Al Gore exits a climate change speech to a long-idling limo.
When those who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis, I'll believe it's a crisis.
Oh, Gore's latest proof of global war-- oh, sorry, "climate change": both droughts in California and floods in the Midwest.
Warm means warming, cold means warming, wet means warming, dry means warming.
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The type of climate change that results from warming varies depending on location. Warmer oceans lead to increased rain in areas that are susceptible to rain. This is different from areas that are susceptible to drought. It is not a one-climate-fits-all situation. You need to do a little more research.
"Varies depending on location," ay? Presumably if the situation were reversed--if there were mudslides in California and a drought in the Midwest, this would be proof of, what, cooling?
Great, I'll keep that in mind.
No, that would still be linked to warming.
Once you have some actual science to support your claims (which you should be able to find if you look--most scientists agree that global warming exists, but it is by no means 100%), then get back to me.
Whatever I came up with (trends, cold, heat, warm, wet, dry), you and everyone else on the Religious Left would take as proof of your own dogma, anyway.
That's my whole point.
When Al "Four Mansions Running Full Blast/Private Jets/SUVs galore" Gore starts living as if he's actually telling the truth (and not running a corrupt carbon-credit scam) then I might start to listen.
I never said that cold meant warming. Since Texas is currently experiencing the results of Hurricane Dolly, I am sure you are aware that hurricanes and thunderstorms are fueled by warm oceans and warm air, respectively. It is thus logical that when global temperatures are warmer, hurricanes and thunderstorms will be more numerous and more powerful. This is just basic meteorology. It does not automatically signal a global catastrophe, but it is a trend that warrants attention. Anyone living in low-lying coastal areas would be short-sighted not to be concerned about a trend that indicates an ongoing increased probability of severe storms.
I admit that as a spokesperson, Al Gore makes himself an easy target; that does not mean the science is wrong. Shooting the messenger may make people feel better, but it does not solve the underlying problem. Even John McCain believes that global warming is a serious issue. What can or should be done about it is separate from the scientific evidence that the earth is warming; the warming itself should not be dismissed as fantasy. Do we need to go to the extremes recommended by some? Maybe not. But your automatic dismissal of the issue is, frankly, disturbing.
Joe-
Attacking Gore rather than the argument is irrational, and you know it. That global warming is caused by human activity is supported by scientific consensus. The "debate" about this conclusion is between the scientific community and the oil lobby. Who could be right? The real question is about how to resolve the problem.
1. I'll lay off Gore as soon as your side gets around to denouncing him as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.
2. Simply calling him a hypocrite is too easy. He's a liar and a crook looking to enrich himself by running this "carbon credits" hoax. Oil companies are looking to make money as well, yes. The difference is, oil companies at least provide something of value in return, like gasoline. (Is the gas too expensive? Fine. Drill here, drill now, pay less.) And simply dismissing everyone who disagrees with Gore as a tool of industry is, at the very least, to commit the same fallacy I'm being accused of.
There is a ton of money at stake on both side of this argument.
You say it's resolved. Fine. Let the debate commence. Blogs at fifteen paces.
I wasn't asking you to lay off him. I was just pointing out it's an ad hominum attack. It's not ad hominum to observe that the petroleum lobby has payed psuedo-scientists to create the illusion of doubt regarding what is not doubted, and that this illusion is what traditional media push. What they have done is dishonestly skew the discussion to unfairly sway public opinion. Your opinion has been influenced by their dishonesty.
You say you disagree with him, but you don't even know what global warming means. You talk about rain here, drought there, cooling over there. Global warming refers to the rise in average global temp. The basic science is easy enough to understand, and it's not hard to find explanations.
Gore (and others) know money is at stake and know it going to be a priority in a national/global discussion. That's why he openly talks about the economics of it. Our car companies are going under because they refused to build cars with competetive mpg standards. There is money to be had in new technologies, and he knows what they are. He isn't pretending it's a secret. Anyone can invest. Everyone should invest. The money is an important part of the discussion.
So how do you think we ought to begin reducing global warming? You say you don't like carbon credits. What do you think we should do?
Hanson at NASA argues the threshold level for averting the worst case scenario is keeping carbon below 350 PPM, and most people talking about this stuff see getting back below that figure as a target.
I don't know what global warming is? Ouch. You say I "talk about rain here, drought there, cooling over there." Quite the opposite. It's the Gores (for lack of a better appellation) who cherry-pick isolated incidents (eg Katrina) and say, "Boo! Warming!" I'm just asking for a bill of particulars.
Is the average temperature of the Earth warming? Probably, a little, though not so much the past ten years as between 1979 and 1998, and about as much as it was cooling previous to 1979, when "Global Cooling" was the next apocalypse and all the best-sellers warned us so. Then came 1979, and the smart authors had "cooling" replaced by "warming" in time for the paperback editions.
I will stipulate that there has never been a time when the earth was neither warming nor cooling. I just think it is the height of both the Romantic impulse and the Fascist collective to insist that humans are as nearly responsible and you seem to think. Humans weren't responsible the last time Chicago was under a sheet of ice a mile thick, and they'll scarcely be responsible next time. 108 years ago a hurricane turned Galveston into Atlantis, and there was nary an automobile in sight.
End of the day, Earth will shake us all off like a bad case of the fleas. Cars, no cars, electric cars, bicycles. Whatever.
As for Hansen, Gore's mentor: Oh, brother. This was the guy whose acolytes turned off the room's air conditioning in the middle of July before his Congressional Testimony in 1998, and then bragged about it afterward. This is the guy who wants oil executives who disagree with him put away for crimes against humanity. The guy Gore quotes no end. If the foregoing is to ad hominem, would you accept this?:
"Hansen has written and given sworn testimony that six feet of sea-level rise, caused by the rapid shedding of Greenland’s ice, could happen by 2100. Why didn’t Gore defer instead to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization with at least a few hundred bona fide climate scientists? Its 2007 compendium estimates that the contribution of Greenland’s ice to sea level during this century will be around two inches."
Courtesy of Peter Michaels of the (EEK!) Cato Institute, and one of Gore's fellow laureates.
There is a difference between renegade theories like global cooling (picked up by the media because it was sexy and scary) and peer-reviewed, scientific consensus based on years of data collection and mathematical modeling. It's like the "face" on Mars. There are cool photographs and one guy who claimed to represent NASA but was actually a discredited former consultant, and all of a sudden people think that aliens must have built a face on Mars. That's not science, and neither is using your own anecdotal evidence to "refute" global warming. What "bill of particulars" are you looking for? Weather examples like Katrina are not the only evidence. There are rigorous scientific studies--the IPCC reports alone are over 800 pages long. Is your real problem here with scientists and not liberals?
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