Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

[Unforgiven]

I'm not sure I get your analogy.

Sometimes you have to care about someone else's cause to get it out of the way so you can shed light on your own.

Fair enough, but if you examine the quote I was replying to, I was replying to someone that was addressing us, in here, or so it seemed.

Sure but, the point goes to what is used to discredit the problem of global warming.

Pretty much the whole schpeil...

Provable science aside.

But that says nothing. This guy is full of it except for what he's right about.
If you feel something is incorrect then show where it's incorrect.

My personal opinion of Gore's motives are that he is just an opertunist, a conman, and has really very little care for the environment.

I have my reasons, the most glaring would be the mine lease, he seems to deflect all questions of, on his land.

That to me, that says a whole lot about the man...if the environment was truly his greatest concern and not money, he could, should, must, break said lease and force the operator to clean up the mess. Not to mention all the C02 a mining operation must be producing.

You pickin' up what I'm layin' down?

Yeah that unless someone is pure in virtue that they can't speak at all to the problems, even the very big one that will eventually cause a disruption to the life cycle of most species on the planet.

I don't know anything about his mining operation but I suspect that it in comparison to all the contributors of greenhouse gases is peanuts. So why is that a major hurdle and a reason to disregard everything the guy has said?

 

[CDNBear]

Sometimes you have to care about someone else's cause to get it out of the way so you can shed light on your own.

Fair enough.

Sure but, the point goes to what is used to discredit the problem of global warming.

I think he does more damage to the cause then my scepticisms of him.

But that says nothing. This guy is full of it except for what he's right about.

Hey, even Hitler was right about somethings...right? (Before anyone jumps up my azz, I'm not comparing Al to Adolph).

If you feel something is incorrect then show where it's incorrect.

I don't have to. A British Court of Law already has.

Yeah that unless someone is pure in virtue that they can't speak at all to the problems, even the very big one that will eventually cause a disruption to the life cycle of most species on the planet.

Not at all. But when one of his states biggest poluters is at his hand to squash, and he does not, that tells me something.

So why is that a major hurdle and a reason to disregard everything the guy has said?

It isn't, this thread isn't about the message, it's about him winning an award he should never have been nominated for.

Look, Suzuki gets a pass from me. (Although I've lost all respect for the man, and trust me, it was quite substancial.) But then again, he doesn't live in giant energy consuming mansions, he doesn't lease land to a major contributor to polution, he doesn't own a carbon trading firm(Hence he isn't profitting from peoples fears). Get my drift.

Had Suzuki won the award, I would be much more forgiving, trust me.

 

[Locutus]

Fair enough.



I think he does more damage to the cause then my scepticisms of him.


Hey, even Hitler was right about somethings...right? (Before anyone jumps up my azz, I'm not comparing Al to Adolph).


I don't have to. A British Court of Law already has.


Not at all. But when one of his states biggest poluters is at his hand to squash, and he does not, that tells me something.

It isn't, this thread isn't about the message, it's about him winning an award he should never have been nominated for.

Look, Suzuki gets a pass from me. (Although I've lost all respect for the man, and trust me, it was quite substancial.) But then again, he doesn't live in giant energy consuming mansions, he doesn't lease land to a major contributor to polution, he doesn't own a carbon trading firm(Hence he isn't profitting from peoples fears). Get my drift.

Had Suzuki won the award, I would be much more forgiving, trust me.

Exactly right Bear.

 

[Toro]

What scientific breakthrough did he make?

None.

It is the theory of global warming, not the scientific fact of global warming.

The theory may very well be correct - I, for one, believe it to be so.

However, no scientific Nobel award has been awarded for any breakthroughs relating to global warming.

 

[talloola]

Agreed. We all get an opinion.

If you mean the fact he won the prize, of course he did. That fact is not in dispute.



How he won it, yes, and that he did is what baffles some people. It's hype and the popular media thing to do. Some people get sensitive when such actions are questioned. The scientists deserve it, sure. Not this clown. David Suzuki or David Attenborough would be far more deserving that Al the hypocrite.

But, he was still given a prize for peace. It's an insult to those that have won and did actually take steps to foster peace.

Yeah he is 'for' peace, opposite to the guy who cheated his way to the white house, and now should get the devil's prize for 'WAR'.

 

[Walter]

 

[Walter]

John Christy of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize) responds to questions by CNN anchor Miles O'Brien:

O'BRIEN: I assume you're not happy about sharing this award with Al Gore. You going to renounce it in some way?

CHRISTY: Well, as a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I always thought that -- I may sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas here -- that prizes were given for performance, and not for promotional activities.

