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A person who is actually a climate skeptic (and WUWT regular) applied for and was granted a training slot in Chicago this week. http://climaterealityproject.org/leadership-corps/ and has graduated as one of the 1500 people that attended the event.
For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal the person’s name, but I can reveal the communication I received last night.
The ‘mole’ writes:
I’m now a card-carrying, official Gore-bot.
(I took copious notes)
a) This was a super-liberal “kum-bay-ya” crowd as I predicted. I kept many of my opinions to myself. The event truly did have a “religious cult programming” feel to it, similar to an Amway meeting I attended years ago – carefully timed applause, audience call & response etc. Very bizarre.
b) Al Gore himself went through the entire slide show that we are supposed to use as his “Climate Leaders.” Quite honestly, there is nothing new here, EXCEPT that there is no trace of the “hockey stick” graph that was so central to “An Inconvenient Truth”!! Amazing, considering how central that was to their arguments!
c) Instead, Al lumps data together year-by-year or decade-by-decade to show an ever increasing rise in temps. He poo-pooed measurement inaccuracies, specifically mentioning UHI effects and saying that the scientists determined these were insignificant.
d) A couple graphs stood out – one showed the documented rise in temperature PRECEDES the rise in CO2 which he brushed aside as “typical variation.” The only hockey stick was one that projected atmospheric CO2 over time, jumping up drastically in coming years. I didn’t have time to write units down, but it was a big jump. It could be a realistic rise with China & India bringing new coal plants online, I’d have to check any citations.
e) Al’s presentation was heavy on his new concept of “dirty weather,” see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/24-hours-of-reality-dirty-weather_n_2130344.html
To summarize, I didn’t see anything new or ground-breaking in this mess. Most slides were BS, typical “this is due to climate, not weather” type stuff we kick around on WUWT all the time. Hurricane Sandy, torrential rains in Pakistan etc.
Personal observations:
a) We skeptics ain’t liked much with them folks. The “d” word (denier) was used liberally, and I queried several participants, some of who were very cool folks, about it. Al Gore and his speakers used “Denier,” “Denial Industry” and other terms I found objectionable. Lousy salesmen, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
b) Nothing new was presented, technically speaking. This thing was “An Inconvenient Truth” redux, with much of the controversial stuff (hockey stick & drowning polar bears) deleted. Al got our message, he doesn’t seem to want to engage folks like us.
c) Al gave some insights into his own choices for low-carbon technologies, with a focus upon photovoltaics & wind power. He doesn’t like BWR nukes and objects because of financial reasons, which I agree with (particularly post-Fukishima). He mentioned that Oak Ridge National Labs in TN is testing a variety of nuclear reactor designs which sound promising (thorium maybe?) but didn’t elaborate.
d) Stuff I’m interested in, like ocean acidification, were only briefly touched upon. Al didn’t discuss the diplomacy challenges of engaging China and India, although he did mention their growing carbon output.
Quick summary:
Al is a polished speaker, and looked trim & in shape. Very impressive command of his speaking material. Decent speakers lined up, including some sustainability folks from private industry. I’m told the health/climate breakout session was terrible & am glad I took a pass on it.
==============================================================
UPDATE: Since many of the Gore followers are arriving here, I welcome you to answer this question that nobody would ask Mr. Gore this week:
If the position and science is so strong, why did Mr. Gore have to fake the results of his experiment in the Climate 101 video (which you may have seen and is still on the climate reality web page).
You can see the experiment recreated here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
For the few of you brave enough, thanks for taking the time to answer that question – Anthony
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Yep, I attended a session in New Zealand given by one of Al’s “Graduates” – long on rhetoric sorely missing on factual content. An appeal to emotion not logic.
Glad mine was only an hour
Andi
So that slide show should hit the internet soon as its for public/cult follower use on the public?
Was their free buffet? If so free bacon?
REPLY: There are no plans to leak Al’s slide show. From what I hear, there’s not much there that isn’t already widely available. – Anthony
erm…just one thought…they don’t want to catch any flies. They want the flies to be ‘disapeared’ .
Reading some of the tweets by other attendees, the ‘cult’ idea seems true. Example
‘Al Gore made me cry three times today :-)’
I am just reminded of PG Wodehouse’s ‘Roderick Spode’.
“REPLY: There are no plans to leak Al’s slide show. From what I hear, there’s not much there that isn’t already widely available. – Anthony”
from this section
Al Gore himself went through the entire slide show that we are supposed to use as his “Climate Leaders.”
I assumed the cultists plan to release it themselves. More of a question of did they give a date when they plan to do it… always good to have the rubber boots out for the incoming flood of stupid.
REPLY: Actually, from what I’ve read, Al Gore tightly controls those slides, and will take legal action against any of the followers that release them into the public domain. As we saw in AIT, most of it isn’t his original work, just window dressing the work of others, so his claim for intellectual property rights might not hold up. – Anthony
I had to Google BWR to find out that it meant Boiling Water Reactor.
Well done! I wonder if there were any more hidden skeptics in there, or how many were checking it out (rather than full-blown alarmists)? I wonder how many he turned off.
What was the turn-out, by the way? I heard Al was having trouble getting the numbers he wanted. I also understand the newspapers sometimes (cough, cough) exaggerate the numbers to various protests. Al certainly has exaggerated his viewing number when he did that 24 hour thing some time ago, so he will no doubt exaggerate now.
