually active 2008 tornado season, the Alaskan town of Shishmaref which is plannng to move because of warmer temperatures. What a nut!
Speaking of nuts — how is your boss?
OK, I’ll drop that one. If only so that I might go out on the deck and enjoy the cool, wet spring we’ve been having. You know, the one following our colder-than-normal winter. Which followed the second-coolest summer since I moved to Colorado in 1994.
I’d have happily taken some global warming back when I was dealing with the five-foot snow drifts on my driveway the year before. But contrary to all my prior experiences with mountain weather, the snow stuck around for months instead of melting away in days as it usually does.
Look. If Al Gore believed this stuff, why didn’t he run on it in 2000? And why doesn’t he behave today as though it’s real?
(Taking money off suckers does not count.)
Of course, none of the destruction can be placed at the feet of the repressive gov’t and probably not-up-to-snuff building codes, etc.
Sandy —
Poverty is absolutely to blame. The only building codes in Burma are for the bunkers where the military “leaders” hide out from the peasants they squash.
Everybody else, crowded into shantytowns and worse, gets to fend for themselves. Not to mention inadequate warning times due to… crushing poverty, crushing government controls, etc.
“Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.”
And those robots that aren’t detecting any rise in ocean temperatures? All part of the denialist conspiracy to reduce the value of his stock portfolio!
Apparently India gave the junta two days notice. The deaths due to lack of warning the people are directly in the hands of the thugs running Burma.
I’ve had a pleasant spring as well, which is a relief, since I suffered through possibly the hottest summer in my life last year–ask Glenn Reynolds– which is no surprise since according to Nasa, 2007 was tied for the second hottest year on record (after 2005, the hottest).
P.S. I assume by my “boss” you mean Buchanan, who doesn’t sign checks, edit or assign articles & reviews at TAC. Among the more disturbing and wrong opinions of PJB is his acceptance of the Green/Limbaugh/Coulter denialist position on global warming. At least he had the good sense to oppose the Iraq quagmire.
Clark –
I’m about to get deeply personal here, and for that I apologize. But something needs to be said.
There’s a certain breed of libertarians, and you’re one of them. When confronted with a foreign threat to American liberty, one that has killed thousands since 1978, you turn tail and run. When confronted with a domestic threat to American liberty — in the forms of right-statist Pat Buchanan or left-statist Al Gore — you run right into their loving arms.
Congratulations, you’ve hit the trifecta of failure of nerves.
I just can’t believe he named his book “The Assault on Reason”. Like he’s the most reasonable guy in the room…
The only green he’s reaping is from the fakey fake carbon credits he’s lured blow hard celebs into buying from him to ease their guilty consciences.
I fall squarely into the denier category when it comes to this global warming bull squeeze. It may be faith in a higher power or maybe lack of faith in the human races’ ability to really make a difference… I don’t know. Torn as to my reasons, but I do know that life is cyclical and like every mother, Nature takes care of her own. Where we’ve lived for the last 14 years in east TN, we’ve always been in drought conditions until this spring. The water table is actually to a place where the people who tell the seasons by the thickness of the caterpillar fur aren’t thumping their bibles on their heads like a manic Monty Python sketch and yelling that the end of humanity is around the corner.
Gore is a looney. Time to axe his gas tax and take back our financial futures and get him out of the picture. BTW, He won’t… can run for president on a global warming paltform because he refuses to take questions or be held accountable to answer for the fallacies in the theory or the down right lies that are being told.
I need to take an arthritis pill after all this typing…
The answer to your question is a ghoulish but profitable Yes.
Gore gets grosser by the day.
There is a serious lack of social calibration that comes from ideologues (left and right). I disagree with Al Gore’s position on Global Warming, but my offense to his comments don’t spout from aggreement or disagreement with his position. I think Steve’s original point wasn’t to get into an argument over whether Global Warming was real or not, but that it is incredibly insensitive to start talking about climate change when 50,000 dead bodies are still warm. It’s like seeing a rape victim in the ICU and telling her that what she needed was some to remember her mace.
Funny how Clark proves the point from the other side of moon–here we are talking about social tact and global warming and this ideologue manages to throw the QUAGMIRE non-sequitur into the mix.
