“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
This of course was first observed some years ago during a procedure to measure the sea level rise.
Neck deep in the sea and with a tape measure, Al would try to establish the sea level by taking the average of the wave troughs and peaks. The troughs were easy enough but every time he went to measure a peak, the wave would blast him in the face. This alone could account for his rather large error in sea level rise, but also the noted cursing at regularly spaced intervals.
/sarc
Brian, maybe you should update your information? Most of the stuff you linked to is out of date and/or inaccurate. Much like the “information” contained in the Gore missive.
Take the very recent news for the Murray-Darling Basin for example. The drought has come to an end, as droughts do. The drought has nothing to do with AGW but is the result of natural cycles and land mismanagement. Unless, of course, you have empirical, falsifiable evidence to the contrary?
a wolf in sheeps clothing .
Hugh Pepper: “…It servers no useful purpose to be slagging Gore. He is not your enemy.”
I respectfully disagree. When someone willfully spreads lies, blocks the other opinions from debate, won’t allow media in his conferences, has demonstrated his massive hypocricy in living an energy wasteful life while lecturing others, and has so clearly orchestrated the whole thing for financial gain then he truely is the enemy. But he’s an enemy of his own creation. He is not the victim.
What can one say about Al? Not only has he been delusional about his CAGW fantasy, but he’s been delusional that “the people”, for the most part were behind him. Like all cult leaders, he has needed to believe that, and has been in a state of denial about it. It is almost as though he has been living not only in a bubble, but in a time warp. But, you can only stave off reality for so long. Now he’s angry, and cussing. Good. He’ll drive even more people away from his climate cult, other than the faithful, mindless sheep who continue to imbibe the Koolaid.
Neil Jones says:
August 7, 2011 at 12:37 am
“”””Clearly the “people” should not have read up on this and thought for them selves. That’s not what it’s about :-)””””
————–
Neil Jones,
Well said.
That brings to mind, what are those lines from the movie ‘Gladiator’?
ahhhh, here they are:
John
Loosing the debate are we Al?
We can thank our lucky stars that this man never became our president. He’s just another unhinged eco-twitt.
Hugh Pepper says:
August 6, 2011 at 10:57 am
It is saddening that the message which Mr Gore has been communicating so ably is not perceived by more people. I’m sure he feels this sadness, as do many of us.
The reason Al’s “message” isn’t “perceived by more people” is that more and more people realize that it is just total BS, and that the’ve been hornswaggled. That isn’t “saddening”, except for the sheep who still want to Believe, but see that the CAGW cult/religion is collapsing.
It servers no useful purpose to be slagging Gore. He is not your enemy.
I’d turn that around and say that it serves no useful purpose for you to defend him. He is not your friend, nor is he a friend of humanity, or even of the earth itself. Al Gore is only out for Al Gore.
If Gore wants to talk about extreme weather, he could do worse than look back to 1971.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/essay-by-reader-paul-h-is-our-climate-becoming-more-extreme/
I credit Albert Gore with the creationalist embrace by making the Inconvenient Truth, and its effect on my EPA regulator mate who had just seen the light, the truth, the saviour. He announced that AG was in fact God!! and this remarkable statement rang alarm bells for me as the guy himself is a declared agnostic libertarian of the green kind.
Well that sparked a search as such religious fervour didn’t sit well with my observation of weather patterns, history, and learning. Thankfully the internet gave me access to very complex discussions, and also pompous authority statements, put downs of “contrarian” scientists “what would they know” “bought by big tobacco, big oil, big coal, “retarded” and even worse terms than that. Anything but engage in discussion, move on, shut up. So Al thanks for shaking up my complacence, stimulating my thinking, sorry it didn’t work out for your plans to take over the world, or whatever.
Now could you just speak to your flock and convince them that we need the internet, access to all information and data, free of censorship and dicatorship, or control by regulation, after all didn’t you invent it so we could do exactly as we have done – strip of the spin, the lies, and expose the truth!!
Good old uncle Al!!
Just fade away Al …
James Sexton says:
August 6, 2011 at 10:23 pm
James – the problem with folks like Brian is that they really think that drastically reducing
theirother’s standards of living for the sake of “the planet”* (through things like totally unnecessary “carbon taxes”) will somehow enable mankind to control the climate and hence fix all of the problems he stated.Of course, we have all seen how Al Gore has reduced his standard of living…
* When people use the term “the planet” they never state which planet they’re referring to…how about going back to referring to the place we live as “the Earth”??
