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There will be a story featuring Al Gore and his climate views on CBS 60 minutes this weekend. Normally I don’t pay much heed to this program, but Gore is publicly calling those who question the science “…almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat…”.
To me, a person who has at one time been fully engaged in the belief that CO2 was indeed the root cause of the global warming problem, I find Gore’s statements insulting. In 1990 after hearing what James Hansen and others had to say, I helped to arrange a national education campaign for TV meteorologists nationwide (ironically with CBS’s help) on the value of planting trees to combat the CO2 issue. I later changed my thinking when I learned more about the science involved and found it to be lacking.
I’ve never made a call to action on media reporting before on this blog, but this cannot go unchallenged.
The press release from CBS on the upcoming story on Gore is below. You can visit the CBS website here and post comments:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974389.shtml
See the video clip here
But let’s also let the producer, Richard Bonin, know (via their communications contact) what you think about it, as I did when Scott Pelley aired a whole hour long special telling us Antarctica was melting. They did no follow up.
“AJ Abrams: Whether you believe some people have seized upon this as an attempted means of control is also politics, and is also irrelevant to the science.”
No it isn’t. In fact, that is ludicrous statement. Control can be political but isn’t a subset of it. Control happens outside of political realms, such as religion and even on a micro social level, such as family dynamics. However, I agree about it being irrelevant to science, as I have already said in that post. My comment about control was about MY personal issues with the topic in addition to the scientific issues.
My first thought on the screencap at the top of the story……..
“And, you know, the thing about a shark… he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes”………….
The arrogance and condescension of “Dr.” Gore is staggering, IMO……..
A letter I sent to CBS:
‘susan.marks@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘ed.harrison@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘kjorgensen@cbs.com’; ‘sljacobs@cbs.com’; ‘khfisher@cbs.com’; ‘andrea.ballas@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘beabseck@cbs.com’; ‘diane.ekeblad@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘sue.lamphear@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘colleen.sullivan@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘bonnie.lefkowitz@cbs.com’; ‘kee@cbsnews.com’; ‘ian.metrose@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘dlmcclintock@cbs.com’; ‘kev@cbsnews.com’; ‘phil.gonzales@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘bbyrd@cbs.com’; ‘smg@cbsnews.com’; ‘gdschwartz@cbs.com’; ‘cender@tvc.cbs.com’
I am a Vice President of Engineering at a high-tech company. I started studying on my own about global warming maybe seven years ago. I had an open mind and was curious to learn about the pro’s and con’s of the arguments. Recently I have come to the conclusion that there still is no “PROOF” that the recent warming of the Earth has anything to do with man. I have an extensive engineering background having taken course in Calculus, physics, chemistry, Engineering etc. I find the below statement insulting easily provable as being wrong, and just plain silly:
…almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat…”.
I would think an organization like CBS would try to investigate the issue beyond having Al Gore pontificate about his beliefs.
Did you know that the Earth has not warmed in since 2002? Did you know the Oceans are cooling recently? Did you know there is record ice in Antarctica? Did you know the ice is back to normal in the Arctic? I am sure you viewers didn’t know any of that and on top of that will be given a serving of pure propaganda by Al Gore. Please check the link out I provide below by one of your competitors and follow the links he provides:
http://community.myfoxcleveland.com/blogs/andrebernier/2008/03/27/More_Climate_News
If CBS doesn’t provide balanced coverage of this major issue I feel I have no other recourse then to stop watching your network at all and inform any one that I can that your network is not interested in the truth.
Best Regards,
If you have a phd in Physics and have spent 15 years studying this topic and still side with Gore, Then you are no Richard Feynman.
The first sign of a Zelot is to silence others.
Besides everyone knows the real answer to life the universe and everything is the number 42. It’s to bad Dougles Adams is not here to have fun with this.
Until the next ice age cheers.
The question is, what’s their evidence? That’s how science works, you see, that’s how it differs from politics. Can you put up any evidence at all (that means scientific papers)?
Funny you should say that, AT. That’s exactly what we skeptics say about AGW, only it’s AGW that is the hypothesis, so that is where the burden of proof lies. THAT’s how science works.
Alarmists are simply more disinformed than us skeptics.
Says a lot about our media today, doesn’t it?
Sadly life has become a battle to keep from becoming disinformed.
Astroturf,
“You’d lose that bet. Since you bring it up, I have a Ph.D. in physics and 15 years research experience in the subject”
Great!!! You wouldn’t mind providing a link or something to your research then!
“Besides, it is ultimately the laymen who will determine the policy related to this issue, not the Ph.Ds.”
It doesn’t split that way. Not all politicians are uneducated morons. Some do know something about the subjects they’re legislating on. Then again, some don’t.
“It is also the obligation of experts to listen to, answer the questions of, and, yes, even learn from the layman side of the fence.”
