![climate-reality-leadership-corps-190x240[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/climate-reality-leadership-corps-190x2401.jpg?quality=83)
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
St Gore may be a failed politician but his still got the ‘taste ‘ for leadership and if that means a cult then that is fine with him .
Which leave us with a problem , should St Gore decide to he ‘needs’ leave his earthly body to return to his godhood , do we morn or laugh ?
It is interesting that the purpose of this meeting seems to be aimed at creating a kind of cult with Gore as its Messiah and a “them and us” mentality as far as “deniers” are concerned. This is rather different from a political movement where the approach is to try and remain as open as possible to people that might be willing to change their minds.
Does make you wonder where Gore is going with all this. He’s starting to look more and more like a David Icke character in the making.
+1 Bernd Felsche
I am curious too. Did any kind of exchange take place or was it just a delivery of instructions?
@ur momisugly Lewis P Buckingham
The share price of the company that has the technology you spoke of, Silex Systems, rose by 20% yesterday and another 6% today. I feel a capital raising may be in the offing. This is Australia, after all..
The Gore cult reminds me of a horrible thing that a girlfriend tried to con me into joining once: The Landmark Forum. Mad people. I shudder to remember it!
Watch the feet; they follow the money, as ever..
Isn’t all this just a modern version of the hippie movement of the ’60s: get back to nature, change society, live in communes, etc,?
@ur momisugly David L., hardly. The hippie movement was quite benign, whereas this one is purposely destructive. Indeed, the Greenie movement has many of the same elements as fas*ism, using fear and propaganda as tools. The hippies were anti-establishment, but primarily by dropping out, whereas these folks are part of a giant multi-$billion machine with malevolent intent.
This sucker is going for another Nobel Prize. The little shoulder patches and soon young troubadours with balalaikas ….
@Bruce Cobb August 2, 2013 at 4:18 am
Good point. That raises a question for me: I wonder if this AGW movement is more closely related to Marxism, rather than f@scism (or any of the other varieties of -isms of the era!) With the idea of wealth redistribution (under the guise of saving the planet) I’d propose it’s more in line with Marxism.
And that, my dear Watson, was how I solved the Case of the Missing Heat.
Fascinating, Holmes! Wherever did you learn this well-honed tradecraft of yours?
University, my dear Watson! University!
The fine points of clear, unfettered thinking supported only by facts and data is a skill not mastered by many. It requires a trained mind, Watson. Trained by pure logic to see nothing but the facts and the underlying data that supports them. Data and facts are truth, Watson, my good man!
Odd, is it not, that one must use truth to catch a thief, a murderer or a simple liar?
Quite right, Holmes. Quite right. But when did you develop this interest… this passion of yours for…
High School, my dear Watson! High School!
There was this Professor there… a man possessed of brilliant insight and knowledge — or so they said. He challenged us, Watson. He challenged us every day to…
Seek the truth?
No, Watson! He challenged us to believe every bloody thing he uttered from his well-stuffed pie-hole. The man was an absolute buffoon! Born into privilege, he became accustomed to having the weak-minded of every social strata believe his every prognostication as if it were from Moses himself.
Holmes! I remember hearing stories of a Professor Gore who was singularly attracted to himself and was quite enamored with his intellectual acumen.
One and the same, Watson! He was a large man with a small mind who fancied himself intellectually well-endowed. Pity the ladies who could find no evidence to support his claims of intellect. Or endowment, for that matter.
Yes, quite. As I remember the man was shamed…
Shamed by real men and women of quiet dignity who simply wanted the truth, Watson!
Holmes… wasn’t Professor Gore eventually found guilty of fraud of some sort? As I recall, the only level of education he actually succeeded at was…
Elementary, my dear Watson! Elementary!
Holmes. You are brilliant.
Carry on, Watson.
Hey the religion thing worked for L. Ron Hubbard. He just hasn’t figured out a way to identify himself as Pope Al yet….
[snip – while I disagree with Mr. Gore, that’s over the top – Anthony]
For those who have commented that Al has not presented a welcoming approach for sceptics who might convert, I doubt that Al wants any former sceptic in his ranks. When you run a scam, having a possible thinker mixed in among the victims is far too dangerous to justify any additional revenue. There is a reason why many cults have some unbelievable gateway doctrine that must be swallowed by new converts; it keeps out the non-gullible.
