wtf??? ... dude's talking about the WEATHER and winning OSCARS and setting the planet on fire!!!

The Deluge, by Paul Gustave Doré
(French, 1832 - 1883)

The Vleeptron High Non-Junk Science Council will skip its own long rant about Global Warming and Planetary Climate Change.

Unfortunately, science has yet to find a way to harness Global Warming Rants as a source of environmentally clean energy. More's the pity. The controversy on this topic is HUGE, the volume of violently angry disputes is ENORMOUS and growing every day. If someone could find a way to squeeze electricity out of it, coal, oil and nuclear would go out of business overnight.

About three months ago, I answered an e-mail from the US political action group moveon.org to go to the home of a neighbor (a Smith College professor) for an intimate little screening of Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." (I was asked to bring Postage Stamps and Snacks, and after the movie, wrote some letters to some politicians.)

The hell with the Science, the hell with the Truth about GW.

I mean -- are you asking me? Are you waiting for Vleeptron to tell you whether this is all crap, or whether you should move to higher ground and buy a canoe and a new pair of galoshes/wellies from LL Bean?

Go ahead. Ask. Leave A Comment. If you really want to know What Bob Thinks About Global Warming, I'll tell you.

Bob is Not a Climate Scientist. Bob has a Nephew who's a Glaciologist, but he's keeping his mouth fairly shut about the GW thing. In fact Nephew keeps his mouth fairly shut about just about Everything, so that doesn't prove anything.

But Bob does know a thing or two about News, about how some things just bore the crap out of everyone, while other things spontaneously burst into flames in the public and political imagination. That's all you get from Vleeptron in this post.

I am in total awe of Al Gore. In the past couple of years, this rather boring unemployed politician has rapidly positioned himself to be the Mother Theresa / Darth Vader / Winston Churchill / Joseph Stalin / Albert Einstein / Abraham Lincoln / Helen Keller / Stephen Hawking / Bertrand Russell / Savanorola / Rasputin / Carl Sagan of this issue.

After he lost (or maybe won) the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore's destiny was clear: He was supposed to vanish from American political life, get a quiet chair in political science at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and make way for a new generation of political players. He was supposed to shut up and go away. We were never supposed to hear from him again -- except maybe to make a dignified speech now and then, but not in a prime-time hour, at Democratic Party conventions.

So much for his cooperation with his destiny. Dude just won an Academy Award, his documentary's theme song just won another Oscar, and on TV, on the news, on C-Span, on Oprah, on Letterman, it's Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore, Al Gore.

Okay, no big deal, dozens of people win an Oscar every year.

But Al Gore?

And suddenly people CARE about the Oscar for Best Documentary?

How many documentaries have you ever gone to the movies and paid money to see? Check one:

[ ] None
[ ] One

Where are the tits? Where are the car chases? Where are the machine guns? Where are the gay cowboys? Where are the 300 pumped Spartans and the FX? Where's George Cloony?

This guy made a DOCUMENTARY about the WEATHER, for Christ's sake, and suddenly the entire population of Planet Earth is staring fixedly at Al Gore, and waiting for his next utterance about The Weather. Al Gore and Global Warming have practically pushed the Iraq War and Anna Nichole Smith off the front page.

Color Vleeptron Impressed!

And as many people hate Al Gore and his Weather as are worshipping him. Rich and powerful people want to assassinate Al Gore because of what he says about The Weather.

Only one thing could possibly explain all this: Al Gore sold his Soul to the Devil. Nothing else could possibly explain how Al Gore and his Weather PowerPoint Lecture Documentary could Rock Planet Earth this way. Dude sold his Soul to Satan.

I mean, Check This Out. Check out how Al Gore just went up to Congress to testify about The Weather, and it was like Moses parting the Red Sea.

And check out the ANGER! This isn't just Political Posing Anger. These guys are sincerely FURIOUS at Al Gore.

While others are waiting in long lines hoping to touch the hem of The Great Weather Prophet's garment.

Who is Al Gore's Press Agent? Who turned this cross-eyed smoked whitefish into Jesus Walking On The Water? Who tossed Al Gore into a big brown grocery bag and then reached in and pulled out Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison?

I want that Press Agent. He can have 19 Percent. I don't care. I want that Press Agent.