Hey, great point, I don’t know anything about brain surgery, but I reckon my opinion’s as good as any brain surgeon’s, so get be a power drill and I’ll have a go. The brain surgeon should learn from the layman, right?
You couldn’t make this up.
If someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they simply have nothing useful to contribute to the subject. That’s the brutal truth. You may find that “insulting”, you may find that “arrogant”, but it remains the brutal truth.
60 Minutes has lost any and all credibility through it’s past stories on, for instance,exploding gas tanks in which they used igniters and missing gas caps to ensure the crash vehicles burst into flames, and the deeply flawed and misleading report on Bush’s service record that while quashed got alot of coverage. Lets not forget the complete fraud of the 60 Minutes Audi 5000 “sudden acceleration” dishonesty that almost bankrupted a fine automaker. This is junk science to boost ratings and sell advertising time while ringing the alarm bells for the gullible. I ‘d say Al Gore would fit right in to this type of “journalism”.
REPLY: FYI, The “exploding gas tanks” was NBC. The used small model rocket engines if I recall.
Stan: I’d count myself as at the liberal end of a Liberal party in a Liberal region of a Liberal country (compared to the US, anyway), but that is irrelevant to the science.
Paul, I wholeheartedly agree, and my comment wasn’t meant as a slam on Liberals, nor did it have anything to do with the science. It was merely an observation about the debate itself. The political Left (not limited to the U.S. either) has seized on the issue, and, IMO, subverted the science in the process. The fact that Al Gore is one of the leading spokespeople for one side of this issue should raise a big red flag for anyone with an even remotely open mind. I’m not wishing for a coming ice age just to get even with them as some here are, but it would, indeed be poetic justice if Nature had the final word.
As I read this, it is snowing in downtown Seattle. The first time in March in the 9 years I have looked out this window.
Political views mean squat when I am looking at scientific raw data. I just like doing it. Finding patterns where no one else has looked is a very cool thing to do. The guys that have been looking at patterns here and showing us the results are doing what comes naturally to traditional investigators, looking at raw data with unbiased eyes. Astroturf seems the one bound by politicalturf chains. Which brings me to an important point: I would sure like to have the raw data that “published” ivory tower scientists use in their papers. Why not let us have a crack at it? Many scientific paradigm shifts have occurred in the past because of some new un-credentialed person from across the scientific iron curtain making noise.
And before someone says I am just an armchair republican conservative man with 6 children, a gun, and another on the way (gun that is), I’m not only a liberal, but a woman who will probably vote for Hillary. I love nature, done the nude hot springs thing, love no-imprint camping, and have hiked over many trails in the Cascades. I have also been bitten by the sun itself. Lip cancer. No one can tell me that the sun has no affect on global temperature when its rays have managed to find little ol’ me and burn my lip. The scar on my lip compels me to at least give it serious thought.
As Anthony’s alter ego said, “Just the facts, Ma’am”. The key question in my mind is simply this: Is the Earth warming more than the basic heat physics predicts for the given amount of CO2 increase (positive feedback) or less (negative feedback), or maybe just the same.
So far as I can see it is not warming at all now. Possibly it’s cooling. CO2 feedbacks seem to be quite negaative (acc. to the AquaSat data).
Probably CO2 has had a small effect, but the main drivers seem to be oceanic (PDO/AMO) and major solar minimums, which have a big cooling impact (250 out of the last 1000 years have been solar minimum years). Those two factors show the best actual correlation with what is known of surface temperature measurement.
I do historical models (storyboards) and I don’t trust models either. They can describe the past fairly well, but are terrible predictors of the future.
After the clean air act began to have real effect in New York, huge numbers of birds have flocked to the city, especially crows, sparrows, gulls, and hawks.
I guess Beijing has something to look forward to — after they clean up.
I also like trees. But even places without them can be bird havens.
Who woulda guessed.
Central Park has become one of the “top ten” bird sanctuaries (whatever that means) and is overrun by ducks, swans, egrets, robins, and many other birds.
Perhaps they should populate Central Park with Wal-Marts instead of trees.
Maybe we should have a contest to see who provides the best essay on the topic of, “Why I Like Trees — Even Though They Are Not The Only Possible Bird Roosting Platform, And Even Though They Do Suck Up A Lot Of CO2, Which Doesn’t Matter”. Or something like that. I’m sure some of us could come up with something else.
Pardon my sarcasm. But I have to say that on the basis of those which I have been introduced to over a couple of threads now, your arguments suffer from a certain lack of coherence.
Astroturf: “You’d lose that bet. Since you bring it up, I have a Ph.D. in physics and 15 years research experience in the subject. It’s obvious from Mr. Watts writing that he has no science education at all. It’s all a political opinion to him.”
Oh good. After years of avoiding the quagmire of name calling climatology has become, I’ve become interested again now that the decline in solar activity offers a wonderful change to compare competing theories. I’ve been amazed at the dedication of folks like Anthony, Steve McIntyre, Joe D’Aleo, and many others plugging away at finding out what really is going on despite the lack of insterest of Hansen in vetting the the data he uses, Mann’s apalling behaviour in discouraging McIntyre from replicating his work, and so on.
