Al "Scare the hell out them" Gore

Here is a recent video of Al Gore—sorry, I didn't mean to ruin your Christmas.




Please note another one of his blatant lies. This time he is claiming the "entire polar ice cap" will disappear within five years. Sure Al! Sorry, this is from German television so there is some German voice over that may make it a bit hard to hear Gore.

Mr. Gore told the Porker to the Global Warming Hysterics Fear Fest and Jamboree in Copenhagen. He claimed that research from Dr. Wieslave Maslowski shows "there is a 75% chance the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years." Unfortunately the scientist being quoted says he it is "unclear to me how thiw figure was arrived at." Questioned about that Gore's office claimed the scientist told Gore this in a private conversation a few years ago. How convenient. That would mean that there is no evidence the scientist said it or not other than his word and Gore's. To complicate matters more, Gore claims it is the "entire" ice cap that will be ice free while the scientist says that he only talks about ice ice, not the ice cap. Video shows Gore making this claim a year ago. A year passes and he still says in five years the ice cap will vanish—shouldn't that be four years and counting?

It's the end of the world—again!

Since I ruined your Christmas with the Gore video allow me to play the Twelve Days of Global Warming for your entertainment.

More Gore bore. Snore!

Folks, I’ve got bad news. Grab your vomit bags. Al Gore is going to make a sequel to his propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth. Filled with lies, exaggerations and plain old bullshit Gore’s first film was popular with the chic “we-need-a-cause” Hollywood crowd and environmental panic mongers. More importantly it made Mr. Gore millions. Fear has been very, very good to Al.

Gore knows his bread is buttered by environmental hysteria so he will give us another does of his “end is nigh” message. Hell, it costs a lot of money to heat his mansion. So St. Al will be back and he won’t change his tune. He made too much money the first time.

Gore says that the little people may do little things to “save the planet” but it won’t be enough. We need big action -- the sort of action that only really big government can provide. Changing lifestyles is not going to work. Only state control will work. “I believe that while it’s important to change light bulbs, it’s far more important to change laws.” He said that only more laws “will ultimately solve this problem.”

The average person, he says, doesn’t take his fear message seriously. Too many people don’t fear climate change because they “think, ‘It it’s never happened before maybe it won’t every happen in the future. That’s a rule that can work but the exceptions can kill you. And global warming is one of the exceptions.”

If you read that carefully you can see Gore is saying that the world has never before experience global warming or climate change. It has. Numerous times. If anything we have experienced almost perpetual climate change. The globe has warmed and cooled and warmed again. Our current period of global warming goes back to the end of the Little Ice Age. Gore is trying to make it sound as if this has NEVER happened before.

Lest you think he gave up his hysterical comments note that he said there are “exceptions [which] can kill you”. And “global warming” is one of them. Gore’s message is that global warming will kill “you”.

Gore tossed about some of his typical exaggerated bullshit: “The entire North Polar ice cap is melting....” he told the paper. Any lie will do when it comes to his panic campaign. Not only is the North Pole supposedly melting but Gore says it could vanish any day now. “If you had told me a few years ago that we would be facing a situation where the entire North Polar ice cap was going to imminently disappear, I might have thought we’d certainly get people’s attention, and yet only to a limited degree.” Got that? Gore says the entire North Pole is going to disappear “imminently”. That means “impending” or “at any moment”. We aren’t talking about in a 100 years. We are talking about in the next few years. That is pure bullshit.

In a recent interview, where this information is found, Gore was asked about some of the Hollywood celebrities who have massive “carbon footprints”. Al is now part of the celebrity set with their lavish lifestyles so this hits close to home. He was asked if the “gas-guzling lifestyles” of his celebrity crowd should be reigned in. The interviewer says that with comment, “Mr. Gore shifts uncomfortably in his seat.” Gore was told that David Beckam, individually, is supposed to have the worse “carbon footprint” in history and then asked what he would say to Beckam about his lifestyle.

Gore’s answer is rather incredible. When it comes to the celebrities types he hobnobs with, he says: “I don’t think that’s my place. I don’t want to get into personally criticizing anyone.” SWith the elite it is not Gore’s place to say anything. But when it comes to common people “there ought to be a law” and Gore knows what kinds of laws. He can’t criticize David Beckam but he has no hesitation to regulate you!