It will be interesting to see how far and wide your friendly mole’s personal information is spread to other related political organizations. An update in a few months detailing all the new solicitations for funds would be interesting.
For any future moles, when you sign up for these things include a slight misspelling of your name or address, use a new email address (not Richard Windsor!), etc. That way you can quickly separate out the spawn from your efforts. Do it a few times, its interesting to see who is sharing with who.
You’re a far better man than I am, Temp! I would rather go to a series of Time-Share sales presentations than have to sit through the dreck you exposed yourself to.
I just don’t think I could do this. I could not keep a straight face or keep my mouth shut long enough to complete the training.
Did you have to do some sort of desensitizing training beforehand? Maybe like they did in “A Clockwork Orange?” When I went to POW training in Air Force Survival School, we had several days of classroom orientation and prep work first.
Basically, it sounds like a political science junkie event especially for the rising students looking for connections, all under the theme of politician science. Think networking not science.
It sounds like an episode from The Twilight Zone. Probably the one with Dennis Hopper in.
Two points.
1. The health stuff is an important selling point, wrong as usual. One thing you won’t hear about health is that CO2 allows more food to be grown per acre, AND allows less water to be used per acre, AND allows more northerly areas to be warm enough, long enough to grow crops. Food is your #1 priority in a world with more people. Many enviros really, really don’t want a world with more people. I don’t want much more population growth, either, but starvation isn’t the right policy to achieve it (economic growth and self interest is: when people in the developing world move up the economic ladder, they no longer have 5 to 9 kids, they tend to have a number they can take nurture and care of, as in the developed world).
2. ORNL nukes: they are small and modular, meaning they can be built at a factory with a standard design. No more custom building at the site with lots of high priced labor and the opportunity for something to go a bit wrong in construction. They should be safer and cheaper per amount of electricity produced, and if you don’t need as much electricity as the standard huge nuke that requires economies of scale to even begin to be economic, you can order a modular nuke that produces 1/10 the power at (hopefully) something like 1/15th the cost.
“Actually, from what I’ve read, Al Gore tightly controls those slides, and will take legal action against any of the followers that release them into the public domain.”
So they’re on releasing the data…..How Mannian of them…Go figure.
Dodgy Geezer,
“But a more subtle literary reference might be G K Chesterton’s ‘The Man who was Thursday’.
You will recall that in that book, dealing with the infiltration of a gang of anarchists by a police spy, the entire gang turns out to be comprised of police spies, with the chief of police as head of the movement….”
I read that years ago. Loved it. But I could never remember what the book was called, or who it was by. So thanks for that.
I seem to remember that when the IRA disbanded, it turned out that at least one IRA cell was composed entirely of informants.
David L:
Fascism was born out of Marxist theory. The only difference is under Fascism the state controls property rather then owning it.
The documentary “the Soviet Story” elaborates on this some.
What did anonymous Gore-botter expect at a training camp for crusaders? It was evangelical: “Spread the Word”. It is written:
>>The science is settled. Our planet is heating up, and carbon pollution from Dirty Energy is to blame. Gore.
Francis Bacon took a couple of decades to insert causation in physical sciences. He created Modern Science by inserting scientific deduction into Aristotle’s scientific method. That was 1620. Between 1934 and 1963, Karl Popper managed to remove scientific deduction from MS to create Post Modern Science, free from Cause & Effect (causation) and from the principle of causality (the cause must precede its effects). Thus where the effect (temperature) can precede its cause (CO2), the subject is a matter of faith. It is PMS.
Where a model’s predictions fail, i.e., AGW, that model is PMS. Take two Tylenol and call me in the morning.
Is this one more case where criticizing one man’s faith makes another feel big?
The shoulder patches are just too close for comfort. The man has no concept of history.
Mongo said, “it is return of the Hitler youth program”
Socialists have always been big on cults. Jim Jones following from San Fransisco and this older one:
These people work this information into anything they can. I once attended a sales training that was given to my employees by one of the “initiated”. This guy was pretty smooth and worked the material into his sales training program. Of course, afterward I asked him, innocently, if he really thought that was true. I was treated to a ton of slides that were at the ready: Polar bears on ice in the middle of the ocean, sat photos of ice free NW Passage, Hockey Stick, etc.
It’s just so underhanded and dishonest it makes me ill.