“There’s no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened. People have no idea! … It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the goddamn word climate. It is not acceptable. They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it.”
And that’s just part of the rant. More below plus a collection of news bytes from the past week that all point to Gore’s inability to restart the success of AIT he had in 2005. My personal view is that the battle was lost the moment Gore and his acolytes started trying to link severe weather events (see photo above of Gore pointing to a big mesocyclone aka thunderstorm) with global warming.
August 6th, 2011
Source: Climate Depot
[Climate Depot Comment: ‘This is psychologically healthy development for Gore. He needs to face the reality that despite his film, an Oscar, a Nobel, a compliant shoddy news media, the UN, Hollywood, untold tens of billions of dollars spent, propaganda directed at school kids, and twisted science – the movement Gore helped found, is dying scientifically, politically and economically. It is time to celebrate the utter and complete failure of the sub-prime science of man-made global warming.‘ More analysis on why Gore has failed here.]
Gore: ‘They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it’
The Failure of Al Gore: Part One
August 6th, 2011
Source: The American Interest
by Walter Russell Mead
It must be as perplexing to his many admirers as it is frustrating to himself that a man of Vice President Gore’s many talents, great skills and strong beliefs is one of the most consistent losers in American politics.
“All political careers end in failure,” said Enoch Powell; Gore has not won an election on his own since his 1990 re-election to the Senate from Tennessee. His 1988 presidential bid ended well short of the nomination. Many observers felt Gore was headed for defeat in a third Senate campaign as the south continued to swing Republican; Clinton’s offer of the vice presidential slot in 1992 gave Gore the opportunity to reach a national audience as his home state cooled. On his own again in 2000, gifted by the departing Clinton with the most bubbliciously expanding economy in American history and a comfortable budget surplus, and insulated from the innuendo and scandal of the Clinton White House by his still-vibrant marriage, he found the elusive road to defeat against a flawed and inexperienced challenger. Tennessee voted for Bush; Florida or no Florida Gore would have gone to the White House if those who knew him longest and best had rallied to his support.
Once out of office, he assumed the leadership of the global green movement, steering that movement into a tsunami of defeat that, when the debris is finally cleared away, will loom as one of the greatest failures of civil society in all time.
August 5th, 2011
Source: UK Met Office
4 August 2011 – Two research papers shed new light on why the upper layers of the world’s oceans have seen a recent pause in warming despite continued increases in greenhouse gases.
The independent studies from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Met Office show how natural climate variability can temporarily mask longer-term trends in upper ocean heat content and sea surface temperature.
The upper 700 metres of the global ocean has seen a rise in temperature since reliable records began in the late 1960s. However, there has been a pause in this warming during the period from 2003 to 2010. The papers published this week offer explanations for this.
Arctic ‘tipping point’ may not be reached
August 5th, 2011
Source: BBC
Scientists say current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced.
Danish researchers analysed ancient pieces of driftwood in north Greenland which they say is an accurate way to measure the extent of ancient ice loss.
Writing in the journal Science, the team found evidence that ice levels were about 50% lower 5,000 years ago.
They say changes to wind systems can slow down the rate of melting.
They argue, therefore, that a tipping point under current scenarios is unlikely.
Radical Environmentalists’ Continuing Campaign Against Economic Freedom
August 5th, 2011
Source: The Foundry
Recently, radical environmentalists have waged a campaign to stifle free enterprise and economic freedom. Here are some of their recent skirmishes, ranging from crop destruction in Australia to attacks on toy companies like Lego and Disney:
- Photos of Greenpeace activists destroying an experimental crop of genetically modified (GM) wheat earlier this month in Australia. They apparently decided that they have the right to act lawlessly and destroy work by scientists designed to feed a hungry world. Even The New York Times rebuked Greenpeace’s actions and argued that the GM wheat field destruction “threatens to completely marginalize the group, and presumably will undercut its credibility when it takes stands on other issues, from climate to palm oil.”
- Read the rest of this entry »
Floods of the Upper Midwest United States: A 75-Year History
August 5th, 2011
Source: CO2 Science
Reference
Villarini, G., Smith, J.A., Baeck, M.L. and Krajewski, W.F. 2011. Examining flood frequency distributions in the Midwest U.S. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 47: 447-463.