Is Warming a Peace Issue???

There is an old joke about the Nobel Peace Prize. It went sort of like this.

"Did you hear so and so won the Nobel Peace Prize?"

"No, really? I didn't even know he was a communist."

The reason is simple. The prize is awarded by a gaggle of left-wing politicians normally to someone for their cause d'jour. The Norwegian, very PC parliament, basically doles it out and apparently does so by completely ignoring the requirements for winning set by the founder. The prize was founded by Alfred Nobel who left his fortune to help fund it. He wrote in his will that it was to be given "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." I guess there was a clause no one noticed before for "hysterical misrepresentations of facts" since the far-Left Norwegian parliament gave the prize to con man Al Gore along with handing it to the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change.

The head of the committee that doles out the prize, Ole D. Mjøs, said they “wanted to further strengthen the focus on the importance of battling climate change.” What that has to do with promoting peace I don’t know. Neither do they apparently but they are apparently happy to go off into political statements on entirely unrelated issues. But then it’s not their money and Mr. Nobel is dead.

According to reports Gore was picked over other nominees like Irena Sendler of Poland “who saved 2,500 Jewish children during World War II and Martti Ahtisaari who “has been a long-time candidate because of his peace-broking efforts in the Aceh conflict in Indonesia.” Hey, what’s saving Jewish children from the Nazis compared to jetting around the world in private jets to give lectures filled with falsehoods for high fees?

Recently Mr. Gore got a slap down he didn’t want. In England a man went to court claiming that the Labour government’s use of the Gore film as a propaganda tool in all the schools was dishonest. He said the film was inaccurate and he went to court over it.

The case was heard in the High Court by Justice Michael Burton, who ought to have been very favorably inclined toward Gore. Burton had his start in politics as a Labour Party candidate and then bolted for the socialist leaning Social Democratic Party where he was also a candidate. So he is a true believer in the virtues of the omnipresent state.

And Burton made it clear he is a congregant in the church of anthropogenic warming. But, he said, Gore was playing loose with the facts. He called Gore “broadly accurate” but said his falsehoods had come about in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration.” But exaggeration and alarmism have been a key PR tactic for the environmentalist movement for decades now. And Gore himself admits that he distorts the fact intentionally for political purposes.

He told the Left-wing environmental publication Grist: “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” Here is Gore’s logic. People are skeptical of his “solutions” which involve massive government control over the lives of the citizens. Gore says there is a major crisis and these state controls must be accepted by the public. So he “over-represents” the truth in order to scare the hell out of them so that they will accept his theory of the threat and the solutions he wants.

How does this differ from what the neo-conservatives did via George Bush with the Iraq war? Bush said there is a threat that the public wasn’t taking seriously: Saddam Hussein and other “evil doers” were going to attack America. So Bush over-represented the facts. He claimed their were weapons of mass destruction and the like that the Hussein might even nuke America! He stampeded a terrified public into accepting his solutions. And that is what got us into the mess we’re in now.

For some reason people always assume that the politician who holds their prejudices is telling the truth and has the right solutions and the “other guy” is the liar. The reality is that both sides are liars, both sides exaggerate their crisis d’jour and both sides have similar solutions -- more power for the political classes. Politicians use a crisis to strip the public of their freedoms. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. And the Left and the Right both do it. It really doesn’t matter if the crisis is real or “over-representated”. Nor does it matter if the solutions they propose will work or will cause more harm than good. All that matters to the political classes is that at the end of they day they have control over the income you earn and what you do with your life.

Gore’s over-represenations are old hat for the warming alarmists. The grandfather of warming alarmism was Stephen Schneider who said, “we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have.” He called this tactic the “right balance” between “being effective and being honest.” By effective he means get the political system to implement his plans on the rest of us.

Warming advocate Mike Hulme calls this sort of tactic “post-normal science”. And he advocates it be used “where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent”. The important thing, he says, is “who has the ear of policy” -- that is, who sets the political agenda. These are people with a political agenda who are using warming to push their agenda. They admit they are exaggerating the facts in order to gain political leverage. It is no surprise that a gaggle of Norwegian politicians (the majority of whom are on the Left) are willing to hand out prizes to a hysteric who pushes an issue which is being used by politicians around the world, for one of the most massive redistribution projects around -- redistributing control from the individual to the political classes.