And, when I look at the world, I see that the carbon dioxide rate is increasing, and energy demand, of course, is increasing. And that's because, without energy, life is brutal and short. So, I don't see very much effect in trying to scare people into not using energy, when it is the very basis of how we can live in our society.

O'BRIEN: So, what about the movie ["An Inconvenient Truth"]; do you take issue with, then, Dr. Christy?

CHRISTY: Well, there's any number of things.

I suppose, fundamentally, it's the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is -- well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it's annoying to me.

O'BRIEN: But you just got through saying that the carbon dioxide levels are up. Temperatures are going up. There is a certain degree of certainty that goes along with that, right?

CHRISTY: Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we're fortunate it's not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand, what is the climate doing. And when we build -- and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets -- we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place.

For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum. (Wall Street Journal)

 

[Unforgiven]

God Bless Al Gore and the Truth!

 

[Locutus]

Al is cool.

 

[mrmom2]

Al's a politician therefore a liar by trade
A Really Inconvenient Truth
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles 2007/20_1-2_CO2_Scandal.pdf

 

[gopher]

``[SIZE=+3]F[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]acts don't matter. Only spin matters.``


Just like the story of WMD and imminent ''threats'' of danger and world conquest.

:lol:

:lol:

:lol:
[/SIZE]

 

[Walter]

COMMENTARY​

My Nobel Moment​

By JOHN R. CHRISTY​

November 1, 2007; Page A19​

I've had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don't think I will add "0.0001 Nobel Laureate" to my resume. The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that's another story.
Both halves of the award honor promoting the message that Earth's temperature is rising due to human-based emissions of greenhouse gases. The Nobel committee praises Mr. Gore and the IPCC for alerting us to a potential catastrophe and for
spurring us to a carbonless economy. I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.
There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming -- around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if​

current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days. Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"
I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort
and an easy answer.
Others of us scratch our heads and try to understand the real causes behind what we see. We discount the possibility that​

​

everything is caused by human actions, because everything we've seen the climate do has happened before. Sea levels rise and fall continually. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk before. One millennium there are hippos swimming in the Thames, and a geological blink later there is an ice
bridge linking Asia and North America.
One of the challenges in studying global climate is keeping a global perspective, especially when much of the research focuses on data gathered from spots around the globe. Often observations from one region get more attention than equally valid data from another.
The recent CNN report "Planet in Peril," for instance, spent considerable time discussing shrinking Arctic sea ice cover. CNN did not note that winter sea ice around Antarctica last month set a record maximum (yes, maximum) for coverage since aerial measurements started.
Then there is the challenge of translating global trends to local climate. For instance, hasn't global warming led to the five-year drought and fires in the U.S. Southwest? Not necessarily. There has been a drought, but it would be a stretch to link this drought to carbon dioxide. If you look at the 1,000-year climate record for the western U.S. you will see not five-year but 50-year-long droughts. The 12th and 13th centuries were particularly dry. The inconvenient truth is that the last
century has been fairly benign in the American West. A return to the region's long-term "normal" climate would present huge challenges for urban planners.
Without a doubt, atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing due primarily to carbon-based energy production (with its undisputed benefits to humanity) and many people ardently believe we must "do something" about its alleged consequence, global warming. This might seem like a legitimate concern given the potential disasters that are announced almost daily, so I've looked at a couple of ways in
which humans might reduce CO2 emissions and their impact on temperatures.
California and some Northeastern states have decided to force their residents to buy cars that average 43 miles-per-gallon within the next decade. Even if you applied this law to the entire world, the net effect would reduce projected warming by about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, an amount so minuscule as to be undetectable. Global temperatures vary more than that from day to day.
Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon emissions and could replace about 10% of the world's energy sources with non-CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 -- roughly equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections, the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by about 0.2 ?176 degrees Fahrenheit per century. It's a dent.
But what is the economic and human price, and what is it worth given the scientific uncertainty?
My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."
Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me.​

Mr. Christy is director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a participant in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, corecipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.​

 

[Locutus]

Good post Walter. ;-)

The problem with the polarized sides of the climate debate, and that is surely what it is, just a debate, is that neither side calmly takes the time to consider the opposing viewpoint. When you go into an argument with a closed mind, you will never learn anything nor influence others to your cause.

The OP derides Gore for winning this award (peace?) in the first place and I stand by it. He was simply a mouthpiece for real scientist doing real work, whether partly right or partly wrong. He is considered as and is proven to be, a hypocrite when it comes to the very subject that he takes glory from. A more weak and cowardly fool I cannot think of at this early hour.