Background
The authors write that the Upper Midwest United States — consisting of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois — “has been plagued by flooding over the past 100 years,” and they say that “these events are responsible for numerous fatalities and large economic damage (e.g., Changnon, 1997, 1999; Pielke and Downton, 2000; Otto, 2009), in particular over the last two decades, with the 1993 and 2008 floods causing economic losses in excess of one billion dollars.”
August 5th, 2011
Source: CO2 Science
In a Policy Forum article in Science, Buyx and Tait (2011) say that “climate change is predicted to impose increasing harms, in particular on those most disadvantaged,” and they go on to state, in their very next sentence, that “thus, climate change mitigation is a vital common good.”
With this declaration as the starting point of their discussion, the two academics approvingly note that “mandatory targets for introduction and blending of biofuels have been introduced” by both the European Union and the United States, even though, as they acknowledge “there are serious concerns about negative effects on food security, the environment, and the rights of farmers and landholders in developing countries,” after which — using various derivatives of the word ethics some 20-plus times — they strive to make the production and use of biofuels as palliative as possible. But have they not put the cart before the horse in terms of the ethics of biofuels?
Things More Worrisome than AGW: various determinants of human well-being
August 5th, 2011
Source: Climate Change Reconsidered
Reference
by Craig Idso
van Vuuren, D. P., Isaac, M., Kundzewicz, Z. W., Arnell, N., Barker, T. Criqui, P., Berkhout, F., Hilderink, H., Hinkel, J., Hof , A., Kitous, A., Kram, T., Mechler, R., and Scrieciu, S. 2011. The use of scenarios as the basis for combined assessment of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Global Environmental Change 21: 575-591.
This paper summarizes the results of several analyses that investigate the global impacts on various determinants of human well-being, including malaria, agricultural productivity, water stress, sea level rise, and heating and cooling demand through 2100 under a “no climate change” scenario and two “policy” scenarios. The first policy scenario, which serves as the “baseline,” assumes no climate change policies and would increase the global mean temperature by 4 °C above the pre-industrial level by 2100. The second is a Mitigation scenario which would stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at around 450 ppm CO2-equivalent leading to a 2 °C increase in 2100. Its aim is to assess the effects of an aggressive mitigation policy on the global impacts of climate change.
Pre-Industrial Climate Change and Human Population
August 5th, 2011
Source: Climate Change Reconsidered
Reference
Zhang, D.D., Lee, H.F., Wang, C., Li, B., Zhang, J., Pei, Q. and Chen, J. 2011. Climate change and large-scale human population collapses in the pre-industrial era. Global Ecology and Biogeography 20: 520-531.
According to Zhang et al. (2011), it has long been assumed that “deteriorating climate” — defined as either cooling or warming — “could shrink the carrying capacity of agrarian lands, depriving the human population of sufficient food,” with “population collapses (i.e., negative population growth)” the unavoidable consequence; but they say that “this human-ecological relationship has rarely been verified scientifically,” noting that at the highend of the temperature spectrum, “evidence of warming-caused disaster has never been found.”
AGW and Malaria — IPCC Wrong, Again
August 5th, 2011
Source: Climate Change Reconsidered
Reference
Nkurunziza, H. and Pilz, J. 2011. Impact of increased temperature on malaria transmission in Burundi. International Journal of Global Warming 3: 77-87.
Authors Nkurunziza and Pilz (2011) — a mathematician and a statistician — introduce their study by stating that “malaria is the main public health problem in the area of Burundi,” citing Protopopoff et al. (2007) and the World Health Organization (2005), while further noting that malaria is responsible for some two million clinical cases that result in more than 15,000 deaths each year, including 50% of all hospital deaths of children under five years of age.
Nkurunziza and Pilz then proceed to employ Bayesian Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) to assess the impact of an increase in temperature on malaria transmission, which in addition to monthly maximum and minimum temperature data, utilized monthly rainfall and humidity data, as well monthly malaria morbidity data for the period 1996-2007, all of which were obtained for each province of the country.