So what did Mr. Justice Burton decide regarding Al Gore’s Riefenstahlistic film. He conceded that Gore’s film had an “apocalyptic vision” that was heavily partisan when it came to politics and that it was not impartial when it came to presenting scientific facts. He called this a “political film”.

The Labour government’s plan was to show the film to every high school student in the country to scare the shit out of them. Terrified citizens are compliant citizens and England is actually farther along toward the Big Brother state than the US -- thanks to the panics over terrorism and warming. Burton says the film may be shown but that teachers must be given guides explaining how Gore is distorting the facts or presenting falsehoods. Of course the chances are the teacher will stick Triumph of the Will (sorry, I meant An Inconvenient Truth) into the video player and take a nap while the kiddies are scared by the big bad man with the horror story.

Burton listed several specific falsehoods or exaggerations in the Gore film. Now remember this is someone politically on Gore’s side.

1. He said the film was “distinctly alarmist” about the alleged threat of rises in sea levels. He says “it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future” and that this is “not in line with the scientific consensus.” He called that an “Armageddon scenario”.

2. He said that Gore’s claim that Pacific island have already been evacuated due to this sea rise has “no evidence” at all to back it up. A nicer way of saying it was pure, unmitigated bullshit.

3. Gore showed a chart which purports to show that carbon dioxide levels rose first followed by temperature rises and these were an “exact fit”. Burton says that overstates the case. It does. In fact the carbon dioxide levels rose AFTER the temperature did, not BEFORE.

4. Gore said the Gulf Stream could shut down due to warming. Burton says the IPCC says that is “very unlikely”.

5. Gore blamed the drying of Lake Chad on global warming. The Justice said that scientific evidence was that other factors were behind the problem.

6. Gore claimed that melting glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro were caused by global warming. The Justice says that the evidence doesn’t support this. We have covered this hysteria here.

7. Gore claimed that Hurricane Katrina was a sign of global warming. Hurricane experts have dismissed that as nonsense and so did Justice Burton, who said the scientific community has found no evidence to back up that claim. This blog discussed the hurricane claim here.

8. Gore claimed polar bears “have actually drowned swimming long distances, up to 60 miles, to find ice.” Burton says he could find nothing to substantiate that except four bears who drowned as a result of a storm.

9. And Gore said that sea coral bleaching was due to warming. The Justice said that it is not possible to distinguish the effect of warming on coral from other causes.

Remember that Burton is a full fledged member of the warming crowd. He is not a skeptic but he mentioned nine significant falsehoods that Gore had loaded into his film.

It is particularly bizarre that the Norwegian politicians have decided to ignore Nobel’s own purpose for the peace prize to delve into partisan politics. But it is not surprising. The world today is awash in politics, the desire to impose one’s will on others. And warming is certainly the big issue to use to do that. Just yesterday I read that the Labour government in New Zealand is considering a ban on large television sets due to global warming. They want to force people to change their refrigerators as well. And they are trying to stop people from driving.

Here is what is critical to remember. The advocates of anthropogenic warming are blaming energy as the culprit. So they want state control of energy to “save the planet”. What does that mean? Ultimately it means state control of everything. It controls how you move. It controls how you live and how you work. Nothing in life is not connected to energy in some way or another. As long as they are controlling “energy” they have the excuse to interfere in almost any area of life they wish.

Now a few fringe nutters will advocate all sorts of extreme measures immediately that will be laughed at. But the tendency is that once one control is accepted another is demanded, then another and another and another. First, they were going to ban smoking in restaurants. Then it was bars. Then it was private work places. Now there are laws restricting smoking in one’s car or even at home. First they demanded people smoke outside and now they are slowly reducing the areas outside where smoking is permitted.

This is the natural tendency of centralized power. It always seeks to expand itself. And the disservice that Gore provides is that his alarmist perspective makes that expansion possible. This is so disappointing. Gore very eloquently explained the problems of the expansion of executive powers by the president. It was a brilliant speech and almost 100% on the mark. But where Gore falls down is that he thinks the problem is only with the rise of executive power not state power. If Bush rides roughshod over private property and individual freedom it is bad, but if some collective body does it then it is fine.

