Above: Al’s high five on ice caps (gone in five years)
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Gore says he has also detected a shift in the view of many business leaders. “They’re seeing the writing on every wall they look at. They’re seeing the complete disappearance of the polar ice caps right before their eyes in just a few years,” .
Responding to James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia theory, who said the European trading system for carbon was “disastrous”, Gore says: “James Lovelock has forgotten more about science than I will ever learn. “
“Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much in the past few years that it has reached a tipping point and will disappear very quickly. The truth is that there is little evidence to support this. Indeed, the record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer sea ice increasing again over the next few years.
In a WUWT reader’s poll earlier this month, 91% of respondents forecast that 2009 minimum ice extent will be greater than 2008 – apparently agreeing with Dr. Pope’s comment above. Perhaps Al Gore should swap his Nobel Prize with people who have a better aptitude for learning science.
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You can see convection in action by viewing the time series of Arctic ice behavior available on several web sites. Both air and ocean current convection affects can be clearly understood. I especially enjoy watching how the ice tries with all its might to battle the incoming warm Arctic current East of Greenland (sometimes winning, sometimes losing) and then watch how the ice slowly forms along the eastern Greenland shore line from North to South where there is a cold outgoing current.
Claude Harvey:
I indeed remember Y2K, and am amazed at the parallels between it and AGW. I’m very saddened to see how gullible the majority seem to want to be.
There were, of course, the occasional rare Y2K realities. For example, I had a nice fat 1 year contract in 1999 with a company that made pharmacy software… that simple database stuff that they look up what you’ve been prescribed and can print a complete fact sheet on each prescription. Apparently the software was written in the 80s and the source code was LOST. They were running a business on 15 year old DOS software that had no source!
Sure enough, some time after the whole Y2K panic started, they tested their software and discovered that the first time in was run in 2000 it would assume it was 1900 and proceed to wipe its database completely. They brought in programmers in 1998 and began a crash program to reengineer the entire thing, in Windows instead of DOS. It was a nightmare. Each pharmacy required a brand new, high end latest-model PC, new monitor, and about 12 hours of database conversion. There were hundreds. Along the way many were disgusted enough to switch to the competition.
At the time, I had a friend working at the telco. Apparently they brought all their staff in to giant meetings and gave them the whole “the network could shut down on Jan 1” talk. Nothing I could say would convince her that the entire world wasn’t going to end that day. There were even people who believed their cars wouldn’t start because, well, they have a computer.
Logic, reason, sanity were abandoned. Once the “VoA” (voice of authority) boomed out the threat of doom, NOBODY seemed willing to listen to the reality. I could show people the source code to my car’s engine controller, demonstrating that the date never figures into anything, but they’d still not believe it. After all, there’s a calendar in the dash, too.
Bottom line: A GIANT THREAT overpowers peoples’ ability to think rationally, and evaluate evidence. People refuse to believe that the drumbeat of danger would be so loud IF THERE WAS NO THREAT. In the end, those who stole billions of dollars are the ones who will claim they SAVED US FROM THE THREAT. And most people are incapable of determining if that is true or not.
cAGW “leaders” are probably well aware that cooling will happen (witness their 30 year “masking” claim), and were really hoping to have everything in place so they could take credit. Luckily, everyone dragged their feet and didn’t actually DO anything to honor their stupid kyoto commitments.
Doesn’t matter though. People believe the Ozone Layer was fixed by not using Freon, they believe the Y2K “bug” was fixed by government and private spending of $BILLIONS into I.T., and they’ll believe the Warming was stopped by whatever ridiculous expensive scheme comes along.
Dorlomin:
And open water also loses a great deal more heat when winter sets in.
tetris
I thought the same re UK MSM as per your post. Have a look at today’s Telegraph first leader!
JimB and JustWantTheTruth:
It wouldn’t matter a whole lot what is on the billboard, as long as Gore’s face and his 5 year warning plan are called out on the rug.
I’m quite sure there are plenty of groups and others who are tired of getting fire breathed all over them when they have more pressing issues to attend to.
Just circulate the idea.
You can even do one on Hansen and his Shut all Coal Plants in the US down decree.
Then we’ll see where Cap & Trade ends up.
My guess is the Recycle Center for used models.
Gotta keep it green, you know.
and they’ll believe the Warming was stopped by whatever ridiculous expensive scheme comes along.
Not if you call Gore’s bluff.
Nobody wants to be taken, especially not in today’s economic mess.
The man threw down his gauntlet. Fine.
Call.
