This is not the sort of op-ed we are used to seeing in the Washington Post. But I found it funny nonetheless. – Anthony
With Al Due Respect, We’re Doomed
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post
Thursday, January 29, 2009; Page A03
The lawmakers gazed in awe at the figure before them. The Goracle had seen the future, and he had come to tell them about it.
What the Goracle saw in the future was not good: temperature changes that “would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth — and this is within this century, if we don’t change.”
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry (D-Mass.), appealed to hear more of the Goracle’s premonitions. “Share with us, if you would, sort of the immediate vision that you see in this transformative process as we move to this new economy,” he beseeched.
“Geothermal energy,” the Goracle prophesied. “This has great potential; it is not very far off.”
Another lawmaker asked about the future of nuclear power. “I have grown skeptical about the degree to which it will expand,” the Goracle spoke.
A third asked the legislative future — and here the Goracle spoke in riddle. “The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it,” he said.
Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) begged the Goracle to look further into the future. “What does your modeling tell you about how long we’re going to be around as a species?” he inquired.
The Goracle chuckled. “I don’t claim the expertise to answer a question like that, Senator.”
It was a jarring reminder that the Goracle is, indeed, mortal. Once Al Gore was a mere vice president, but now he is a Nobel laureate and climate-change prophet. He repeats phrases such as “unified national smart grid” the way he once did “no controlling legal authority” — and the ridicule has been replaced by worship, even by his political foes.
“Tennessee,” gushed Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Gore’s home state, “has a legacy of having people here in the Senate and in public service that have been of major consequence and contributed in a major way to the public debate, and you no doubt have helped build that legacy.” If that wasn’t quite enough, Corker added: “Very much enjoyed your sense of humor, too.”
Humor? From Al Gore? “I benefit from low expectations,” he replied.
The Goracle’s powers seem to come from his ability to scare the bejesus out of people. “We must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization,” he said. And: “This is the most serious challenge the world has ever faced.” And: It “could completely end human civilization, and it is rushing at us with such speed and force.”
Though some lawmakers tangled with Gore on his last visit to Capitol Hill, none did on the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. Dick Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican, agreed that there will be “an almost existential impact” from the climate changes Gore described.
As such, the Goracle, even when questioned, was shown great deference. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), challenging Gore over spent nuclear fuel, began by saying: “I stand to be corrected, and I defer to your position, you’re probably right, and I’m probably wrong.” He ended his question by saying: “I’m not questioning you; I’m questioning myself.”
Others sought to buy the Goracle’s favor by offering him gifts. “Thank you for your incredible leadership; you make this crystalline for those who don’t either understand it or want to understand it,” gushed Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who went on to ask: “Will you join me this summer at the Jersey Shore?”
The chairman worried that the Goracle may have been offended by “naysayers” who thought it funny that Gore’s testimony before the committee came on a morning after a snow-and-ice storm in the capital. “The little snow in Washington does nothing to diminish the reality of the crisis,” Kerry said at the start of the hearing.
The climate was well controlled inside the hearing room, although Gore, suffering from a case of personal climate change, perspired heavily during his testimony. The Goracle presented the latest version of his climate-change slide show to the senators: a globe with yellow and red blotches, a house falling into water, and ones with obscure titles such as “Warming Impacts Ugandan Coffee Growing Region.” At one point he flashed a biblical passage on the screen, but he quickly removed it. “I’m not proselytizing,” he explained. A graphic showing a disappearing rain forest was accompanied by construction noises.
The Goracle supplied abundant metaphors to accompany his visuals. Oil demand: “This roller coaster is headed for a crash, and we’re in the front car.” Polar ice: “Like a beating heart, and the permanent ice looks almost like blood spilling out of a body along the eastern coast of Greenland.”
The lawmakers joined in. “There are a lot of ways to skin a cat,” contributed Isakson, who is unlikely to get the Humane Society endorsement. “And if we have the dire circumstances we’re facing, we need to find every way to skin every cat.”
Mostly, however, the lawmakers took turns asking the Goracle for advice, as if playing with a Magic 8 Ball.
Lugar, a 32-year veteran of the Senate, asked Gore, as a “practical politician,” how to get the votes for climate-change legislation. “I am a recovering politician. I’m on about Step 9,” the Goracle replied, before providing his vision.
Prospects for regulating a future carbon emissions market? “There’s a high degree of confidence.” The future of automobiles in China and India? “I wouldn’t give up on electric vehicles.” The potential of solar power in those countries? “I have no question about it at all.”