The problem isn’t so much who does it but that it is being done at all.

Al Gore III arrested on drug charges.

Al Gore III has been arrested on drug charges. Police pulled him over at he was allegedly clocked driving at 100 mph. A sheriff’s deputy says that the car smelled of marijuana and when police searched the vehicle they found a mini pharmacy with Xanax, Vallium, Vicodin and Adderall. Police say there is no evidence that Gore had prescriptions for any of them. Gore has been arrested before on pot charges and supposedly underwent substance abuse therapy.

That’s the news. Here are the comments. First, if Al Gore were my father I’d be looking for pharmaceutical relief as well. Doomsday is rather depressing. That point aside will justice be service if Gore III is incarcerated for his supposed inclination to obliterate reality, partially or fully, with chemical help?

NO! Some people delude themselves with various tablets, something they smoke or swallow. Others do it with their faith. Either way they alter the way they perceive reality. And unless they directly harm someone else it ought not be the law’s business.

It ought to be the business of Gore’s family. His father should be concerned not the state. But daddy Gore has long seen the state as a substitute father. That is the problem with Nanny statism. The government becomes our supreme parents and we all get demoted to the level of children.

If Gore III has drug problems, and I don’t know if he does or not, it does not pick my pocket nor break my leg. He has stolen nothing from me nor has he reduced my rights in any way. Driving under the influence is no different than driving under the influence of alcohol and should be treated the same. Reports I read did not indicate his driving skills were in question just that he was speeding.

Turning this man into a criminal does nothing to help him. Nor does it do anything to solve the issues that may drive him to act in the way he does. If anything such police involvement can only make his life worse.

It has long been time to repeal the utopian Nannyism of drug prohibition.

Global warming may save the snows of Kilimanjaro

It’s no secret that I am an AGW skeptic. That is I’m not convinced that there is anthropogenic global warming. That doesn’t mean one who says there is no warming merely one who thinks it is not human induced. So get out the stakes and pile up the fire wood. A heretic needs to be burned.

One reason, but not the only one, that I’m a skeptic is I don’t trust the other side. They consistently exaggerate, distort or even lie. I’ve documented many of those lies in this blog. And here is another one.

Consider this story from Reuters:

A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap for the first time in 11,000 years will be used as dramatic testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet on Tuesday.

They quoted Steve Howard of the Climate Group lobby saying: “This is a wake up call and an unequivocal message that a low-carbon global economy is necessary, achievable and affordable.” Reuters directly stated that the picture showed “Kilimanjaro almost bare of its icecap because of global warming.”

Maybe Climate Group is just a small fringe group. But World Wildlife Fund released their own “report”. As the BBC reported: “As an example of the impact of climate change, WWF says that the ice-cap on Mount Kilimanjaro has shrunk by more than 80% since 1900.”

The New York Times reported that:

Campaigners from Greenpeace, the environmental group, scaled the mountain in November 2002 and held a news conference via satellite with reporters at climate-treaty talks in Morocco. Last October, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is co-author of a bill to curb greenhouse gases, displayed before-and-after photographs of Kilimanjaro during a Senate debate. A British scientist proposed hanging white fabric over the glacier's ragged 10-story-tall edges to block sunlight and stem the erosion.

At a symposium on climate change Professor John Harte of the University of California presented numerous scary scenarios of global warming. And one he mentioned was: “By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro could be no more.” But as we’ve already seen Harte wasn’t alone with this assertion. Al Gore used pictures of Kilimanjaro in his doomsday docudrama An Inconvenient Truth. He said the receding snows were caused by global warming. R&D magazine told readers “Scientists now expect the snows to be gone completely by 2015. Most scientists attribute the reduction to the effects of global warming, to which humanity’s industrial energy consumption is at least a partial, if not a major contributor.”

Salon magazine, in co-operation with National Public Radio’s “Living on Earth” and U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism did a series “Reports From a Warming Planet” which stated that the shrinking ice on Kilimanjaro is “another unbearable loss of an overheating planet.”

