Roger L. Simon: Does Al Gore ever wonder that he could be wrong about global warming?

I know I do, all the time. Sometimes I suspect he never does - or doesn't want to - even though this article - by an MIT meteorologist, no less - should give him pause. What about my colleagues at the Academy who awarded Al's second-rate film that Oscar? Do they think twice? Talk about " an inconvenient truth." That film was like Discovery Channel filler. The only reason to give it a prize was that it was "right." But what's if it's wrong? Or what if - more likely - it's only half right? Do they take back half the Oscar? Don't hold your breath. People who could give an award to a film like that are highly unlikely to examine anything.

UPDATE: To the commenter below who makes the odd assertion that my disagreement with Gore's approach to this issue is because I favor Bush (?), let me make myself clear: I am no more interested in Bush's opinions on global warming than I am in Gore's. Neither, to my knowledge, has any significant scientific training whatsoever. Why would anyone be interested in either of their opinions on this subject?

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I doubt that he does, Robert Anton Wilson stated that "When Dogma enters the brain, all rational thought leaves." He also used a model called "The Thinker and The Prover", what the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. That is, what we have decided to be TRUE, is usually supported by the way we interpret available information. This seems true of many people that sight UFO's, many people that sight the Virgin Mary, many people that believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old and many people that believe that we are causing Global Warming.

As for Hollywood and the Academy, what do you expect from self serving egomaniacs? Honesty? Humility? Decency? We don't get those values from most of our citizens, why would actors, directors and starlets be any different?

If Weird Al had named it "An Inconvenient Hypothesis" I might have had a degree of curiosity. But I'm not his target audience.

In any discussion of man made global warming, its proponents have better account for the oceans "footprint" witch only covers over 70% of the earth's surface with depths surpasing the lands hightest peaks.

"The creation, aging and destruction of the ocean floor is an on-going, continuous process that governs many fundamental aspects of the physics and chemistry of our planet: (1) It produced the oceans and atmosphere very early in Earth history, and (2) now buffers the composition of seawater and the atmosphere. (3) It controls the composition, distribution and size of continents. And (4) recycling may be important in regulating certain aspects of Earth's climate."

"Studies of ophiolites confirm that large volumes of seawater can penetrate more than 5 km into oceanic crust. Hydrothermal systems occur on land (e.g., Yellowstone, Iceland) and all along the spreading ridges, wherever there is a high thermal gradient and a network of fractures (permeability) that allows fluids to move through the solid rock to extract heat and exchange chemically."

"Hydrothermal activity plays an important part in moving dissolved minerals and other substances through the Earth's crust and into the ocean, says Andrew T Fisher, a hydrogeologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. There's enough water flowing through such seafloor vent systems to recycle the ocean's volume every 500,000 to 1 million years, he notes."

AGW based on CO2 is being pushed by the left for one single solitary reason: to increase taxes and regulation on industry and trade - and to reduce consumerism.

i mean... how CONVENIENT is it that the remedies for AGW are exactly what they have ALWAYS proposed!?!

if GW is natural then their leftist policies are proven useless and counter-productive - once again.

what the third world needs is more globalization, industrialization and consumerism.

to get their they need ONLY to ditch kleptocracies and socialism. NOT CARBON CREDITS, which function as a sort of payoff the the kleptocrats for NOT developing their nations' economies

these poor people need factories and power plants and highways and trade. they need the things which WE used to lift ourselves out of poverty.

Are you saying perhaps Al Gore should become the Milli Vanilli of climate change? Award rescinded and a maligned attempt at a comeback in his own voice?

Pee-Wee Herman may be a closer fit. The sunlight suddenly shining on his obsession is equivalent to those cop flashlights in that movie theater. "Oops--uh oh!"

It was "right' by virtue of it being non-Bush. Bush scraped the Kyoto, causing global warming. Carter got his Nobel Peace prize because he criticized warmonger Bush, Gore got his Hollywood prize by contrasting himself against Bush. Bush's concern was terrorism, not global warming. Anti-Bush must play down terrorism by banning War on Terror, and play up global warming.

Those who can't face reality, lose control of the messy world, can't face up to jihadists need to control something. The easiest thing is to pass some laws to control us who would not blow their heads off.

Here is a good one for Al Goreacle. The most accurate forecaster of hurricanes in history thinks Al is full of well, hot air.

It's nice to know that Al was willing to cut off his government funding when Dr. Gray questioned the GW crowd.

For those of you who like to read, here are a couple of links that look at the science and the methodologies employed and end up questioning the gloabl warming orthodoxy.

I am sorry for the links. I can't seem to get them to where you just have to click.