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BLOG: SCIAM OBSERVATIONS

Opinions, arguments and analyses from the editors of Scientific American

March 21, 2007

06:23:43 pm, Categories:
Global Warming and Climate Change, Politics and Science, 1344 words

Gore Returns to Senate to Butt Heads
With Climate Change Skeptics,
Propose Real Solutions

by Christopher Mims

As soon as the Democrats took both houses of Congress, one thing became inevitable: Gore was coming back to the Senate, if only to address his all-consuming passion, climate change.

Today at 2:30 EST, at the behest of Barbara Boxer (D-California), the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Gore got 30 minutes to speak before a packed house. Immediately after, noted climate change skeptic Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), who famously declared that global warming "is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American public," got a chance to lay in to the former vice president, at one point even attempting to ambush him by embarrassing him into signing a pledge that he reduce his emissions to those of a typical American household.

Debate

The gloves were off: it was political theater at its finest. Unfortunately, that meant that, save Mr. Gore and, in his better moments, Sen. Inhofe, few of those present addressed the science of climate change in a way that made it sound like they'd done their homework. To wit:

* When Senator Kit Bond (R-Missour) declared that sun spots were just as likely a cause of global warming as human emissions of CO2, I just about fell out of my chair. So did Mr. Gore, apparently, because he focused so much on answering this claim that he almost missed the bit of political stagecraft that preceded it, when Sen. Bond unveiled a giant poster of a little girl whose family is so poor they can't afford to heat their home in the winter, then asked how Gore could conscionably ask that folks like this pay more for energy (since clean coal and renewables are both more expensive than plain old dirty coal). It's a measure of how into the science Gore has become that he answered the sunspot question first and basically missed his opponent's attempt to pull the heartstrings of anyone too unimaginative to realize that energy efficiency would make it *less* likely that anyone would be cold in the winter rather than more likely.

* Sen. Inhofe declared that the Antarctic is gaining ice, not losing it. This makes a nice sound-bite (gee, if the coldest place on earth is growing, not shrinking, doesn't that mean the earth is cooling and not warming, or something?) until you realize that the climate models actually predict increased snowfall over antarctica, mitigating to some extent the sea-level rise that will come about as a result of global warming. It's also worth noting that this data is patchy, at best, and only goes back a few decades.

* Inhofe also whipped out a poster with "over a thousand names" on it of scientists who don't agree with the consensus on global warming. This was a nice touch, but Gore responded appropriately: the IPCC just declared the evidence for anthropogenic climate change to be unequivocal. The National Academies of Science of the 16 most developed countries all concurr. In other words, for every name on that poster, there are a dozen, maybe a hundred scientists, maybe more, who don't dispute the basics of anthropogenic climate change. (It was also nice to hear Gore cite the September 2006 single-topic special issue of Scientific American on the future of energy, even if it was only to note that in it the editor in chief declared that the debate on anthropogenic global warming is over.)

To me, Inhofe's poster o' climate change skeptics is the equivalent of trotting out a bus full of young-earth creationists--sure, there are people on this Earth who think that dinosaurs and humans co-existed, but that doesn't make it so, nor does it mean that there is any real debate about whether or not our planet is 6,000 years old.

To his credit, Inhofe did bring up one point where Gore may have exaggerated in his film: the link between global warming and an increased number of hurricanes. Certainly scientists believe a warmer earth will cause more intense hurricanes. But more hurricanes overall? The jury's still out. Chris Mooney, who is about to come out with a book on just this subject, has more at his blog The Intersection.)

Solutions

Some folks may still think this is a political issue, but the many Republican Senators on the Senate Environment committee who were more insterested in talking about solutions than debating the science would disagree with those folks. It was gratifying to finally see this becoming a bipartisan issue.

Here is Gore's 9-point plan for dealing with climate change, starting today, directly from his speech:

1) I think we ought to have an immediate freeze on co2 reductions and start from there.

2) We should use the tax code. What I'm about to propose I know is is very much outside the range of what is now politically feasible.

I think we ought to cut taxes on employment and make up the difference with pollution taxes - principally CO2 taxes. Some countries are talking about it seriously.

In the developed world our big disadvantage is that these developed countries have access to tech and container shipping. We don't want to lower our wages - but we don't want to pile on top of those wages these taxes.

We ought to use some of the revenue [from carbon taxes] to help the poor with the adjustments that are coming forward.

3) I'm in favor of cap and trade and I supported Kyoto. but I understand the realities of the situation.