WorldChanging warned us that photos of Kilimanjaro “are useful for making visceral the often-academic discussion of carbon and timelines, and for driving home the point that global warming isn’t a problem off in the future, but it is happening -- and having serious consequences -- right now.”

One university student who saw Gore’s docudrama wrote that he was “particularly moved by the scene depicting the melting snows of Mount Kilimanjaro.” He says the “documentary” caused him “to connect some thematic dots in my mind”. And he got the message Gore intended. The snows were melting and he knows why. “What caused this decline? What concurrence happened in the last 100 years? The answer: the Industrial Revolution and global warming. Warming and resultant drying soils have decreased snowfall atop the mountain.” And on this he says there “is no doubt in the scientific community.”

Apparently he and Gore and many others are wrong. The consensus has fallen apart. Of course those insane warming skeptics have been saying that the decline of the snows on Kilimanjaro were not related to warming. But the media cranked up their scare stories, Al Gore released his film, and numerous environmental groups all said the skeptics were merely in the pay of Big Oil. How many times have we heard that line?

Now it should have been obvious that global warming had nothing to do with the change in snow levels. The summit of the mountain is so high the temperature rarely gets above freezing. But over and over the environmental doom sayers were arguing that warming was the culprit. Now CNN reports that “the disappearance of Kilimanjaro’s ice is driven by solar radiation.” And this is not the first time that claims of warming induced melting have proven less than accurate (also see here).

They report:

The researchers attributed the ice decline to complex interacting factors, including the vertical shape of the ice's edge, which allows it to shrink but not expand.
Decreased snowfall, which reduces ice buildup and determines how much energy the ice absorbs, also plays a role.
Much of Kilimanjaro's ice is vanishing by sublimation -- where ice at very low temperatures converts straight to water vapor without going through a watery phase -- rather than by melting, the scientists said.
Fluctuating weather patterns related to the Indian Ocean also could affect the shifting balance between the ice's increase, which might have occurred for decades before the first explorers reached Kilimanjaro's summit in 1889, and the shrinking that has been going on since.

Mote and Kaser say that Kilimanjaro’s images in Gore’s film startled the audience, as the college student mentioned above illustrates. But they also say:

Indeed, warming fails spectacularly to explain the behavior of the glaciers and plateau ice on Africa's Kilimanjaro massif, just 3 degrees south of the equator, and to a lesser extent other tropical glaciers. The disappearing ice cap of the "shining mountain," which gets a starring role in the movie, is not an appropriate poster child for global climate change. Rather, extensive field work on tropical glaciers over the past 20 years by one of us (Kaser) reveals a more nuanced and interesting story.

Indeed Kilimanjaro “has gained and lost ice through processes that bear only indirect connections, if any, to recent trends in global climate.” They also find that “lines of evidence do not suggest that any warming at Kilimanjaro’s summit has been large enough to explain the disappearance of most of its ice, during the whole 20th century or during the best-measured period, the last 25 years.” But increased solar radiation “in conditions of very light wind... allows a warm layer of air to develop just next to the ice.”

Now the following quote is important.

The role of solar radiation in shaping the ice edges is evident in other features as well. As the ice retreats horizontally, it can leave behind knife-thin vertical remnants that eventually become so thin that they fall over and disintegrate. Like other explorers who came before them, Kaser and Hardy also noted the sculpted features called penitentes in the Kibo ice cap on several occasions. Penitentes are seen also in many places in the Andes and the Himalaya, where they are sometimes much larger. These finger-like features arise when initial irregularities in a flat surface result in the collection of dust in pockets, which accelerates melting in those places by enhancing absorption of solar radiation. The cups between the penitentes are protected from ventilation even as wind brushing the peaks of the developing spires enhances sublimation, which cools the surface. If infrared radiation and sensible heat transfer were the dominant factors, these sculpted features would not long survive. Solar radiation and sublimation are sculptors; infrared radiation and sensible heat transfer are diffuse, coming equally from all directions, and so they are smoothers. The prevalence of sculpted features on Kilimanjaro's peak provides strong evidence against the role of smoothers, which are energetically closely related to air temperature.

