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A person who is actually a climate skeptic (and WUWT regular) applied for and was granted a training slot in Chicago this week. http://climaterealityproject.org/leadership-corps/ and has graduated as one of the 1500 people that attended the event.
For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal the person’s name, but I can reveal the communication I received last night.
The ‘mole’ writes:
I’m now a card-carrying, official Gore-bot.
(I took copious notes)
a) This was a super-liberal “kum-bay-ya” crowd as I predicted. I kept many of my opinions to myself. The event truly did have a “religious cult programming” feel to it, similar to an Amway meeting I attended years ago – carefully timed applause, audience call & response etc. Very bizarre.
b) Al Gore himself went through the entire slide show that we are supposed to use as his “Climate Leaders.” Quite honestly, there is nothing new here, EXCEPT that there is no trace of the “hockey stick” graph that was so central to “An Inconvenient Truth”!! Amazing, considering how central that was to their arguments!
c) Instead, Al lumps data together year-by-year or decade-by-decade to show an ever increasing rise in temps. He poo-pooed measurement inaccuracies, specifically mentioning UHI effects and saying that the scientists determined these were insignificant.
d) A couple graphs stood out – one showed the documented rise in temperature PRECEDES the rise in CO2 which he brushed aside as “typical variation.” The only hockey stick was one that projected atmospheric CO2 over time, jumping up drastically in coming years. I didn’t have time to write units down, but it was a big jump. It could be a realistic rise with China & India bringing new coal plants online, I’d have to check any citations.
e) Al’s presentation was heavy on his new concept of “dirty weather,” see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/24-hours-of-reality-dirty-weather_n_2130344.html
To summarize, I didn’t see anything new or ground-breaking in this mess. Most slides were BS, typical “this is due to climate, not weather” type stuff we kick around on WUWT all the time. Hurricane Sandy, torrential rains in Pakistan etc.
Personal observations:
a) We skeptics ain’t liked much with them folks. The “d” word (denier) was used liberally, and I queried several participants, some of who were very cool folks, about it. Al Gore and his speakers used “Denier,” “Denial Industry” and other terms I found objectionable. Lousy salesmen, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
b) Nothing new was presented, technically speaking. This thing was “An Inconvenient Truth” redux, with much of the controversial stuff (hockey stick & drowning polar bears) deleted. Al got our message, he doesn’t seem to want to engage folks like us.
c) Al gave some insights into his own choices for low-carbon technologies, with a focus upon photovoltaics & wind power. He doesn’t like BWR nukes and objects because of financial reasons, which I agree with (particularly post-Fukishima). He mentioned that Oak Ridge National Labs in TN is testing a variety of nuclear reactor designs which sound promising (thorium maybe?) but didn’t elaborate.
d) Stuff I’m interested in, like ocean acidification, were only briefly touched upon. Al didn’t discuss the diplomacy challenges of engaging China and India, although he did mention their growing carbon output.
Quick summary:
Al is a polished speaker, and looked trim & in shape. Very impressive command of his speaking material. Decent speakers lined up, including some sustainability folks from private industry. I’m told the health/climate breakout session was terrible & am glad I took a pass on it.
==============================================================
UPDATE: Since many of the Gore followers are arriving here, I welcome you to answer this question that nobody would ask Mr. Gore this week:
If the position and science is so strong, why did Mr. Gore have to fake the results of his experiment in the Climate 101 video (which you may have seen and is still on the climate reality web page).
You can see the experiment recreated here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
For the few of you brave enough, thanks for taking the time to answer that question – Anthony
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@ur momisugly richardscourtney
Corrections –
1.) You are not a scientist.
2.) You have chosen the minority position. It is correct that nothing requires you to prove your assertions (which makes my work easier, btw) however, you have a decision to make.
How will you make a difference in the world with what you know?
Will you settle for just being right, or will you use your knowledge to serve everyone?
You could save lives and economies by proving that AGW is not true. Will you take that on, or just be superior?
3.) As you know, emissions from coal-fired electrical plants kill people and make them sick. They increase deaths downwind from lung cancer, and increase asthma and other respiratory diseases, accompanied by higher medical costs for those families downwind for approx 25-50 miles.
We know this in Chicago, because until the last decade, half of our electricity was produced by coal-fired plant, the other half by nuclear energy. The last speaker at Climate Reality was a Chicago neighborhood organizer that succeeded in closing a coal-fired plant here.
If Global warming science is wrong, we still need to replace coal-fired electrical generation.
“European coal pollution causes 22,300 premature deaths a year in Europe” a study published 12 June 2013 in The Guardian showed. “Burning coal also costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days,”
Will you join us in this campaign – global warming or not?
James B.
Chicago
James says
GET A CLUE! NO ONE LOVES GLOBAL WARMING – EVERYONE WANTS TO STOP IT!!
@James Baldwin
it is already globally cooling
so you can stop worrying about that now
It will not stop globally cooling until 2038
in fact, if I were living on the great plains, I would start worrying about that:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
[cut]
James B
James B:
Concerning your untrue and unfounded attacks on me.
I repeatedly asked you to substantiate your falsehoods about AGW.
Your replies only consist of falsehoods about me.
I do not rely on climate science, environmentalism and the AGW-scare for anything.
You say you rely on climate science, environmentalism and the AGW-scare for your income.
In light of these facts, I observe that you obtained inadequate “training” at the ‘Al Gore’ event you attended.
Richard
Hi Anthony, did my comments on your experiment make it to you? I do not see them posted. I commented regarding the fact that you did a great job at showing that visual effects were used in the video you posted from Bill Nye and Al Gore. I admit I have not watched Bill Nye before and am not sure if this is typical or not. However, you did not actually conduct the experiment. Have you or your readers considered actually trying the experiment? If you try the experiment and it does not work, your point would be more valid. I am going to see if the college I teach at has the materials. If it does, I will happily have my students video the experiment and we will post it. One thing to be careful of if you do try it is that you bought oral thermometers and not air thermometers. You cannot use oral thermometers to measure air.
henry@suzanne lewis
essentially by asking if you can evaluate the GH effect from a closed box experiment,
you admit to not having a clue, just like Tyndall and Arrhenius did not understand 100 years ago,
But we must forgive them, because they did not know then what we know now.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
I hope you will read it and at least try to understand, a bit,
I am sure James B is not interested in even trying to understand ….
Dear Sir, you continue to display your ignorance to this forum. A simple Google search of “DrPH” shows that it stands for “Doctor of Public Health,” the public health equivalent of the M.D. degree. My background is in environmental science, and I have worked in alternative energy since the grim Jimmy Carter years. I’ve known about the “global warming” argument since my undergrad days in the 1970’s and find that alternative hypotheses to Mr. Gore’s have merit and should be openly discussed by professionals, scientists, policy-makers and lay folk before society is re-engineered by force. You may categorize me as a “lukewarmer light.”
WUWT has proven to be one of the most accepting places on the web where all sorts of folks, even extremists to both positions, can mingle, trade ideas and debate in a highly moderated and open environment. Please treat us with respect, you may be a LEED architect and I appreciate your work in this space, as energy conservation is important for many reasons. However I and many others on WUWT have numerous professional reports, textbooks, peer-reviewed publications, patents and other equally impressive backgrounds. We are here for discussion and debate, not lectures upon the merits of Mr. Saul Alinsky.