Of course not. He’s the Goracle.
Flanagan (10:12:28) :
“BTW, do you know that there are more and more houses in our “old” continent that are completely energetically independent? Take a house, with thermal and photovoltaic panels, and geothermic pumps, and tadaaaa! You don’t pay any gas or electricity anymore! Full freedom! Not depending on some profit-eager company!”
Show me how? Everything I try results in a pathetic improvement. I have insulated my home in accordance with all the Governments recommendation only to achieve next to diddely squat. I think you, and many other people, live in cloud cuckoo land. Don’t believe everything you here just because it fits your agenda. Sorry mate but it ain’t that easy.
“Geothermal really is an excellent type of power.”
I can just see the headlines in 2109 … “humanity must act fast to end the potential destruction of the earth caused by sucking the life giving heat from the earth to stave off the current glaciation.” said Morrie Gore, former vice president and great-great-great grandson of Al Gore. He continued, “glaciation is a normal earth process and humans should bundle up rather than destroy our great Gaia.”
Gore needs us to IMPLEMENT his ideas so that he can take credit for the coming cooling.
Had we ratified Kyoto while he was VP, all would have already worked out perfectly for him. The MSM would be shouting about the currently reduced (if not reversed) cooling and he would be in line for even more prizes.
But, alas, that didn’t happen and now the Chinese coal based electrification project really puts his scam in a bind. Atmospheric CO2 levels are easy to measure and not in dispute. They are rising, and fast.
Oh well. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, eh?
With the Goracle as the chief spokesman for AGW, is there any wonder why so many people believe it’s a scam, hoax and/or fraud?
Not only can Dr. Gore diagnose your problem, he can sell you the snake oil to fix it! Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry — the cause and the cure are all the same. Of course, Dr. Gore’s expert knowledge doesn’t come cheap and his potion is much too valuable for him to give it away. After all, doesn’t he deserve some sort of reward for all his hard work?
gordonsclark (10:57:41) :
The comments here are the most disturbing thing I have read in a while. There are a thousand pieces of concrete data, from carbonized oceans, dramatically melting ice caps, methane chimneys rising from the melting permafrost in the arctic, and increased drought and flood around the world to show that global warming is a catastrophically deadly reality….
Good Sir…you must be new to WUWT…if so, please join the disscussion…however, please do also go back and read some of the threads over the last few months. Humor, without bitterness, is one of the high spots of this site. Satire is common, personal attacks are generally frowned on…attacks on data are to be expected.
Most here are agreed that there is no supportable data that proves AGW. There are a great many bits of cherry picked data that are tossed into arguments to try and support AGW, however none that I have ever seen stand up to examination. Again, most here are open minded about the data and do not have a political ax to grind…we just believe that AGW can not be used to explain more than more than very minor, probably immeasurably small, changes in the earths climate.
Please check to see what has already been discussed in the recent past. Then begin discussing your thousands of points of data and see how they stand up to the various experts [of which I am clearly NOTone] and see how they fair…and we will surely all learn from it….
Most respectfully…cdl
Craig D. Lattig (13:13:29) :
most here are open minded about the data and do not have a political ax to grind…
As you said earlier in the post, “Humor, without bitterness, is one of the high spots of this site. Satire is common…” Thanks for such a good example of it! 😉
gordonsclark @ur momisugly10:57:41:
Gordon my friend, you’ve been listening to this guy too much. Here, let me help:
There are no dramatically melting ice caps: click
The planet isn’t getting warmer. In fact, lately it has been getting cooler: click
And “carbonized” oceans?? Assuming that by ‘carbonized’ you are referring to CO2 [carbon dioxide], the oceans have always been, um… ‘carbonized.’ See, the oceans breathe CO2 in and out, depending on many factors — the most insignificant of which appears to be human produced CO2: click. Notice the “cumulative man-made emissions” [blue line @ur momisugly the bottom of the chart].
To claim that “global warming is a catastrophically deadly reality… we will have more and more frequent extreme weather events” is to deny the factual record:click. Catastrophic weather events are becoming much less common.