So the presence of these penitentes is evidence of solar induced melting not temperature-related melting. And they are also found in the Andes and Himilaya ranges as well. That would appear to mean that some melting seen in those massive mountain ranges, which have also been used to “prove” AGW theory, is not due to warming either.

Here is the bizarre aspect of all of this. Global warming might be a necessary ingredient to save the snows of Kilimanjaro. Part of the problem for Kilimanjaro is that the ice has formed into steep walls. This makes accumulation of new snow difficult or impossible. New snow disappears in a few days. If the glacier shape were different snow could accumulate and the mass would grow. And a warmer mountain would change the shape of the snow pack. The authors note that this warmer climate “would gradually erode the sharp corners of the ice cap; gentler slopes would quickly develop.” And the change in the slope would “permit the ice cap to grow.” They conclude:

Ironically, substantial global warming accompanied by an increase in precipitation might be one way to save Kilimanjaro's ice. Or substantially increased snowfall, like the 2006-07 snows, could blanket the dark ash surface so thickly that the snow would not sublimate entirely before the next wet season. Once initiated, such a change could allow the ice sheet to grow. If the Kibo ice cap is vanishing or growing, reshaping itself into something different as you read this, glaciology tells us that it's unlikely to be the first or the last time.

The disappearance of the snows of Kilimanjaro is not related to global warming at all. But global warming might be their salvation. Ironic indeed.

Gore's hysterics on drought.

As much as I admire Al Gore for his famed speech on the imperial presidency at Constitution Hall I find his global warming hysterics borderline psychotic. Gore becomes unglued emotionally and mentally when the topic of global warming comes up. Either the man is nuts or entirely dishonest, I will let his own fans decide which. On Larry King Live he went into how global warming will cause increases in sea levels from 3 feet to 20 feet.

His much praised International Panel on Climate Control has stated that a 1 foot increase is the most likely scenario. He also claimed that half (49% to be precise) of the US is currently “in conditions of drought or near drought.” But is this true? The National Climate Data Center actually keeps track of such things. And using their data here are a few charts.

First, I assume that drought is more of an issue during the warm summer months when it is hottest. So I graphed out the actual average precipitation in the US since 1895. The black line is the average precipitation since 1895. The green bars that go up show years with above average precipitation. The brownish lines going down are years with less than average precipitation. And that red line is the trend over the last century plus. The conclusion is unmistakable, the US is not suffering from less rain at all. Precipitation is up. (Remember if you want to see the charts enlarged just click on them.)

If we drop the summer weather and look at spring when crops are planted we find the same sort of upward trend in precipitation.


And if not then perhaps it is the fall season just as crops need to be harvested. Nope, the trend for more precipitation, not less, is even stronger.

And if we try for the entire year the trend is still for more rain not droughts.

Gore said: “We have a very serious threat of losing enough soil moisture in a hotter world that agriculture here in the United States would be greatly affected.” How are we losing soil moisture when precipitation is up, on average, across the United States?

Gore was claiming that this drought was ongoing right now and that half the country was involved. The National Drought Mitigation Center didn’t seem to get the message. Here is their map on “Reported Drought Impacts for Entire US” based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It shows only California having problems and those are relatively mild at this time. But then California is perpetually having problems.


There do appear to be some areas of the American Southeast which have below average rainfall for this time of year, mainly Georgia and the Carolinas. Interestingly this is one region of the US which has clearly cooled over recent decades. And none of this is nearly the half of the country that Gore claimed.
And from data I've looked at this area of the US received above average rain in January and normal or above average rain until the end of March and since then some areas have had moderate shortages of rain but even so most of the Carolinas remained near normal with nmost only Georgia being moderately affected. On the other hand states like Texas, New Mexico, Okalahoma, Nebraska and Iowa have been through a moist spell as has New England.

The Gospel according to St. Al.

I’ve been searching for Al Gore’s testimony before Congress on global warming. I wanted to see what he said and report on it. Along the way I went by the doom prophets of Grist, a rather Left the-end-of-the-world-is-coming environmental web site. The sort of people who worship the water Al Gore walks upon.

