Mar 13 2007
Who Cares If Gore Is Not Accurate!
The mantra from the “man-made Global Warming” crowd now seems to be all CYA. Al Gore, science/engineering bufoon, has apparently been out telling stories that have no scientific basis and actually fly in the face of actual scientific studies and results.
“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.â€
…
Some backers concede minor inaccuracies but see them as reasonable for a politician. James E. Hansen, an environmental scientist, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a top adviser to Mr. Gore, said, “Al does an exceptionally good job of seeing the forest for the trees,†adding that Mr. Gore often did so “better than scientists.â€
Still, Dr. Hansen said, the former vice president’s work may hold “imperfections†and “technical flaws.†He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.
The general excuse from the ‘scientists’ is Gore’s inaccuracies are OK as long as the bigger issue is conveyed. Pure BS. That is a very condescending view of Americans and people in general. It implies people cannot grasp the details of the debate, which the NY Times finally admits exists!
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.
Actually the community is absolutely split down the middle, with more people turning against the ‘man as source’ theories since they have not panned out and have been shown to be based in erroneous (and sometimes downright amatuer) scientific grounds. I watched a show about the glaciers on the Canadian Rockies and how they were receding rapidly. The scientist (in this case the real deal) noted the glaciers there today, the ones everyone points to as being destroyed by man, did not exist 5,000 years ago – clearly when man had not numbers to effect global atmospheric processes. The scientist was pointing to the real “inconvenient truth”. Glaciers we see today were not there many times in our past. Many times. Only once or twice were these warming or cooling cycles tied to a massive event like a super volcanoe or a large meteor. 95% of the cycles are normal cycles. The inconvenient truth is the global warming chicken littles have yet to prove their case, and they have so far have only proven they have made a series of poor assumptions and have had to, at each step in this PR campaign, had to adjust THEIR models and results. But who cares if they are innacurrate? Especially if you can make some good money at it.
Uh, Oh, The NYT Didn’t Listen To Al…
Now you may think that the NYT has finally seen the light, but you’d be mistaken. I’m sure they felt they did their due dilligence with this article likely won’t touch the subject again except to report Gore’s press releases in the future. …
Well, he’s got his Oscar. AND, his multi-millions. So laugh all you want. He found the room with the dough.
As to the real buffoonery, it’s ultimately a democrapic party problem. One of many. And, I could care less.
The Net, however, has been fantastic! Yesterday, Drudge put up a site: “THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE” with a video up at Google that lasted for more than an hour. It was done extremely well. And, it even gives the political history behind this behemoth; that grew in time to eat the scientists that first climbed on board.
Shows ya what happens when science is funded by incompetent idiots with political agendas. And, taxpayer funding.
Probably, will be a lesson, ahead. Not that it will stop the moonbats.
The bottom line? Supposedly this movement is interferring with the growth of 3rd world countries to join the modern world. Something I don’t believe is possible for lots of reasons. Including that first you have to grow intelligent people. Which is why China did so well. Without “boosts” from politicians. But, sure. A tourist destination as soon as the gates opened. When back in the old days you had to pack your own toilet paper. And, things weren’t very comodious, either.
Al Gore may not be 100% accurate – but let’s compare him to Condi, Dick and George and their yellowcake fantasies, their mushroom clouds, their aluminum tubes, their mobile weapons labs . . . those clowns are 2% accurate on a good day!
Attaboy Sooth, make the thread about something ELSE. Because obviously this site provides you with so few opportunities to rant about the Bush administration and Iraq that you have to do it on a thread about global warming and Al Gore.
Says something about Sooth’s ability to focus.
We have a serious problem with this global warming stuff. It seems that nobody can find the data that a lot of the research that is driving policy was based on. Steve McIntyre has been attempting to get information used in the Nature article “Jones, P.D., P.Y. Groisman, M. Coughlan, N. Plummer, W.C. Wang and T.R. Karl, 1990. Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperature over land, Nature 347, 169-172”. This article is cited by world policy makers as evidence of global warming. His requests for the data or failing that a simple listing of which weather stations and what time periods were used for the paper so he can get the data himself have so far been refused. Also interesting to note that a later paper by one of the members of Jones’ team … W.C.Wang … came to quite a different conclusion. This different conclusion from apparently the same data has been ignored.
Here is the bottom line for me and it has nothing at all to do with “believing in” global warming or not:
If government is going to make policy decisions that will cost us billions of dollars, it is the responsibility of the government to make sure that these decisions are based on a sound foundation of fact. The data and the methods used to analyse the data should be freely available for inspection by anyone and others should arrive at the same conclusion. In other words, the process used to reach those conclusions should be repeatable. Also, the process itself should be open to scrutiny for flaws in logic or design so any errors might be corrected. As it stands today, neither the data nor the software used to analyse the data are available and yet that paper has been cited in many newer papers calling for increases or changes in government regulations. We have a situation where policy makers are asking us to fork over billions of dollars with a “just trust me on this one”.
This is a problem for two major reasons. First of all, it is tantamount to corruption or fraud. Taxes are paid under threat of prosecution if you do not pay them. So in exchange for the government’s expectation that we pay our taxes, we have an expectation that the money is needed and is being used in a way that benefits the public. We have no way of verifying this to be the case here because the people who did the research refuse to provide the data and refuse to provide the method used to analyse the data. We have no way to judge. It becomes a matter of “faith based” science in that one must just “believe”. Science isn’t done that way. That isn’t science, that is religion.
Secondly, if CO2 emissions turn out to have little to do with it and the recent warming is learned to have been caused by natural variation, people are going to be less likely to take a claim of a future disater seriously. They will pooh-pooh the warning as “another global warming” or “another cold fusion”. A one degree rise in Earth’s temperature probably won’t hurt a soul and, in fact, would probably mean more food production and better living conditions at high lattitudes. On the other hand, a degree of global cooling could easily lead to famine in Eurasia. Should we detect global cooling in the future and if the warming hysteria turns out to be just that (which I believe it will) then people are not going to take a real crisis seriously.
Al Gore could be taken a lot more seriously if he would work harder to getting the data and methods used for this research out into the open so people can take an honest look rather than have to take someone’s word for it. He needs to campain on getting Mr. Jones and others to bring their data and software into the light of day. If Gore is really convinced that he is right, then he has nothing to fear from this and it is only through this path that the debate clarified.
In the 1200s the Earth was actually warmer than it is today. Starting in the 1300s the planet underwent what scientists have dubbed “the Little Ice Age”. This global cooling trend ended, I believe in the 1800s.
So the Earth steadily warmed during the reign of the Plantangents and steadily cooled throughout the War of the Roses and the rise and fall of the Tudor and Stuart kings.
All without Al’s help.
I watched the BBC special.
You’ll never guess what these heretic, scientists believe causes warming on the earth and the vast majority of Co2 production!! It’s the SUN, evaportating water in the ocean!! Shaaaa!!!!! Like who would have thought of that???