You’re on your way to a possible epiphany by simply visiting this site, Gordon. So forget the wild-eyed alarmism of Al Gore and the IPCC; all it takes is an open mind.
gordonsclark, yes a large number of things are predicted and observed regarding global warming. i think you will find, if you read enough material online, and this is a particularly concentrated site, is that most every point you will have heard supporting AGW, has a reasonable counter argument. it will take some time to go through them all, but most everything is covered. i personally find this interesting, and continue scanning stuff looking for something, just ONE thing, that is so thorough and concrete that it is indeed very reliable, either in favor or against AGW. see, the problem is that nature is very very complex. natural systems are very very complex. take for example the field of medicine. you can run a medical trial, give all patients the same drug, and you can find that half of them don’t respond, a quarter get worse, a quarter get better, and one has a heart attack. (i am not a doctor so feel free to check my characterization of that). natural systems are very very complex. or take for example the medical trial where the drug tested absolutely fine in animals, there was no evidence to suggest it was risky, but within ten minutes of administering it to humans, all the patients developed a horrific and very serious adverse response. nature is complex. the planet is complex. the climate is complex. ecosystems are complex. you could find thousands of little bits of evidence that together form all you know, and as a whole lead to one inescapable conclusion. and the nature of complex systems is that you will still be 100% wrong for practical purposes. so all the evidence suggests that global warming is real, and all the smartest and best funded minds agree. meanwhile nature goes off and does her own thing. see the problem? we need humility. lots and lots of humility. now that is not to say that we can never understand the planet, just that we need gigaquads of data and many many years of careful study. none of these climate models have been tested. not one. they make a prediction about an even 100 years in the future. the ONLY way to know if that prediction is correct is to wait. nature of all things is capable of doing something very surprising. she often does. this is not simple newtonian mechanics. think about the technologies we have today, from mp3 players to space rockets. all of that stuff gets tested in laboratory conditions under careful repeatable experiments. engineers build models but then they test the real thing. they always test the real thing. that’s why your mp3 player and that space rocket work. but climate models have not undergone such testing. the argument is then that it will be too late if we wait. too late for what, the predition that was never going to happen anyway?
Stan Needham,
“My simple question to you is, what kind of climate would you like to legislate? Do you have a specific level of temperature, relative humidity and precipitation in mind. If so, what scientific principles will your legislation address to ensure that the desired parameters are met. Be very specific in your answer because my future support for you is at stake.”
My I use your wonderful question to Sen Lugar on my own legislators? You phrased it perfectly.
There is an old tradition in England of swearing by certain personages although they are not necessarily the ones you might imagine them to be.
Thus ‘What the Dickens’ is not Charles of that ilk, it actually refers to Richard the Third [Dickon]. Thus when I was small, a long time ago, ‘Great Scott’, ‘Gordon Bennett’ and such like were commonplace but are seldom heard today.
For some time I have being trying to persuade people to use ‘By Gore’ instead, so you can say ‘By Gore it’s cold today’.
It hasn’t caught on I am sorry to say perhaps because Gore is not much known over here.
Mind you I rather like Gore Blimey. And the Goracle, given his travelling circus, should he become the Great Goracle do you think?
Kindest Regards
Copenhagen will be a boom for alcohol sales, and limo companies.
It will be a great time for people to meet and see each other, some for the first time.
Otherwise it will have no baring on the planet.
The real tragedy is if MAN ‘fixes’ the planet and causes a real problem.
Many of us accepted these assertions (since we had no other viewpoint at the time) until we started to dig a little deeper. The further we dug the more alarmed we became at the gaping chasms between the actual facts and the reports being widely and repeatedly distributed. It was at that point that we became ‘skeptics’ – which is in fact the necessary initial position of any scientist.
My suggestion is to stick around, do some research and keep an open mind on everything you read, whether it’s in comments on a blog or in a peer-reviewed scientific paper from the most prestigious journal in the world. You may be surprised what you find.
Greg, Geothermal is great until Al Gore comes up and says we are cooling the core and he can prove it by fluctuation in global magnetic field. (as if it doesn’t move and change now!!) but you ignore the truth and anything can sound realistic.
Even the groundhogs are sceptical of the Goracle.
A news update per my previous comment. Evidently FEMA has already came and left. Seems there was nothing for them to do. We had it all under control, I guess. There has been a massive outpouring of help locally and from neighboring states. People around here help one another – the churches are working triple overtime. I guess FEMA decided nobody needed any bottled water, and there were just too many limbs and branches for them to trip over…
Just another example of how WE DON’T NEED the federal government to “help” us. We don’t need Al Gore and we don’t need FEMA. We didn’t need George Bush and we certainly don’t need Obama. “We the People” have the ability and the answers. It’s high time for America to re-wean itself from kings and queens.