I think the new president should take office at a time when our country has a commitment to defacto compliance with Kyoto. And I think we should move the start of the new treaty period from 2012 to 2010. We need a tougher treaty that starts in 2010. And we need to find a creative way to get China and india involved sooner rather than later.

That's important not least of which because China's emissions will exceed ours in the next couple of years.

We need to ratify a cap and trade system so the market will work for us rather than against us.

4) We should have a moratorium on new coal plants that are not fixed with carbon capture and sequestration technology.

5) I think our congress should fix a date beyond which incadescent lightbulbs are banned. [aside: Australia is about to do this.]...

It's like wal-mart. It's not taking on the climate crisis simply out of the goodness of their heart. They care about it but they're making money at it.

6) The creative power of the information revolution was unlocked by the Internet. When the science and engineering pioneers came up with arpanet and this senate empowered them with a legislative framework and money for r&d, that came together.

We ought to have [an analogous] electro-net and we ought to encourage widely distributed power generation. We ought to take off the caps and let individuals sell back as much as they want on the grid.

Know that the opposite of a monopoly is a monopsony - a single buyer who dictates prices, so we need to have an open market to deal with that [so it's not just the utility company dictating the value of electricity sold back to the grid]. You give individuals the ability to do that and you watch - families, small business will go to town on this.

7) I think we ought to raise the CAFE standards. Don't single out autos, but as part of it.

8) Pass a carbon-neutral mortgage association. Here's why: buyers of new homes and buyers and sellers all focus on purchase prices. But the expenditures that go into more insulation and window treatment and those that don't pay back immediately but pay back over 2-3 years, those don't get counted as savings. Put those in a separate instrument - then have a Connie May [like the government's Fannie Mae, which handles mortgages] which can create a separate instrument. So that people can save and reduce co2 at the same time.

9) Require corporate disclosure of carbon emissions. Investors have a right to know about material risks that could affect the value of their stocks in the future.

Posted by Christopher Mims

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7 comments
Comments, Pingbacks:
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Comment from: monocrater [Visitor]

Global Warming or Climate Change is not a political issue, it can be substantiated with empirical evidence. Anthropogenic Global Warming IS political and it is largely a theoritical soft-science because it is primarily focused on future predictions based on limited and selective present knowledge. While well-intentioned, Mr. Gore, the IPCC, environmental organizations, and the liberal left have latched onto AGW and promoted it as a catastrophic fact, creating a new fear to shift political and social power. AGW has been hyped, overblown, exaggerated, and promoted as unequivocal fact without any separation of reality from myth. Now, every storm, heat wave, drought, migration, flood, cold spell, disease, sleepless night, and a host of other maladies are being attributed to AGW as a result. Follow the money trail for research into AGW - largely the the IPCC and government agencies are funding this research - and all come with deep pockets.

Climate researchers who's hypothesis inetend to show alternative causes to GW are not funded to the same degree as those whose hypothesis aim to show a human cause. The reason? Human cuases are scarier and "correctable" and "legislateable" - something the UN and government agencies excel at. Pro AGW hypothesis are going to get funded and as a proverb in economcs goes "when you fund something, you'll get more of it". Environmentalists sit back and enjoy the show as their exaggerated AGW scare has gotten these agencies to fund their cause in a "take no chances" panic.

Many scientists in the AGW camp are by nature sympathetic to environmental causes and are generally not friendly to industry. In other words, imagine a poet being a neo conservative? An artist who supports the NRA? A biologist who supports the death penalty? It is a positive sympathetic feedback system in the AGW science camp. Peer reviewed? By sympathetic peers who are not held accountable by the funding agencies? What are the official peer review standards anyway in IPCC AGW science? How are these researchers held accountable for review?

While I remain skeptical of AGW claims, and largely because history has shown "flavor of the month science", I am open to the further study of this issue. However, I am not supportive of sweeping and costly political legislations at this point. There are plenty of other natural explanations that have yet to be fully funded and ruled out. Funding is the key here, and who is doing the funding will often dictate the results. If you agree with this principle (since it seems to apply when industry funds) then it must be decided on the science. And since science has shown radical and rapid climate change in recent geologic times, how can the AGW science we are being told is a "consensus" be explained as the absolute truth when funding is taken into account? This is fundamental skepticism from a critical thinking perspective.

And please spare the holier-than-thou "climate contrarian" and "climate denier" labels. They are further evidence of politics manifesting itself in climate change debate.