I found their report prior to his testimony where they were salivating in anticipation. Apparently this was something of a Greenies wet dream. They refer to his testimony, before he gave it, as “what may be the blockbuster hit of the political season”. Yawn! They say “there’s sure to be drama”. No doubt, fiction is often dramatic. Reality, however, often isn’t. Now remember this is the very publication that printed Gore’s statement that he exaggerates the facts in order to get people’s attention.

Of course they were upset that anyone disagreeing with St. Albert of Gore is allowed to counter the prophet at the same hearing. So they run down Prof. Lomborg and make a snide remark about how the subcommittee chairman “thinks Bjorn Lomborg is of commensurate intellectual and political status.”

Interesting. Why does “political status” matter at all? This is supposed to be a scientific debate. Or is it? By now you know that I contend that many of these warming hysterics (not all) are pushing these claims because of the perceived ability to impose socialism as part of the solution. They are control freaks. Regulations, taxes, controls, are their solutions to almost every problem they invent or exaggerate. In a previous era they would be in jackboots and brown shirts. Some are sincere. But many are not. By the way the same is true on the other side of the debate though the control freak label doesn’t apply as often.

As for being of “commensurate” intellectual status let’s explore that for a second. Commensurate means of equal status. The implication is that Gore has intellectual status and Prof. Lomborg does not. Odd since Lomborg is actually a university professor while Gore is a politician. Gore was born into a political family and has basically been a politician his entire life. He entered Congress in his late 20s.

His academic career, what there is of it, was that he went to university. Not taught just attended. He first studied English and then switched to his passion “government”. He took some theology courses, and it was actually there that he became an environmental catastrophist. He studied law but dropped out to run for office. That is his academic career. Unless I missed something he earned an undergraduate degree in government and nothing else.

Prof. Lomborg received an undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia (even if he is Danish). He got a Master’s degree from the University of Aarhus and then received a Ph.d from the University of Copenhagen. He was an assistant professor in statistics at the University of Aarhus then became an associate professor there. He then became an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. And in 2002 he was appointed to run the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute. It’s true Lomborg’s intellectual status is NOT commensurate with Mr. Gore, it is vastly superior. Of course the faithful won’t see it that way.

Since I reported what Lomborg said, and urged you to read the entire thing, I will do the same for Gore. (Note: PDF document.)

Now, Al, is no hysteric preaching doom. Not at all. He started out saying we face “a planetary emergency--a crisis that threatens the survival of our civilization and the habitability of the Earth.” “Global warming is real and human activity is the main cause. The consequences are mainly negative and headed toward catastrophic unless we act.”

Next he uses the old line about the Chinese word “crisis” meaning danger and opportunity. (Is that true or an urban legend? Anyone know? UPDATE: I checked. It is basically an urban legend. The literal meaning is “dangerous moment” which make sense. Poor Al didn’t even get that right.)

St. Al warns that “Hurricanes are getting stronger”. Actually they aren’t. (Also here.) “Sea levels are rising.” Well, yes and no. In some places they are rising and in others they are not (and here) and there is no change in the long term trends. “Mountain glaciers are receding around the world.” Technically yes, and they are also expanding around the world. Some expand, some contract and they are located all around the world. See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

After telling Congress that disaster and catastrophe is around the corner Gore then says: “New evidence shows that it may be even worse than we thought.” Worse than catastrophe?

Next he talks about how various political bodies are taking “action”. And he says that since “the climate crisis is, by its nature, a global problem” then “ultimately the solution must be global as well.” He next compares this to the crisis of “global Fascism” which England “and then America and our allies rose to meet”.

He told Congress that “This is not ultimately about any scientific discussion” but like the fight against Fascism “is a moral moment” “about who we are as human beings and our capacity to transcend our limitations and rise to meet this challenge.”

He assured everyone that “if we solve” this crisis “in the right way, we will save money and boost productivity.” No details about “the right way” were given. Next, he presented an image of future grandchildren begging to know why we didn’t save the planet for them, and how if we do save it, i.e. give politicians more control, they will thank us.

Odd that he compares this to fighting Fascism while simultaneously requesting greater control of the economy. Fascism is an economic system where the means of productions are privately owned but regulated and controlled by the state in the name of the “collective good”. In one sentence he invokes the moral courage of standing up to “global Fascism” while in the next he is basically advocating another form of global Fascism.