Dynamics of the Greenland Icesheet
August 5th, 2011
Source: Climate Change Reconsidered
by Craig Idso
Reference
Sundal, A.V., Shepherd, A., Nienow, P., Hanna, E., Palmer, S. and Huybrechts, P. 2011. Melt-induced speed-up of Greenland ice sheet offset by efficient subglacial drainage. Nature 469: 521-524.
According to Sundal et al. (2011), “fluctuations in surface melting are known to affect the speed of glaciers and ice sheets,” but these authors say that “their impact on the Greenland ice sheet in a warming climate remains uncertain,” citing Meehl et al. (2007), while further noting, in this regard, that “although some studies suggest that greater melting produces greater ice-sheet acceleration (Zwally et al., 2002; Parizek and Alley, 2004),” others have identified a long-term decrease in Greenland’s flow despite increased melting (van de Wal et al., 2008).”
In a study designed to further explore this important subject, and based on data for five different years (1993 and 1995-1998), Sundal et al. used “satellite observations of ice motion recorded in a land-terminating sector of southwest Greenland to investigate the manner in which ice flow develops during years of markedly different melting.” So what did they find?
August 5th, 2011
Source: Climate Change Reconsidered
by Craig Idso
Reference
Vecchi, G.A. and Knutson, T.R. 2011. Estimating annual numbers of Atlantic hurricanes missing from the HURDAT database (1878-1965) using ship track density. Journal of Climate 24: 1736-1746.
In a recent paper published in Climate Research, Trenberth (2011) compares the projections of state-of-the-art climate models with what is known about the real world with respect to extreme meteorological events related to atmospheric moisture, such as precipitation and various types of storm systems, as well as subsequent extreme consequences such as droughts, floods and wind damage. So what does he find?
69% Say It’s Likely Scientists Have Falsified Global Warming Research
August 5th, 2011
Source: Rasmussen Report
The debate over global warming has intensified in recent weeks after a new NASA study was interpreted by skeptics to reveal that global warming is not man-made. While a majority of Americans nationwide continue to acknowledge significant disagreement about global warming in the scientific community, most go even further to say some scientists falsify data to support their own beliefs.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who say this is Very Likely. Twenty-two percent (22%) don’t think it’s likely some scientists have falsified global warming data, including just six percent (6%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 10% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here .)
Things More Worrisome than AGW: Heat waves pushes Texas power grid into red zone
August 5th, 2011
Source: Reuters
The Texas power grid operator has scrambled this week to meet soaring electricity demand in the face of a brutal heat wave, and residents of the second most populous U.S. state are one power plant shut-down away from rolling blackouts.
Power demand for Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc, or ERCOT, which runs the power grid for most of the state, hit three consecutive records this week as Texans cranked up air conditioners to escape one of the hottest summers on record.
The grid operator on Thursday cut power to some big industrial users, and businesses and households face a repeat of the rolling blackouts they faced in February, when a bitter cold snap interrupted power supplies.
h/t to Bob Ferguson, SPPI
http://coloradoindependent.com/95450/al-gore-calls-b-s-on-corporate-polluters
Unfortunately, for now, Wil’s invocation of the “Golden Rule” – “he who has the gold, makes the rules” – is still probably a fair assessment of the situation. ‘Twas ever so.
On the other hand, though, I think things are changing, if slowly. The Western economic system is pretty much in the position of one of those cartoon characters who has run off a cliff, but not looked down yet. We have recently heard that about 7 out of 10 Americans now doubt that “scientists” are always dispassionate, honest individuals. We hear of the convoys in Australia … there are signs that we are reaching what Churchill called “the end of the beginning”, at least. Perhaps even we staid Brits will begin to stir once more of us realise that we’re currently paying over twice as much for our “electric” as we were ten years ago, the figure racking ever upward.