March 21, 2007 @ 19:48

Comment from: Wall Street Journal [Visitor] ·

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115457177198425388.html
Wall Street Journal article by Antonio Regalado and Dionne Searcey about Al Gore's Penguin army comes to mind. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115457177198425388.html
March 21, 2007 @ 20:48

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Comment from: Eco Author Chris Eldridge [Visitor] · http://www.trafford.com/04-2708

With how important his message is, I have to wonder why some people are so hateful and distrustful of it. Isn't environmentalism the right thing to do regardless? Basically, you really don't even really need to believe in global warming to want to live more efficiently, right? I mean, it's the right thing to do for many critical reasons. Apart from improving our health:

Living more efficiently SAVES MONEY. Yeah, like you have to twist my arm for that... To think how companies can save millions in just the efficient design of their office buildings. Economy cars can also save you like $16,000 in gas over the life of the car when figured at just $2.00 per gallon. Isn't that worth it right there?

It improves our national security. Oil could spike to $5.00 a gallon tomorrow if something happened in the Middle East or a hurricane hit Huston. If that happened, the economy would be greatly weakened, Duh!

Burning less fuel creates less smog, less air pollution, and less soil contamination. Go figure ...

Living more efficiently ultimately lowers our impact on wildlife and forest areas in the form of less acid rain, fewer catastrophic oil spills, and less strip mining.

Finally, if we can become more energy self-sufficient on a very local level we become that much less vulnerable to region-wide disasters like Hurricanes or mass blackouts. In this regard, renewable energy, isn't just good for the environment. It's also the key to keeping the power on when everybody else is sitting in the dark.

Overall, isn't wastefulness and carelessness "morally" wrong? We have to expand our thinking to find solutions that address the broadest possible array of problems. Being able to work productively from home or in our own communities would be the most 'cut-to-the-chase solution' of them all as it would eliminate the need for a daily commute in the first place while giving us five more hours of free time! It's what LA is trying to do to curb the extraordinary amount of traffic they have: create consolidated communities where people live, work, and have recreational facilities nearby! Got to think that's smart at some level, right?
March 21, 2007 @ 21:10

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Comment from: Keira [Visitor]

[about 20 porn site URLs]

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Comment from: Truman Witherspoon [Visitor]

Mr. Eldridge,

In response to your question I would offer the following; while no response should be hateful, I can fully understand the distrust. Absolutely environmentalism is a worthy endeavor. However, to couple the cause with fear tactics intended for political and financial gain is quite troubling. Further, the omissions of critical facts from the analysis to make the “climate crisis� story more compelling is akin to the claims of WMD and linking of al qaeda to Iraq as a justification for invasion. These are highly charged issues with millions of dollars and elite cabals of power pulling the strings. These groups have historically use tactics of this type to incite advocates on both sides. Unfortunately, we [the people] loose when political and social leaders use these tactics. A nation misguided and divided ensures that a corrupt group of elitists can remain in power.

Also, while the notions you suggest regarding fuel efficient cars, green homes and consolidated communities are excellent goals to strive for, I trust that you don’t expect these changes to occur within Mr. Gore’s timeframes. Saving $16,000 in fuel costs is not that compelling to the average income family who would have to spend $30,000+ to buy the vehicle in the first place. To upgrade the average home in the U.S. to a “green� home would put the homeowner in debt for 14 years. Although this is clearly the direction society needs to move in, there is just not enough economic capacity to move in this direction quickly.

With Respect,

Mr. Truman Witherspoon
March 21, 2007 @ 23:28


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Comment from: Christopher Mims [Member]
Chris, I have to agree. Let's say you don't believe in AGW at all. Isn't it still a good idea to save yourself money by increasing the efficiency of your car, your home, etc.? Maybe you don't believe CO2 is an issue, fine... there are plenty of other pollutants our actions produce (Sulfur Dioxide and acid rain, anyone?) that should make us want to use less and use what we've got more efficiently.

Let's extend it further--isn't investing in R&D on new energy sources a good way to get us off the foreign oil teat? How about the idea that we might someday produce solar power for less than we now pay to make that energy with coal. Wouldn't that be nice? I personally get so many peripheral (mainly psychological) benefits from taking steps to reduce my own impact (saving money isn't the least of them, I can tell you) that I wonder why there is so much harsh rhetoric... would it kill us all to buy locally and strive for energy independence?

March 21, 2007 @ 23:39