 

[Walter]

Trouble in Goreland.
Robert Redford Bashes Al Gore as Greedy Opportunist


By Noel Sheppard | November 22, 2007 - 17:48 ET

As irrefutable evidence mounts that Nobel Laureate Al Gore's climate alarmism is about nothing other than lining his supposedly green pockets with green currency, manmade global warming skeptics around the world wonder when the former vice president's house of cards will collapse.
Without question, if Gore were to lose the support of almost universally adoring Hollywoodans, the scam would implode quicker than a Democrat demanding a recount after losing a close election.
As such, the following comments by actor and environmentalist Robert Redford, reported by the New Statesman last week, should bring hope to folks not buying the snake oil Gore is selling (emphasis added, h/t NB reader Lee):

Redford was an early convert to the environmental movement, and talks proudly of having campaigned on it since 1969. "It was not a happy easy time, because those were the days that the oil and gas companies pretty much controlled the show on propaganda. Anyone speaking about solar energy would be smashed down as being a radical, a tree-hugger and granola-cruncher or what have you."
He is notably cynical, however, about Al Gore's recent award of a Nobel Peace Prize. "He's making a lot of money, he's having a belle époque, a heroic moment," he says. "It must have been really hard for Gore to suffer all that [losing the presidential election], so he found another thing to come back with: the environment. He had a lot of money behind him, because in Clinton's administration there was a lot of money. With that he was able to build himself a new campaign and pick an issue. And he picked an issue that just happened to arrive at its moment in time." The less-than-subtle subtext is that Gore is an arriviste, while Redford has been out there, a grizzled loner, bearing the jibes and right-wing clobbering before the environmental cause was fashionable. Asked why he thinks Gore is not going back into politics, he says: "What's most important - to be a hero to your country and go save it . . . or do you want to be happy and rich and be a hero and not get into the political scene?"
​

NewsBusters readers know the answer to that question.
For those unfamiliar with some of the more obscure references in this piece, belle époque is French for beautiful era, and refers to a golden period in European history from roughly the beginning of the 19th century until World War I when the continent experienced an unprecedented string of peaceful years combined with improving technologies and standards of living.
An arriviste is defined as "a person who has suddenly risen to a higher economic status but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class." A more modern term for such a person is nouveau riche.
This is NOT a compliment.
With that in mind, is Gore's belle époque about to come to an end?
Those that adore democracy and capitalism should certainly hope so.

 

[gopher]

the global warming skeptics:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics



decide for yourself ...

 

[Walter]

the global warming skeptics:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics



decide for yourself ...

Your source has the same credibility as Wikipedia.

 

[Walter]

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Al Gore Will Never Live Up to Milton Friedman


Posted by Devil's Advocate After browsing YouTube for several days, I found many videos about Milton Friedman. Eventually, after some time, one of those videos stuck out at me, but not for reasons you would think.

In this video, Milton Friedman was in Iceland discussing his economic theories as well as his political theories (he made a partial distinction between the two). What was most remarkable was that Milton Friedman’s economic theories were generally accepted by an overwhelming consensus of the economic community at that time. Yet, he was more than willing to have a three vs. one debate against him. He was that confident.

For a full hour, three Icelandic economists continually grilled Friedman regarding his theories and his politics. Friedman appeared to really enjoy himself. When the debate was over, two of the three still held their convictions, but one of the three appeared to have changed his opinion within that short hour. Keep in mind that Friedman’s economic theories were largely accepted in the free world.

Throughout the full hour, Friedman encouraged the attacks and fired back with data and even a willingness to accept the possibility that he could be wrong (we know now that he was right). But, what I took from the video was that this was science in its purest form. Friedman developed theories, and scientists questioned him vigorously. He accepted the criticism, and was almost expected to respond to that criticism. Now let us examine Al Gore.

As I said before, Al Gore had single-handedly destroyed the necessary facet of science: The zealous questioning of scientific hypotheses. Al Gore, and the minority of climatologists around the world, are convinced (although I often have doubts that Gore believes himself) that the Earth is doomed to Global Warming unless humans reduce their CO2 emissions.

Yet, Al Gore cites the IPCC report, a report which scientist had to sue to have their names removed as coauthors, in order to state by fiat that the debate is over. There is nothing in my lifetime that has harmed science more than that statement. What it has done is taken the area of science and shielded it from the people who demand answers to questions. They demand answers because, according to the hypotheses asserted, we all need to change our lives and stop prospering. The hypotheses attack capitalism at its core.

The reason why Al Gore refuses to respond to questions is because he knows for a fact that he would be embarrassed in front of the whole world if he ever accepted the challenge. This is also why he will never run for president. Could anyone imagine Al Gore in a room of three climatologists throwing questions at him? The debate certainly would be over.

By the way, because of Al Gore, Congress and the President have just banned the Thomas Edison light bulb by 2012. Don’t you wish we had that debate?