Let’s hope that Gore loses it more often. It means we’re getting our message through, and that more of the public are aware that the AGW Emperor has no clothes. It’s a sort of linguistic equivalent of the old (and most likely apocryphal) Chinese rules for debate: violence is freely allowed, but whoever strikes the first blow loses the argument. Keep on cussin’, Al, keep calling us seven shades of sh**, feel free. And meanwhile we’ll keep up our modest requests for any evidence at all to prop up your, er, arguments, and we’ll smile nicely while we’re doing it. 🙂
Hugh Pepper says:
August 6, 2011 at 10:57 am
“…Actions to curtail CO2 emissions and develop alternative energy sources are evident in other parts of the world, notably Europe, and perhaps part of this has resulted from Mr Gore’s efforts.”
Take AlGore… please.
What alternative energy sources are evident in other parts of the world, notably Europe, that we don’t also have right here in the good Ol’ US of A?
Well Smokey… Micheal Mann was also found to be innocent.
Hockey Stick’ Climate Scientist Found Innocent of All Charges.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/07/02/hockey-stick-climate-scientist-innocent-mann/#ixzz1UHFKgPWp
And we made better decisions when we didn’t elect him as President. Gore is still a loser and will always be a loser.”
[snip off topic – your comment will start a whole different argument unrelated to the issue at hand ~mod]
Well so were OJ and Casey; what’s your point?
If Gore wants to be taken seriously I guess he shouldn’t have bought that gosh-darned luxurious Montecito beachfront pad after he told us to expect monster sea level rises if we didn’t go back to living in caves, should he…
To paul. Temper tauntrum does not cause global warming. Only CO2 can. However, global warming will cause a sharp rise in global average temper tauntrums, according to our newest computer models.
”A group of six of Mann’s Penn State colleagues found him innocent of 3 out of 4 charges on February 3, but the investigative panel requested a deeper, more thorough look into whether his conduct deviated from standard scientific practice.”
From the FNC article
Foxes clearing the one who has feathers on his lips…
If Gore wants to be taken seriously I guess he shouldn’t have bought that gosh-darned luxurious Montecito beachfront pad after he told us to expect monster sea level rises if we didn’t go back to living in caves, should he…”
Sceptic…. Gore will be dead before the sea levels become a problem. So what’s the problem?
Gore is an authoritarian parasite who has committed betrayal on the world, his own country and the American people for political power and financial gain.
I think he’s a monster and a disgrace to humanity.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Al Gore is worse than a snake oil salesman, he’s a Southern Tent Revivalist. He flunked out of theology school, but apparently not before learning about preaching the word. You see younger versions of him on the street corners in the south, holding a Bible in one hand and screaming Biblical verses. Gore isn’t stupid, look at Scientology and tell me that he’s not using it as a business model.
Gore failed miserably as a politician. It is as a propagandist that he has found his forte. He has probably influenced received attitudes more than any who went before him and that influence has extended worldwide. What disturbs me most is that his success (if that is the word for it) seems likely to be emulated by other wealthy but failed politicians in the future. I am not happy with the thought that my great grandchildren will have to live in a world of budding Al Gores.
Looks like the beginning of a preference cascade. Even though media and many governments are on board with Gore’s bad science, the fact that he’s losing it will get more and more attention. The more desperate they get, the less credible they will look. I think things are swinging back to better science, but we still have a ways to go. The sillier they act, the faster the collapse goes. I think more and more people are coming to the idea that they have a right to know the science.
The biggest sign of bad science is not being willing to engage in debate with one’s opponents. And you can’t win if you won’t let people see the magic that let you come to the conclusion you came to. Which is even worse when you consider the economic damage they want to do to to fix a problem that may not even be there. I think Big Green is worse than Big Oil. Big oil is at least providing value for the money they get. I’m thinking Gore will become a bigger laughing stock as time moves on. He laughed all the way to the bank, but karma may play turnabout with him.
Before the presentation of Mr Gore and his film ‘An inconvenient truth’ in 2007 I had already read the book ‘State of fear’ (2004) of Michael Crichton. In this book an American environment organisation (Greenpeace ?) ask a marketingconsultant how they must introduce a worldwide action around the theme ‘global warming’ with a rise of the global temperature of 2-5 degrees. After investigation they advise them not to use the rise in temperature as the eye-opener, because people cannot imagine much by such a rise. No, they must take ‘severe weather events’ as a central theme of global warming. They happen from time to time all over the world and people has a bad memory of such events in the past, so global warming can easily be accepted as the reason.