Gores views are hardly controversial. You may like to oppose him just because he ran against Bush, or because he's a pompous ass, or whatever reason you choose, but he is not wrong about this.

Richard Lindzen's (author of the Newsweek article you cite) views are not even believed in much by Lindzen

[quote]
Professor Richard Lindzen is a prominent sceptic who claims that the anthropogenic influence on our climate is close to negligible and that in fact cooling is about as likely as warming over at least the next 20 years. Now, although there must be some non-zero chance of cooling on this time scale (due to the natural decadal-scale variability of the climate, and the possibility of large volcanic eruptions), this opinion certainly seems to be well to one extreme of what most climate scientists think is likely.

Recently, my attention was drawn to some comments attributed to Lindzen: "Richard Lindzen says he's willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now." (thanks to William Connolley for the tip). Given his widely-promulgated views, I took this quote at face value and contacted him to arrange a wager. A payoff at retirement age would be a nice top-up to my pension.

Now here's the kicker. Richard Lindzen will indeed accept a bet - but only if offered odds of 50:1 in his favour! He actually started out quoting 100:1 - but came down to 50:1 in what he described as a "special favor" to me. If the temperatures went down, I was to hand over $10,000, but in the event of a rise, I'd get a whopping $200
[/quote]
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/betting.html

"We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. " - Timothy Wirth quoted in Science Under Siege by Michael Fumento, 1993

I think he is wrong about this, because I think he is wrong about this. It has nothing to do with Bush.

I am tired of people making these declarations as if they were written in stone.

In truth I think there is no "normal" when it comes to climate. I think climate is in a constant state of change.

I recently read the bood "The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt" and the planet it describes is so different from the one we live on today, that nothing, not climate or plant life or continents or oceans or polar caps or species are the same. Even the oxygen level in the atmosphere would be different as well as levels of carbon dioxide.

So it seems to me that it might be the sun as easily as man. Or it might be a combination of several factors.

I don't know this of course, but I do think that the longer Al Gore and his friends say the world is going to end and it doesn't...the less seriously people will take the whole issue. That ofcourse induces panic in many because there is a possibility the industry of global warming will pass away and with it the grants and documentaries and NGO's and all the other neat stuff that goes with preaching in the secular world.

I read somewhere recently the opinion that if Al Gore truly believed that we were on the verge of an environmental catastrophe - as he has said. Then he wouldn't be living like a prince and easing his conscience by purchasing carbon offsets. Says it all really.

Have you, despite the fact that you are a MALE, ever thought you could bear a BABY?

If you think you can bear a baby, Gore can probably think he is (was) wrong on what he had fight for, for more than 25 years....(that's more than my age).

The most fundamental assumption driving the climate change gloom & doom, namely that CO2 drives climate, is shown to be wrong.

I have been spending a lot of time recently learning more about "global warming." My conclusion: this stuff is pure bovine excrement. The big money only goes to those who support the radical environmentalist position. The pro-global warming folks probably receive $200 to every $1.00 obtained by their opponents. Did you want a nice career and ample financial remuneration? If so, you had better be on the side of the crazies.

Margaret Thatcher inadvertently goofed up. She wanted to pull the rug from under the striking miners. Unfortunately, the former British prime minister implied, if not even explicitly, offered government funding to scientists---only if they proved the existence of global warming! Needless to add, this financial incentive encouraged them to do her bidding. The situation has only gotten worse.

Gore is trying to scare people into buying into his Offshore investment firm.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2007/04/uns-ipcc-global-warming-bunko-scam-uns.html

If you are certain that Lindzen is wrong, why are you crying about the odds? It's free, certain money to you, right? Take the bet.

Since Greenland was once green, I'm credible enough to believe that it was warmer than it is now prior to the Industrial Revolution.

I'm cynical enough to believe that most of the promoters of the theory of catastrophic global warming do so out of less than pure motives. Research grants do tend to dry up when there is no problem... History provides no examples of governments willing relinquishing power over the citizenry.

Beyond that, you have to prove to me that global warming is a problem and that we can do something about the cause at an affordable cost.

Back when I was a kid the big thing was Global Cooling - the Ice Age was coming. There was a best-seller on it, Newsweek had a cover story, and I was delighted because I was living in PR and it was hot and humid; an ice age would have been very welcome.

Now I'm freezing in NJ (it's not even 45F right now in the middle of the day), and the big story is Global Warming.

Gore's "opinion" is that of a clapped out politician seeking to revive his career and his film has been criticized by people far better qualified to speak on the science of climate change, which is, to say the least, a very inexact one.

The IPCC's report is a highly political one, and many of the most influential "scientists" who produced the documents issued to the public aren't necessarily the most respected scholars in their discipline, but rather life-long professional "activists" who have published few papers if any. On the other hand, one of the top experts on malarial mosquitoes fought long and hard to have his name removed from the list of contributors.