Thank you for going in there and giving us all a peek.
yes, the climate is changing
Al Gore is right about that.
it is just not man made
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
Did you go in the toilet cubicals and swob them with a test kit to see if you could find any traces of CoCaine.
“REPLY: Actually, from what I’ve read, Al Gore tightly controls those slides, and will take legal action against any of the followers that release them into the public domain. As we saw in AIT, most of it isn’t his original work, just window dressing the work of others, so his claim for intellectual property rights might not hold up. – Anthony”
So little confused are they handing the slides out to the foot cultists to display in closed door forums then? Or are they going to use some other presentation as the push? I’m assuming its the closed door setup and they will ban ppl from taking pictures of the slides and so forth.
So then the question is is this kind of an al-gore proxy cultist rally they will hold behind closed doors for the faithful? Normally propaganda you want to throw far and wide. Maybe he’s getting scared the faithful are losing the faith… or its just another way to cash in.
My immediate thoughts are that this is probably similar to the pressure sales technique used in the past for Timeshares and holiday ‘clubs’, etc. Slick punchy presentation with little chance for debate or discussion! All of which is entirely the mantra of ‘cultist’ type organisations.
If people (sheeple?) want to be treated that way, that is their choice! I guess when they are finally herded into fuel poverty pens and sit awaiting their slow freezing demise, they may wish they had taken a more rounded view?
Thankyou very much for this. Very interesting. My personal believe is that people like Gore (and the administration associated with him), who have gone out on a limb on this issue, are in fact the greatest barrier to scientific progress.
1) Did you have to pay for the event? Because Al Gore really does know how to make cash and I’m just wondering if he “volunteered” his precious time. or did you pay for his sermon?
2) Were the people there generally of the “educated elite class”?
3) Age groups, gender, religion?
4) Where there any republicans? Y’know, like Richard Alley?
Hrm. That’s precisely the session I would’ve taken pains to attend. I suspect the “epidemiology” aspects of AGW catastrophism are – if anything – even more gormlessly projected than are their contentions about atmospheric physics.
I like the ‘Spode’ video.
But a more subtle literary reference might be G K Chesterton’s ‘The Man who was Thursday’.
You will recall that in that book, dealing with the infiltration of a gang of anarchists by a police spy, the entire gang turns out to be comprised of police spies, with the chief of police as head of the movement….
Were there any questions allowed?
it is return of the Hitler youth program never thought gov;t would allow it to happen again very sad
Wow! I wonder if they are giving away any of those super cool Al Gore “Blubber Suit’s”?
If so, I am in baby!!! “Al…Al…Al…Al…Al…Al…!!!”
Dodgy Geezer says:
August 2, 2013 at 1:00 am
“You will recall that in that book, dealing with the infiltration of a gang of anarchists by a police spy, the entire gang turns out to be comprised of police spies, with the chief of police as head of the movement….”
Sorta happened in reality in Germany in the last 10 years. As usual, the state wanted to abolish a nationalist party, I think the NPD. The procedure failed in court because the party was able to prove that 15% of its members were spooks and that therefore any activities counter to the constitution of Germany might have been implanted by the state’s spooks themselves.
Dodgy geezer – Amazing! That is precisely what I was thinking just before I read your comment. Great minds etc.
…Sorta happened in reality in Germany in the last 10 years. …
Amazing! That is precisely what I was thinking just before I read your comment. Great minds etc….
GKC is a much underrated author, and completely out of fashion at the moment.
Which is a shame, because he’s one of the best there is….
Just don’t drink the cool aid while there. Literally.
Saw a down-revised attendance figure of 800 somewhere, in a PR-sounding blurb. Sorry, linklost.
“Don’t undertake vast projects with half-vast plans.”
😉
No need for us to worry about that bunch of amateurs then.
But over our shoulders looming from the ‘weather becomes climate’ dept. there are a few embarrassing heat waves for us to field this year (China, Italy, temp record on Greenland etc.) And what about when that pause stops pausing? (sorry I mean if, of course)
…And what about when that pause stops pausing?…
To answer that, we need to know what the ‘right’ temperature is for the Earth.
I have seen no one ask any policy makers that question. “What is the right temperature we should keep to, and will you stop taxing us when we achieve it?” would be a good one to start with…
Interesting to see Al Gore is open to nuclear.
Last night on the ABC in Australia,7.30 report there was a long ‘expose’ of the new Australian laser enrichment technology for uranium, of which I had never heard.
Apart from the creator of the technology, the rest was a Green explaining how this would lead to more nuclear weapons, more wars and more children would die or be horribly maimed or disfigured.Lots of horrific pictures.
The object lesson and the reason for this ‘morality play’ was the impact of depleted uranium on the lives of children after the Iraq war.
The fact that you need advanced optics and plenty of power to do this enrichment was expressed.Its unlikely the average Jihadist or rogue state could do the enrichment.
The concept that it ‘may save the planet’ from AGW was never uttered.Lots of nuclear power plant cooling towers against the sunset looking evil and polluting.
Perhaps the split in the Greens is greater than imagined, with the ABC greens on one side opposing enrichment and Gore and Lovelock in some other corners,either accepting nuclear or not wanting to degrade energy infrastructure to replace it with windmills.