Link for equitus’ comment. Gore is just spouting random phrases he picked up from the AGW enthusiasts. He has no real idea what he is talking about.
Clark –
I don’t understand; weren’t the NASA lists of hottest years proved wrong, and retracted by NASA? I can’t believe you’re just glossing over their self-admitted track record.
Are you just blatantly lying?
Stephen:
That’s not really that personal, insulting, etc. I maintain my independence from both Gore and Buchanan and try to view issues on their merits instead of who is for and against them.
Some Guy:
No, you are wrong. NASA readjusted their ordering of temperatures in the U.S. lower 48. Their list of the warmest global averages still stand. I should add that the Hadley Centre in England has a different ordering of the warmest years than NASA, but both organizations agree that the planet is warming because of human activity.
But on the other hand, I just saw ice in my freezer, so perhaps the science is bullshit.
Clark, how about posting a link?
Clark,
Never mind the fact that the overall integrity of the temperature tracking systems is completely up for grabs. Nope. Nothing wrong there. Those thermometers that are sitting on tarmac in the desert, when they weren’t 20-30 years ago? Don’t you worry your pretty little head about those. Those thermometers that are sitting in Communist China and completely free from third-party auditing? Nothing to see here.
Trust us. We know what’s best for you!
“50,000 still-warm corpses” eh? If not for the global warming, they’d be just lukewarm by now.
Proof!
And, since I am actually an environmentalist to some degree, wish to add that the recent deforestation of mangroves along the shoreline resulted in much more dangerous inland conditions. It wouldn’t have stopped the flooding, but it would have slowed it.
Of course, if the government of Burma refused to allow the new farmland they would have been brutal starvemongers. If they were Thailand, they’d be dictators in thrall to tourist money.
Aside from the beauty, great lifestyle, access to the water, and all the commercial opportunities available, I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to live near an ocean.
Clark – I hope you have a good shrink lined up when your bubble bursts.
It is a fact that ocean temperatures have been cooling. It follows that Al Gore is wrong when he attempts to link hurricane activity to warming oceans. This is the latest in a series of dubious assertions by the prophets and merchants of doom.
This is not “science”.
“It’s like seeing a rape victim in the ICU and telling her that what she needed was some to remember her mace.”
It’s more like telling the doctor that if she dated taller men, that girl wouldn’t have been raped.
Despite NukemHill’s sarcasm, he’s come closest to the sane position.
-There is no standard definition of “average global temperature”
-The sensors are not arranged in such a way that we may effectively sample all regions equally accurately (like the South Pacific)
-The data which has been recorded has been demonstrated in at least some instances to be questionable or inaccurate.
-No climate model exists which has been validated; i.e. take a known starting point (say AD 1900), feed in known data, and reproducing historical result.
-No climate model has as yet managed to include both the apparent 1.2C increase in global temperature the last century (yes, there seems to be something going on) and known historical variations, including about 1,000 years ago, when Greenland deserved its name.
-No climate model (to my knowledge anyway) accurate reflects oceanic effect, solar cycle effects, and the role of carbon. Apparently just as many state that carbon is a trailing indicator, and not leading.
-No one has managed to develop a usable predictive model. The stuff we hear or read about is near-hysterical worst-case scenarios.
Warming adherents have demonstrated a low level of class by calling their opponents “deniers,” or comparing them specifically to Holocaust deniers.
Those who disagree (the non-warmers?) respond with snarky comments about the “Gore effect,” or (sorry Stephen) last winter/summer. Having an unusually cool or warm season is about statistically significant as a baseball player going 0-for-9; it’s the number at the end of the season which counts.
I am honestly skeptical, instead of derisively so. I admit that there does seem to be some small increase in the overall average global temperature (however they measure it), and I maintain that we need to perform a Bayesian analysis in order to determine what we should investigate, and how.
Does Al Gore really want to be remembered as the guy who walked over 50,000 still-warm corpses to drive up the shares of his investment fund?
Why not? He pimped his own son’s tragedy to win votes in 2000, why not a bunch of strangers?
I see Clark never posted the link I requested, which draws me to the conclusion that he is talking out of his ass. Thanks for playing!