Clearly the battle will continue over who is right based on which correlation is believed. Some will say it was the downturn in the economy, thus reducing CO2 emissions, allowed the Earth to cool. Others will say the sleepy Sun did it. Still others will point to the cooling ocean in the Pacific (and still weak signs that the Atlantic is turning cold too) is “what done it”.
I’m of the ocean camp. The mechanism is hypothesized to be related to the trade winds becoming stronger, blowing warmer surface water further west in the Pacific, allowing colder ocean water to dominate on the surface, and we know that weather patterns beginning in the Pacific end up creating variations in weather patterns across the US. And yes, I know that I still have to read up on understanding what causes the trade winds to behave as they do.
Aron (08:24:02) :
I just want to know how a guy who takes energy efficiency and environmentalism seriously gained so much weight in three years. . .
He’s sequestering carbon.
Vanilla Ice isn’t the only charlatan singing “ice ice baby”
Gore says: “James Lovelock has forgotten more about science than I will ever learn. “
Well actually, Daffy Duck has probably forgotten more about science than Gore will ever learn.
If I were Mr. Lovelock, I’d be insulted.
Prize to the first poster to mention the word “cult”? Ding ding ding! You win!
One stuffed polar bear to Dorlomin.
Michael Crichton broke down the numbers regarding Y2K in State of Fear.
He discovered government expenditure was less than 10% of the total amount spent on fighting Y2K. The public and private sector did all the rest of the spending and most of that was part of the natural software and hardware upgrade cycle that would have occurred anyway without Y2K hysteria.
Yet the British and US government claimed credit for beating Y2K.
He’s probably black mailing them.
“So, Sir Richard”. (Richard Branson that is)
“If you don’t support my Hoax, eh sorry, Church of Global Warming, for which I have earned the Nobel Price, my followers will sabotage your Airline by chaining them self to the landing gear of your new Airbus 380 and my Democrat friends in Washington will take away Virgin’s US landing rights”.
Since Gore spoke with Branson, he is deeply involved in experiments with bio jet fuel for his aircraft and he “donated” a substantial sum of money to Gore.
You will find more of Al Gore’s “business leading” friends at:
http://green-agenda.com
Many of them, who have made their fortune by exploiting the masses, for example by publishing news papers and exploiting radio and television stations or producing operating system software for computers, now support the Club of Rome and UN initiative to curb the world population.
His most gracious Highness, Lord of the darkest and most noxious greenhouse gases, the Prince of the last remnants of frozen antartic territories, the One who was so clever as to stir up the deep slumber of sleeping consciousnes of the most despicable commons by teaching them with words of wisdom how to manage the world order, how not to breath, how not to dare farting, they and their so numerous cattle, without paying previously to their Mighty Excellence a most convenient and liberating tax, the Prince of dark and filthy methane, will soon bless us with His Presence in the coming Summer season, to enlight us with truths uttered by His most admirable mouth, through words born deep in His always growing and magnificent belly His most wise sayings and new warnings referring to all the new calamities, we the commons have originated, and how He, as a punishment, has cleverly decided that, instead of warm, COLD will afflict us. This new era, so HE has decided, will bear HIS NAME to remind us WHO our Lord is and how we are suppose to behave before the ominous commandments, always for our wellbeing, He graciously pronounces.
Guardian: Al Gore says “business leaders see the writing on every wall they look at”
So undoubtedly did the local merchants in the cult film The Godfather (“Make him an offer…”). It didn’t mean they agreed to the validity of the argument.
Dorlomin (08:23:13) :Prize to the first poster to mention the word “cult”?
OK. I win. What’s the prize?
The first rule for major market success is: ‘shape the market, shape the product’.
In this case, shaping the market means creating a lasting firm and unchangeable belief that climate change is dangerous, man-made and understandable.
Shaping the product means identifying specific technological areas which can ‘address’ the issues of climate change effectively but in a way which requires continual product usage for a very long time.
If you have invested in those products and shaped that market successfully, then you are likely to make a lot of money.
The question is: has Al Gore done those things successfully yet?
And if not, will he in the next seven to ten years before his VC fund has to have been fully invested and exited from?
I have no faith in our ability to really reduce carbon usage if that does turn out to be the problem.
— John (10:37:06)
Well, that’s the other side of it. I’m agnostic about AGW. The basic greenhouse gas argument works for me and I wouldn’t be surprised that humanity has had some warming effect on climate. It could be argued that without that effect the planet would be somewhere into the next ice age, and thank God for that.
But the global weather system is plenty complex with many different feedback paths. It’s clear to me that the AGW advocates haven’t made their case ironclad and are attempting to stampede the world into their camp with alarmist propaganda.
Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” accepts the moderate range of AGW as put forth by the IPCC, but even so he concludes in his new book “Cool It” that the trade-offs of spending money to prevent or lessen AGW plus the economic hits that causes versus spending money to alleviate the effects aren’t clear.
In any event I suggest reading the IPCC summary on climate change which shows that even if one accepts AGW as a reality, their projections are not nearly as alarming as Al Gore, James Hansen, and James Lovelock would tell you.
Report From Texas
As I mentioned in an earlier comment, natural gas drilling in the US has lately been so productive (especially in tight gas shales) that the price for Nat Gas has tanked. As the chairman of Petrobangla (Bangladesh’s national oil & gas company) told me once, “We are floating on a sea of natural gas”.
If you wait long enough, some of the facts trickle through to the Old Gray Lady (rapidly becoming the Old Gray Pipsqueak):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15drilling.html
(A) “The drilling cutback has been particularly stark for natural gas. Gas exploration had soared in recent years after technology advances enabled the exploitation of gas trapped in huge shale beds found around Fort Worth, western Pennsylvania, upstate New York and elsewhere.
But that boom has created such abundant supplies that companies are not only drilling less but also deciding not to pump from [sic; gas isn’t “pumped”. The correct jargon would have been “deciding to shut-in”] wells already drilled.”
(B) Oh, and here’s a surprise:
“But the economic downturn has cut into demand. Global oil prices and American natural gas prices have plummeted two-thirds since last summer. NOT EVEN AN UNSEASONABLY COLD WINTER drove down unusually high inventories of natural gas.”
I wonder where the heck THAT came from? Oh, it’s Saturday. Nobody reads the paper on Saturday. Time to print the FACTS.
Business leaders see…other walls far,far away, where they take their money, and businesses…just look around
Oh, yeah, except for Big Fat´s business: Cap and Trade
Not forgetting “The windmills of HIS MIND”
“Mike McMillan (11:51:32) :
Aron (08:24:02) :
I just want to know how a guy who takes energy efficiency and environmentalism seriously gained so much weight in three years. . .
He’s sequestering carbon.”
Since methane is such a horrendous greenhouse gas, any carbon sequestered is small compared to the methane emissions generated.
I have often thought that YK2 was a scam and would like to congratulate Claude Harvey on his observations.
One would have thought that the media would have had a field day and taken all an sundry to task…but no. Never mentioned.
Likewise the same will happen with the AGW “debate” (such that it is).
The likes of Hansen adn Gore will quietly retire from public life leaving others to deal with the issues and excuses and clear up the mess.
A carefully thought out campaign of dis-information will bore the public into even greater apathy.
Recently the UK Government gave out some incorrect figures on knife crime…it was slapped down within 24 hours by opposition MP’s and the press as the figs were way under the actual levels.
The Govenment then come up with some lame excuse and then we witnessed an argument about an argument…and everyone missed the point that knife crime has soared.
All they remember is the argument….alas the same will probably happen with the Climate.
Robert Wood (09:25:48) :
tetris @ur momisugly 09:03:25
The Daily MAil has also be known to be occasionally skeptical
You wouldn’t call the Telegraph sceptical, if you saw yesterday’s main headline or today’s leading article. I think they may be trying to catch up with the others!
The only scepticism I’ve seen is regularly in the Sunday Telegraph from the admirable Chris Booker. Looks like he’s locked in a separate room away from his colleagues though. I think he may contribute to the Mail as well?
Claude Harvey
I suspect you may be thankful for those emergency generators in years to come. Assuming the Great and Good don’t slap you with a CO2 tax.
Numerous mainstream media no longer serve as societal watch-dogs – they’ve become docile show-dogs. Without the backing of the many spineless media present today the un-proven AGW theory would never reach the masses. The Gores and Hansens of the world rely on alarmist writers, editors and publishers to disseminate their propaganda and ignore all data and sources that question the dogma of CO2-induced global warming/climate change. We’re witnessing yellow journalism at its worst.
Fossil Fuels are nothing more than Prehistoric BioFuels. The only problem I can see is the other stuff that is mixed up in them. Like Sulphur and Mercury.
The particulates are debatable, what would you do with all that mass anyway?
Cap & Trade as the New Economic Bubble is stupidity.
Go back to your Superfund cleanup stategy. It was working, why break it?
Naw, it’s time to call the hand.
Billboard.
@Pragmatic: “The Guardian has been recognized as a relatively bias-neutral paper”: my golly, by whom? In my judgement it’s the most partial of the British broadsheets or former broadsheets- if you really need evidence try visiting Tim Worstall’s blog where he demolishes its rubbish with dismissive ease.