To tie this comment to the article: it’s all about letting go of leviathan. I’m serious. There are many bright and gifted individuals on this site. People interested in the truth about weather, climate, etc. When you include tax dollars you immediately attract sharks like Gore. This is why he swims around Congress. The amount of money granted to that place is scary. Currently Congress is blowing out bills faster than they can be printed. Literally. Very very scary. I fear national bankruptcy much more than I do a warmer planet.
Geothermal energy is limited by geology. Only limited areas of the world can put geothermal energy to practical use.
However, geothermal heat pumps and similar technologies make geothermal heating and cooling available for many of us. In a nutshell, these system circulate water or other liquids through an underground closed-loop system. Since the earth is cooler than the air during summer, the liquid is cooled by the earth and then circulated throughout your home. Likewise, the earth is warmer than the outside air in the winter and warms the liquid.
I don’t know the return on investment for these systems. How long does it take to recoup the initial costs? Do they add to the resale value of your home? These factors must be taken into consideration before installing them.
Smokey (13:22:32) :
“all it takes is an open mind.”
Was your sequence of cherry picked graphs supposed to be evidence of having an “open mind”? I’m rather astounded that you should think anyone will be taken in by a six-year graph carefully cut off at a La Nina low point as showing a negative climate trend! Although my favourite was the one employing the reconstructions of Ernst-Georg Beck, whose work I rather suspect even Anthony Watts would not endorse too enthusiastically.
Stefan says, in the following post “most every point you will have heard supporting AGW, has a reasonable counter argument”. It is certainly true that there is a counter argument for everything, though whether or not it is reasonable is a matter of judgment. What is just as true, of course, is that for every such counter argument there is a rebuttal. The difference between the arguments/ rebuttals and the counter-arguments is that the former are consistent, whereas on the other side of the ‘debate’ just anything goes, however self-contradictory. So, for example, one will argue that the ice core CO2 record is consistent with solar variation, then another will reference Beck’s obscure ideas (suggesting that the ice core record is nonsense and his reconstruction is the truth), then another will say that the ice core records are indeed rubbish in their suggestion of past temperature extremes, then another will say that the ice core records are a spot on accurate indication of CO2 lagging temperature (which no one is disputing anyway, by the way – CO2 was a feedback!), and so on. Do these various parties leap at one another’s throats over their contradictions? No, of course not, because they are consistent in this one thing – they are all anti-AGW! No matter how obviously self-contradictory they are, that’s not the point. Taken as a whole, the aim is not to establish the truth of the matter but to attack the hated ‘consensus’, and any weapons will do. This is what having an “open mind” means then – opening your mind to any collection of anti-AGW stuff that you can, regardless of the nonsense of the sum of the parts.
gordon, how many of those “concrete pieces of data” only exist in computer models? How many are actual facts, versus speculation?
Do you know the earth has warmed and cooled many times over? Are you aware that in the last few thousands of years, the climate was naturally warmer than anything experienced during the 20th century? Are you aware the Medieval Warm Period had a much more desirable climate than the Little Ice Age?
There is no factual evidence that warming is catastrophic. The actual evidence contracts that assertion. Cold kills. Warmth increases the growing season and improves harvests. Cold brings famine, starvation and plagues.
Of course warming won’t affect all parts of the earth evenly. Some places will get drier and some wetter. Overall, it’s likely that renewed warming will be like previous warming — overall beneficial.
Do a little more research and you’ll find those events you’re worried about have all happened before. Anybody have a link to the New York Times articles about the polar ice cap melting in the 1920s handy?
Smokey (13:22:32)
You put a lot of trust into a 6th degree polynomial trend line. I have taken the liberty of updating the data up to and including December 2008, that’s all the data available now (the grey data in the plot).
t2lt data and trend speculation
You will notice, that as of December 2008 the anomaly has rebounded to the level observed in the period 2002 to 2007, deviating strongly from your “trend”. The plot contains also a speculative scenario of mine. Let us assume that the anomalies in 2009 will be an exact copy of the data in 2005 (the red data). How does this affect a 6th degree polynomial “trend” line? It would flat line with a small upward bend. A single year of data could overthrow your hailed “trend”.
My conclusion? A 6th degree polynomial “trend line” is anything but. It may highlight weather (as in interannual variability), but it is useless as a predictor for climate trends.