There is hyperbole, rhetoric, emotional images, sentimentality, fear mongering, etc . What is missing is science. But as he said “this is not ultimately about any scientific discussion”. Gore didn’t present testimony, not in the sense of offering evidence, he preached a sermon. Fundamentalists love sermons so the Green fundies will be shouting “Amen, brother”. The only thing missing was an altar call and the choir singing “Just as I Am” as sinners come down the sawdust trail promising to never emit carbon again.

As I’ve said repeatedly, go ahead and read the testimony yourself. Compare what Gore had to say, how he said it, and the evidence he presented (or failed to present) to that of what Lomborg said and the evidence he presented. With Lomborg’s testimony I said I left out the copious footnotes that present his sources. With Gore I didn’t but then I didn’t need to. Gore didn’t have any.

Given the quality of testimony from St. Al and that of Prof. Lomborg one can understand why Gore has refused to talk to Lomborg and why he refused to do an interview if Lomborg was allowed to forumulate any of the questions. Religion just doesn’t hold up to rational scrutiny well. And what Gore presents is apocalyptic religion at it’s best.

Photo: I admit it’s a little mean. It’s also amusing and the entertainment devil on the one shoulder won the debate over the niceness angel on my other shoulder. Sorry Al. By the way I actually did love this speech you gave on the Constitution. It was great and we were on the same wavelenght 95% of the time.

Warming advocates: trading truth for power.

First warming alarmist Al Gore admits that he thinks it entirely valid to “over-represent” (exaggerate) the dangers of global warming. Now another top bishop in the Church of Anthropogenic Warming, Mike Hulme from the University of East Anglia, says that we need to use a new kind of science to understand the issue. He calls it “post-normal” science. And it allows them to “trade (normal) truth for influence.”

Hulme’s problem with regular science is that: “Self-evidently dangerous change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking....” So, we won’t get the exact scare mongering out of the “normal scientific process” so we need a new process in order to get the correct inspiration for public policy.

Under this “post-normal” science “scientists -- and politicians -- must trade (normal) truth for influence.” That’s what Al Gore said when he admitted to exaggerating the dangers of warming. He said it “appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentation of how dangerous it is” in order to open up his film audience to his ideas. One of the granddad’s of warming hysteria, Stephen Schneider, suggested this tactic years ago, in 1989, when he said, “we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have.” He calls this distortion of the facts a “right balance” between “being effective and being honest.” All three are saying it appropriate to distort facts in order to gain political influence, i.e. power.

All three of these prominent advocates of anthropogenic warming are saying that one must either distort science, exaggerate facts, or give up the normal scientific process in order to further the political agenda they have. Hulme says science is “provisional knowledge” that “can be modified through its interaction with society.” He says scientific knowledge is open “to change as it rubs up against society.”

What? Science is supposed to founded on facts of reality not on social perceptions, ideas or political opinions. We don’t take public opinion polls to determine facts. Opinions don’t change facts. Pasteur was right even if pulbic opinion was against him. Franklin’s lightening rod worked even if the clergy preached against it.

Hulme admits that the AGW theory is filled with uncertainties but says that circumstances require action before we know the facts - but then apparently “facts” are something of a social construct. He says his “post-normal” science has to be practiced “where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent.” Under this kind of “science” he says an important issue is “who has the ear of policy” that is, who sets the political agenda.

What sort of agenda? He describes this as “do we have confidence in technology; do we believe in collective action over private enterprise; do we believe we carry obligations to people invisible to us in geography and time?” And the problem with “normal” science, says Hulme, is that “it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, that broadly-based policy will then follow.” He finds that defective because it ignores “values, perspectives and political preferences.” This means “we have to take science off centre stage.” Get that! We have to move away from the science and concentrate on political preferences.

I have long argued that what was going on with these alarmists was an intentional substitution of political preferences for science. This confession, by a leading alarmist, confirms that. For Hulme “Climate change is too important to be left to scientists -- least of all the normal ones.” Instead it has go to politicians who share a specific set of values such as prefering “collective action” over private enterprise.

Photo: Mike Hulme, not a "normal" scientist.