Otherwise, I find it much more damaging to public debate for a celebrity scientist like David Suzuki to go out on the hustings for Global Warning, raising all sorts of money for his foundation. His qualifications are as a geneticist who studied mosquitoes for the purpose of exploring environmental adaptation and he bought garbage on the question of the spread of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

And as far as the Academy giving an award to Gore for the best documentary, didn't they do likewise for Michael Moore nothwithstanding a few distinguished critics outing him much earlier as a prevaricator?

I decided to no longer listen to the Goricle when he fatuously claimed that the science is settled. Heck, even quantum mechanics is not settled. No science ever is.

But to get to the actually science, there is an odd relationship going back centuries with temperature and solar activity. The Maunder minimum (almost no sun spots for over a century) corresponds nicely to the little ice age. The sun was relatively calm during the sixties and seventies (cooling earth) and active during the eighties and nineties (warming earth)(and I don't need a lecture on the solar cycle, I am talking about overall magnetic activity which applies even during the minimum years.

Some astronomers have proposed this as a model for predictive behavior of the earth in the coming century. GW types do not even have a model that can predict the past, why should we believe they can predict the future?

Finally, the current Alpine glaciation is recent and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Greenland was greener and the Alps unglaciated in 1000-1200 AD. Polar Bears survived that.

Does this mean humans aren't contributing? Not necessarily. And as for your bet with Richard Lindzen he probably just takes you for a sucker, so he hoped to get you with a sucker bet.

Well, now I really want to rant about a lot of science junk, so I will just shut up.

If the country was really serious about global warming, there is something that could be done right now that would have an immediate, major impact.

So, ask your Senators and Representatives to back a national 50-mile-an-hour speed-limit bill and see how popular such a bill would be.

I think there is room for honest folks to disagree... that being said... this is far from settled... The Great Global Warming Swindle that ran on the BBC was pretty good... take a look

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4340135300469846467&q=Great+Global+Warming+Swindle&pr=goog-sl

AGW, or whatever they're calling it these days, is our modern Tower of Babel, and will probably yield similarly useful results.

...the portion of the green-house gas global warming caused by human CO2 is about 0.003% or 0.00003 or 30 millionths. Even if we stop producing any CO2 at all, 99.997% of green-house gas global warming will still happen (even if we ignore the Borrello Limit and the saturation effect).

Maybe their followers don't, but the leaders must--they have large staffs of researchers (most of whom you're paying out of your pocket).

Roger, I doubt Al Gore worries whether he's wrong, I don't think he cares if he's wrong, this is his game and he's not going to abandon it over anything like facts.

I don't worry much as to whether I'm wrong in my opposition to his point of view, mostly by looking at it from both sides of a worst case scenario:

A) If Al Gore is right and the powers that be proceed to "fix" it via the convoluted (and ripe for fraud) schemes they propose, the economy is going to suffer mightily and when it does, all of their schemes will be repealed to stop us from starving in a great depression, but not before our lives are upended.

B) If Al Gore is right and we do nothing, we're eventually faced with new fertile growing acres in Minnesota and Canada etc. and perhaps some new contours on our shorelines that will require millions to move inland -- with a very hectic deadline of decades, if not centuries.

I'd vote B), but the Supremes have taken ownership of this issue, so all argument is now futile -- we starve first, then incorporate maximum ages on Supremes (and hopefully term limits on the rest of the...)

And here's another question: Why are almost ALL of the AGW people also against the war?

And why is the reciprocal equally true? What's the deal? Wouldn't normally rational thought produce at least SOME overlap?

What if the Gore-types (who want us to jump the economy off a cliff on AGW) have applied the same quality of thought to the Mideast?

And here's another question: Why are almost ALL of the AGW people also against the war?

In the US today we have two really big tribes, the Democrats and the Republicans. Many people within those tribes have accepted the concept that one tribe is Right and the other is Wrong. Thus, normally liberal, pro-women's rights folks are donning scarves and protesting the liberation of repressive nations. Meanwhile, traditional conservatives are backing the further bloat in our federal government, more federal noses in private life and somehow have leaped across the chasm that once separated religion and politics (one that was traditionally guarded by conservative elements of the political system).

It's not just the openly partisan folks either. I know anarchists that are protesting for National Healthcare and Federal support for Colleges (talk about oxymorons... or at least morons). If people accept a party as their tribe, they will defend that tribe (and its tribal leaders) even when they've obviously made mistakes or gone against the normal tribal values.

April 9, 2007: Does Al Gore ever wonder that he could be wrong about global warming?

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