Gore: ‘They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it’
Sorry Al, your side polluted the very meaning of intellectual honesty and true scientific discipline. Along the way, the system of peer-review was corrupted by “crony scientism”, and the curtain was pulled back on the Academic-Advocacy-CronyCapitalist-Government Complex.
It really sucks when you have become irrelevant.
Total fail on your assessment. Among the progressives, the height of political discourse and debate includes liberal use of foul language. However, if Big Al really wanted to reclaim his leadership role, he shoulda thrown in some f-bombs. That really woulda been like throwing them some tofu!
RE: Craig: (August 7, 2011 at 4:54 am)
We can thank our lucky stars that this man never became our president.
Hopefully true, but if the President, due to the failed economy, should pull a ‘Johnson’ and recuse himself from the next election then another Clinton/Gore ticket might be possible.
The quoted statement in the main article above does seem to be a clear concession that he has, with great regret, lost control of the climate debate.
opinion. Why can’t scientist look closer to the evidence? Maybe there is some truth in it. Even if there was 30% credible evidence, maybe politicians ought to make serious commitments towards saving the planet. As regarding Gore himself, I think it is unfair to criticize his personality. Maybe he was just having a bad day. Perhaps he should tread a path such as that Jimmy Carter did?
Never count a scoundrel down and out.
Just feel very, very sorry for the Brits. They have 5 political parties all of whom believe that global warming is real. They have a prime minister whose wife is a ghost supporter of the big green orgs and an opposition led by the biggest clown since COCO. They can’t even get rid of them all by not voting. They must be desperate.
Doug in Seattle is right. There are many greedy little fingers in the pot of cash that have financially supported the election of a certain group of genetic mutants sucking the life out of our surfdom economy under the name of saving us from our toxic doom. The puppeteers will continue to dictate to those enslaved public figures who in public drama will seemingly appear ridiculously out of touch with reality. Meanwhile the save the planet bumbersticker crowd do not see themselves as the problem, but zealously follow the gorium deity.
The Gore montra is now the snickery chuckle of BBQ chat, seen as seriously flawed from the onset.
“Clinton’s offer of the vice presidential slot in 1992 gave Gore the opportunity to reach a national audience as his home state cooled. ”
Apt phrase in the context of alleged Global Warming.
Gore doesn’t practice what he preaches, so why should anyone believe him? It is interesting that Bush has one of the most environmentally friendly houses one can design, while Gore has one of the most environmentally unfriendly. Do as I say says Gore, not as I do.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/02/gore-mansion-20x-average-household.html
Wil says:
August 6, 2011 at 11:14 am
“Now the latest polls indicate that as many as 34% say that they think UFOs are real. January 2011 Rasmussen Energy Update, fully one-third, 33%, “see AGW as a Very Serious problem.” Notice more people believe in UFOs than Gore? To me that’s not very able communicating on Gore’s part when more folks believe in aliens, is it?”
err..the flaw in your humorous post is that Unidentified means just that..Unidentified..with a bit more information..most tend to be prosaic..
Sorry..nothing about ET`s.. 🙂
Al…just remind me: what’s the temperature of the earth’s interior? Or perhaps you can explain how CO2 in ice cores causes temperature to rise when there is a lag of 800 years in the wrong direction? Or why your mate Lonnie Thompson only selectively releases ice core data? Or that Poley Bear picture…just where did that come from? “The science is settled”. Science is never settled. “Consensus”: consensus is politics, not science. Al “the science is settled” Gore who won’t debate with anyone. Pathetic.
Like most politicians, Al Gore is scientifically illiterate and a narcissist. And now he’s facing the worst nightmare for a narcissist: he’s increasingly standing in an echo chamber. Just think of all those fundraisers to come with a thousand rubber chickens going cold…*
*Ok..credit for the last line to Al Stewart.
Venter says:
August 6, 2011 at 10:17 am
“You see these signs of desperation everywhere in the pro-AGW community these days. They are lashing out indiscriminately and letting their anger and frustration show as they can see that their edifice is crumbling.”
Yes, desperation is one reasonable interpretation of Gore’s recent antics. Another is that Big Al realizes that he’s on the losing side of history, and is trying to milk every last dollar out of his True Believer followers, before the whole movement implodes.
Gore’s recent colorful metaphors appear to be part of an effort to tailor his sales pitch to the new reality. Yes, I feel your pain. Here, have some Demerol.
Larry Fields