The Gorehog's shadow does not lie!
Posted on 02/01/2009 6:06:09 PM PST by neverdem
Ho-hum. On January 28, in the midst of a pelting sleet storm, Al Gore told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the end is nigh from global warming.
He told the Senate that “some scientists” predict up to 11 degrees of warming in the next 91 years (while failing to note that the last 12 have seen exactly none), and that this would “bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fiber of life everywhere on earth.” Hey folks, this is serious!
Besides having a remarkable knack for scheduling big speeches on remarkably cold or snowy days (it’s known as the “Gore Effect” in journalistic circles), Gore has been incredibly ineffective in bringing his message home.
According to the New York Times, Gore told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last November, “I feel, in a sense, I’ve failed badly. . . . [T]here is not anything anywhere close to an appropriate sense of urgency [about global warming]. This is an existential threat.”
And fail he has. The Pew Foundation recently asked Americans to choose which of 20 prominent issues is of most importance. They included the economy, crime, education, and, of course, global warming, which came in dead last.
Gore’s failure is his own fault. He gained a reputation for exaggeration during his 2000 campaign, and he’s unable to shake it—because he’s proud of it, saying that it’s just fine to emphasize extreme global warming scenarios because they get people’s attention. Telling people you’re exaggerating isn’t exactly the way to get street cred. In Washington on January 28, his campaign continued.
The fact is that the “fiber of life” can be found on this planet over a range of 140°F, from Antarctica to the Death Valley. People actually live in these places. The average temperature of the planet is about 61°, a temperature at which Homo sapiens au naturel will die from hypothermia. So ask yourself if raising the temperature 11 (impossible) degrees will indeed bring civilization to a “screeching halt.”
It’s not like the press is very vigilant, either. A couple of years ago, he got a free pass on Larry King Live (May 22, 2007) after making at least seven exaggerations or outright misstatements on climate change in less than a minute.
Gore fielded a call asking “what issues caused by climate change globally are likely to affect the United States security during the next ten years?”
He responded, “you know, even a one-meter increase, even a three-foot increase in sea level would cause tens of millions of climate refugees.”
In ten years? The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hardly an apolitical body (the IPCC’s “lead authors” are all appointed by their governments), gives an average sea-level rise of 1.25 inches in the next ten years for its “midrange” temperature scenario. Never mind that it hasn’t warmed since 1997 and that sea-level rise is clearly slowing as a result.
Gore went on: “Today, 49 percent of America is in conditions of drought or near-drought”, and that “the odds of serious droughts increase when the average temperatures go up.”
That’s a testable hypothesis. The history of U.S. drought back to 1895 is readily available from the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, as is the history of global temperature. Although surface temperatures have risen about 1.4 degrees since 1900 (with maybe half of that a result of emissions of carbon dioxide), there’s no similar trend in U.S. drought. Gore had to know that.
In the same minute, he droned on about how in a hotter world, “agriculture in the United States would be greatly affected.”
Thanks, Al, for another assertion subject to analysis. The slight rise in surface temperature was accompanied by a 500 percent increase in United States yield of corn (that’s the amount we produce per acre). How could any possible warming in ten years put a dent in that? The IPCC projects about 0.3 degrees of warming per decade now, or about a fifth of the total warming of the last 100 years. That’s going to “greatly affect” agriculture?
People notice these exaggerations. They see that food is still on the table (despite the government’s attempt to burn it up as ethanol). They know the country isn’t particularly dry, nor particularly wet. They can go to the beach and see that the ocean isn’t notably higher than it was before.
In other words, Gore’s lack of penetration is a result his own exaggerations. He’s created a climate of extremes that people are simply tired of, which is why his issue ranks dead last. He’s right. He’s failed.
— Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of the forthcoming Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know.
A meaningless prediction is never wrong. I see UP TO 500 degrees warming in the next 91 years. And up to 459 degrees of cooling, too. But probably less than that.
I think we may be experiencing another (hopefully mini) dust bowl in my part of the world right now. We have had almost no rain for several months. As I look out my window, I can see that Lake Travis is way down from where it should be.
We could use a lot of rain in my particular part of TX! Parts of Oklahoma are also parched.
The California state government is right now imposing BILLIONS of dollars in regulatory costs on California businesses, making California the leader in job loss and emigration. The O administration is about to destroy the US economy the same way.
Unfortunately, Gore has succeeded in causing governments all over the world to flush trillions of dollars down a rat hole with NOTHING to show for it.
The Gorehog's shadow does not lie!
See? Global warming is ALREADY creating a disaster, and the temperature averages have scarcely budged. The disaster is taking place in people’s heads, not in the biosphere, as the will to actually respond to the challenge is foregone, in favor of wringing of hands and squandering moral and financial capital for ineffective schemes. On a side note, is this one of the “risky schemes” that Al Whore was talking about back in the 2000 Presidential election campakign (which of course he won)?
I'm not so sure about that. I think saner heads will prevail. I don't see an economic recovery with expensive energy. The economy and jobs were the top choices in that poll Michaels mentioned.
bump
I sure do hope you are right. But I am very pessimistic as there are only a couple of sane people in Congress like Senator Inhofe. I don’t see any countervailing force to stop them. With rare exceptions, eople in Congress have no technical, scientific or engineering training and don’t have a clue how the world or its energy systems really work. They are generally also totally ignorant of basic economics. Hence they actually listen to and believe people like Gore.
This is a disaster in the making. It was once on slo-mo, but is now picking up a full head of steam.
Climate change’s Antarctic ruffle
Growing Optimism for U.S. Climate Change Bill barf alert!
Lefty, It’s Cold Outside - Uniting liberals and conservatives in laughter.
Thanks for the pic.
Thanks for the ping!
Michaels sticks with the lowball estimates and the minimal impact scenarios, but at least he's honest about the causes of the warming.
Michaels sticks with the lowball estimates and the minimal impact scenarios, but at least he's honest about the causes of the warming.
I'm not saying CO2 doesn't have any effect, but is it significant? Maybe it's 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16? I haven't seen any reasoning about the estimates. We are talking about an increase of about 100 parts per million, i.e. from 280 parts per million to 380 parts per million, IIRC. How much of that was degassed from the oceans while it was getting warmer which ended over a decade ago? How much was from volcanic activity?
I'm not saying CO2 doesn't have any effect, but is it significant? Maybe it's 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16?
If those are fractions of the full warming signal, CO2 increase is responsible for about 50% of the rise since 1900, 80%+ of the rise since the 1970s. There was some solar contribution and natural variability in the early 1900s.
How much of that was degassed from the oceans while it was getting warmer which ended over a decade ago?
Natural sinks and sources are virtually in balance. Furthermore, if there was no human influence, the slight imbalance would be a net reduction in CO2 atmospheric concentrations. Despite recent warming of the oceans, they're still a sink. The increasing atmospheric concentration is due to human activities (mainly fossil fuel burning). There are several ways to show that's true, but I hope you'll take my word for it. If you don't, research it. Start with "Suess effect".
How much was from volcanic activity?
See my profile, point #1.
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