@ur momisuglyRobert van der Veeke (12:21:44) :
re.: Malaria,
Agree, was same here:
Germany, Lower Saxony, East Frisia, last frequently occurances of malaria was around 1919, the tidal creeks behind the dykes were an area where mosquitos did survive for long.
@ur momisuglyStan Needham (11:29:31) :
Well done, Sir
(From a CPO, Federal German Navy, Reserve)
@ur momisuglyall
from ScienceAndPublicPolicy – The Real Hockey Stick – Carbon Credits, Another Corrupt Currency?
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/corrupt_currency.pdf
@ur momisugly Ross (12:24:13) :
Re.: My guess would be a black hole
– out of which no useful information can be got.
Even black holes emit radiation.
And even some men can, at least glitter as bad examples.
(Goracle, Gorexample)
@ur momisugly Richard M (12:32:16) :
re: geothermal
Yeah, agree. We too, here did have some projects running. Some OK and some ugly. The areas fitting best for larger geothermal projects are too, sometimes rather instable. We’ve here a town where the ground below peoples houses got instable after a few years using geothermal in that town. Even slight quakes did happen.
It can be of good use, but do plan carefully. By the way, the Icelandics have quite some expirience – and data – on it.
Okay, okay, now they have quite some expirience from financial/currency quakes, too.
@ur momisuglyBob D (13:48:37) :
Many of us accepted these assertions …
yep, me too…
until I recognized – 2002/2003 – there is something totally wrong.
Thank you, all of you folks, have a good night
klausb
Arkansas (09:38:48) :
Im so sorry to hear your troubles. We have to stop relying on the Government to save us. I stocked up on firewood this year for the very reason I suspected it would be very cold. If our pwr were to go out here I have two elderly neighbors that I would be taking in to my house to keep warm. Our communitys need to be more aware of themselves we need each other now because basically we are on our own.
Seems like the only thing our gov is good for lately is figuring out ways to tax us more. Its the only true transparent bi-partisan thing they can agree on and both parties are equally guilty.
If I could advise folks, we never know when disaster will hit. If we could forcast it properly it would be one thing but its a guessing game and hit and miss. When I lived in CA. we had an earthquake kit. All the supplies (including water, and the little camp heater) you would need to survive for a week. I suggest others across the country adopt this, our world is a chaotic place and we, the human race have no clue on where and when nature will reach out and slap us on the back of the head.
gordonsclark (10:57:41) :
But hey, let’s just all make jokes and mock the people trying to do something about it…
I want to do something about it, too…if there is something wrong to fix. And, I want to adjust the handle that gives us a good chance of correcting the problem. From all my research and understanding of both sides of the AGW argument, there is nothing to fix, and even if there were, there is no handle to adjust.
The polar ice masses are not melting — they are growing.
The seas are no longer rising.
Droughts and floods occur and have occurred regularly throughout history.
CO2 is not a good handle to adjust, as there is ample evidence that temperature both rises and falls with very little regard to the CO2 level.
The oceans are pretty well saturated with CO2, and have been apparently for millenia. Witness limestone formations.
For the futility of adjusting CO2 to control global temperature, this reference should be required reading for the AGW alarmists: the Letters to the Editor of January, 2009 of Hydrocarbon Processing magazine.
Greg (11:47:06) :
Geothermal really is an excellent type of power.
Instead of polluting our environment by burning coal or tearing atoms apart to generate heat to make steam to run turbines… we could be taking advantage of the pretty much inexhaustible supply of heat from within the Earth itself.
Geothermal power is not as environmentally benign as some would think. Depending on the geo-source, there are sulfur compounds and other noxious components. As others above wrote, there are limited areas where it is economic.
Far better power sources are wave-power, and turbines powered by large ocean currents. I do agree with you on no need for nuclear power. Fortunately, that has priced itself out of consideration.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
Tom in about to freeze again Florida,
By all means, feel free to use my question verbatim with your own legislators. I’m flattered that you would ask.
oh a ps.. all that cold has been following the jet stream. Seems when its kicking down from the artic it brings a mess of cold and nasty with it..
http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html
every now and again.. look where the wind thats gonna hit ya is coming from:) Time for us to put away the toy models and start observing again.
sorry if im off topic, but if I say anything about Gore, you would have to snip it anyhow.
Regarding CO2 as an inappropriate control variable for global temperature, the Letters to the Editor for February 2009 Hydrocarbon Processing magazine is out, and Temple and Dr. Pierre Latour, PhD, P.E. Control Engineering and Chemical Engineering, have another go. My money is on Latour.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California