From that time I was interested in this subject and was wondering how long this fairy-tale would last.
Wait you here a moment, what do you mean he cussed during a presentation, he is the bloody demagogue curse. :p
Wil says:
August 6, 2011 at 10:22 am
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Think Gore is a winner? Look at what the green agenda has done. Wasted billions, If rational energy and political policies were followed would the US have a downgraded credit rating, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Canada and England are are suffering from “green” energy policies that are sucking the life out of our economies – it isn’t alone but it is a big contributor – and perhaps it has a “forcing” affect. I am all for pollution control – I’d make littering a $10,000 fine but the green power thing is just dumb. I recycle and do most of the things a responsible person should do but Gore – total hypocrite.
Brian, the problem is that Gore doesn’t practice what he preaches. That makes him a hypocrite. And having read the mendacious, post normal
scienceeasily refuted CAGW tripe that he laughingly presents as “fact” contained in Climate of Denial, I have a big problem taking seriously anything he says on the subject.What’s your problem?
And just who polluted the topic of climate?
The profiteer whose movie made millions?
GE making billions and paying no taxes?
those who hid the decline?
hunter
What the hell is wrong with GE making billions and paying no taxes as long as they’re obeying the law? Take away the corporations and what have you got? Somalia.
“I am not one of those who thinks him a hypocrite; I think rather that he shares an illusion common amongst the narcissistic glitterati of our time: that politically fashionable virtue cancels private vice.”
This is the problem with our narcissistic glitterati and those who think like them: they can’t admit to seeing hypocrisy when it’s in front of them. Instead, they calm themselves with an illusion to make them believe it’s not really there.
It it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc.
mike g says:
“What the hell is wrong with GE making billions and paying no taxes as long as they’re obeying the law? ”
Normally nothing would be considered wrong. However, in the case of GE you have a company that supports an administration that demagogues corporate taxes and profits incessantly particularly those of “big oil” You have the CEO or chairman of the boardof GE, D. Immelt, serving as a so-called jobs “czar” in the administration. You also have GE owning major news media outlets, NBC & MSNBC, which are incessantly calling for higher taxes on the “rich” and on “corporations” while acting as a defacto PR outlet for the administration. It has an unsavory appearance of duplicity and hypocrisy on the grandest of scales.
I looked up the topic “GE pays no taxes” and found that, lo and behold, the CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, has been advising Obama on taxes and business in general.
With any other president, there might just be an investigation going on as to why such a close chum of the Prez is getting such a break (though to be fair, they are following the tax code as is written). I can (once again) only imagine the vitriol that would be in the press if a good ol’ oil buddy of GWB hadn’t paid taxes on his billions of profit in two years.
Regardless, what polluted the topic of climate was the blatantly unscientific behavior of the team et al. Once I heard Jones’ “Why should I give you my data when all you’ll try to do is find something wrong with it,” I knew we weren’t talking science any more. Suppressing rival papers; declaring a “consensus,” as though that’s how science is done; engaging in ad hominem attacks: none of these things is how science is done, nor even how skeptics are dealt with. It’s certainly not how the biologists deal with the still-ongoing bother of creationists they have hanging around badgering them.
Wait, the same guy who thinks we shouldn’t be allowed to buy music with naughty words in it* issues actual profanities when giving a science-like talk?
*reminder: the warning labels were a compromise to keep Al & Tipper’s PMRC from lobbying to outright ban the sale of naughty music. Funny how having the wife of a sitting senator as a professional lobbyist can get hearings that directly contravene the spirit (if just skirting against the actual letter) of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Wil says:
August 6, 2011 at 10:22 am
He gets traction with government officials in the US and abroad because they see how his government-imposed regulatory markets can make them and their friends rich. Why else would PoW Charles give Al G the time of day? Al’s burning up not because of AGW, but because his carbon credits are not going to be worth much soon.
Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk. – Curly Howard
[snip we don’t discuss HAARP on WUWT, take that junk someplace else ~mod]