The two things that convinced me there is much more to climate change than greenhouse gases are 1) those pesky correlations between solar activity and cold climate; and 2) the claim that the IR band that CO2 blocks is essentially opaque and that additional CO2 will have little impact. D’Aleo’s r^2 regression studies that show the PDO and AMO oscillations have a much better correlation with global temperature than does CO2. Altogether, it convinced me to write some web pages to stand above the fray and present all sides of the story.
Physics was my favorite class in High School, but I started college as a Chemisty major and then computers point out to me that I’m a much greater asset as a software engineer than a scientist. In your scientific opinion, what are the primary forcing factors and why do you believe them to be so. I understand you can’t come up with with detailed figures without experimental and theoretical data, but surely you have good reasons to support the Greenhouse gas hypothesis. I really would like to include a little more text in favor of that in my main web page, it’s just that the more I read the more trouble I see with it.
Do you at least agree that the next several years ought to provide a really good test of these hypotheses?
Astroturf –
If you are so right, then please provide the link(s) to some peer reviewed research that proves your case. Comments like “You apparently don’t know your physics” needs to be backed up.
The case against CO2 is becoming stronger and stronger as the research comes in. For one example, see:
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
OccamsEdge: “Why does anyone give the former VP any consideration? This is a man how has an extremely long distance relationship with truth, or has everyone forgotten?”
Apparently not everyone has learned. He seems to have influence over $300,000,000 and no matter what his relation is to it, it gives him more say in a lot of matters than you or I have. If you’d like truth to get somewhat more exposure, a semi-organized rabble will do better than just ignoring it all.
Anthony et al have taken a huge amount of time to come up with some remarkable data. Seems to me that us rabble ought to show some appreciation by understanding it and sharing with people who aren’t getting it now.
AstroTurf
One of those who question the AGW by Co2 is Ferenc Miskolzi, who found that the greenhouse gas equation developed by Arthur Milne in 1922 assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere. Miskolzi added the missing information, and finished up with a self correcting climate, with no sign of ‘runaway warming’. Nasa, for whom Miskolzi had been working for some 20 years as a physicist, refused to publish, and he has since left them.
Perhaps, with your superior knowledge, you would be good enough to explain to us how he was wrong in his calculation?
Further to that, whether he is wrong or right, Nasa’s refusal to submit one of its own, long-standing employees work to peer review clearly demonstrates exactly the ‘political’ side to all this that you are attributing to those who disagree with you. You would do well to remember that, on the basis of science that is clearly more and more disputed by experts, not ‘settled’ at all, as people like you would have us believe, we are now expected to adopt stringent and highly expensive measures, which would themselves have highly ‘political’ effects.
Lastly, Anthony Watts publishes under his own name. Are you a football field, sir?
Astro-turf is a troll.
Hey Astro-turf, please give an analytical description of an octopole EM field. By analytical description, I am alluding to using calculus to show how an octopole field can be developed from first principles.
Astroturf
I very strongly agree with Aaron Wells. If you seriously believe there is convincing evidence that man made CO2 is likely to lead to catastrophic climate change lets see it. Right now the overwelming evidence is that the hypothesis was wrong.
I know literally hundreds of scientists most of them in physics, which is also my field, many of them are in fields related to climate, I don’t personally know any who believe the catastrophic scenario.
Your statement that Mr Watts knows nothing about science makes me strongly doubt your honesty.
Astroturf:
Wonderful – a Phd physicist. Why don’t you enlighten us? I am sure that Anthony would give you a forum to explain from 1st priniciples how much a doubling of CO2 increases the global temperature – say within a error of +/- .2 deg C. You could then precisely explain how, after adding thermal energy to the atmosphere, this increased themal energy is handled by various atmospheric processes?
I would like to invite you to http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/
either Unthreaded/ Global Warming: This is a “must read” or
Physics Issues/ Empirical Observations of the Greenhouse Effect or
Physics Issues/Basic Quantum Mechanics and the Greenhouse effect or
Physics Issues/Empirical Observations of the Greenhouse Effect
and enter the discussion with some people more your peers.
Al go…re….home
If you believe in Al Gore’s “Man Made Global Warming” I have a
bridge…mmm…CARBON CREDITS to sell you!‘If someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they simply have nothing useful to contribute to the subject. That’s the brutal truth. You may find that “insulting”, you may find that “arrogant”, but it remains the brutal truth.’~
The brutal truth is, astroturf, that YOU have offered NOTHING to prove your contentions. YOU are both insulting and arrogant, because YOU offer NOTHING. You have not answered one single person who has asked you to post links to your work.
astroturf = skeptics best friend/cause… leave him alone we need more of these guys!