Guest essay by Eric Worrall
I guess after getting the science wrong so many times Al Gore feels safer predicting a political tipping point than another dodgy “Ice Free Arctic” prediction.
Al Gore: America Is Close to a ‘Political Tipping Point’ on Climate Change
The former vice president discusses how the politics of the environment have changed considerably over his decades of advocacy.
EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE
JAN 3, 2019…
Isaac Dovere: Where do you see the politics of climate change right now?
Al Gore: I think that we are extremely close to a political tipping point. We may actually be crossing it right about now. The much-vaunted tribalism in American politics has contributed to an odd anomaly, in that the core of one of our political parties is uniquely—in all of the world—still rejecting not just the science, but also the messages from Mother Nature that have pushed toward, and perhaps are pushing across, this political tipping point right now.
More and more people on the conservative side of the spectrum are really changing their positions now. This election, in 2020, is almost certainly going to be different from any previous presidential election in that a number of candidates will be placing climate at or near the top of their agenda. And I think that by the time the first primary and caucus votes are cast a year from now, you’re going to see a very different political dialogue in the U.S.
The climate-related extreme-weather events are causing millions of people who had successfully pushed this issue into the background and into the projected distant future to now be finding ways to talk about it and to express their deep concern.
Dovere: When you were in politics and talking about climate change, you were made fun of for it. Is that weird to think about now?
Gore: Forty years ago, it was not easy to get people’s sustained attention for this looming crisis. It’s much easier now.
…
The Democrat leadership certainly seems on board with Al Gore’s theory, their new Congressional climate committee is to be called “United States House Fellowship of the Climate Crisis Select Committee on the Climate Crisis“.
What do you guys think?
I’m aware far too many schools have been doing damage over the years by focussing on green indoctrination rather than education, trying to turn our kids into little eco-warriors, but despite this I am optimistic.
A funny thing happens after the kids graduate; they get their first set of bills, they run up debts and mortgages, and suddenly the importance of economic growth and the cost of expensive electricity and fuel becomes a lot more real to them.
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Just know what he’s really doing.
He’s continually providing grist for the mill so all the faithful will stay on board ever motivated to enter nirvana where they are conquerors who will of course manage the spoils of this war. He is their general, fighting the only war he’s had any real influence over. As an aside, what is the first rule of war? Deception. Is Al Gore a deceiver? and doesn’t he have conflicts of interest?
The climate faithful must not be allowed to have doubts that might lead to Democratic policies being rejected, so the Democrats abuse everyone over climate change, with AL being the chief abuser, followed closely by the media, and then THE SCIENCES, who seemingly have no shame in being used for Al’s political program.
As far as I am concerned all those people are engaged in a conspiracy to incite violence among Americans.
Re “…A funny thing happens after the kids graduate; they get their first set of bills, they run up debts and mortgages, and suddenly the importance of economic growth and the cost of expensive electricity and fuel becomes a lot more real to them….”
This only pertains to the kids that actually grow up, move on AND move out on their own, and NOT the “boomerang kids” who come back home to live in Mom & Pop’s basement. As a certified OF (Old Fart), I see a lot more boomerangs in the neighborhood.
Gore unfortunately could be correct, if 2020 brings in a democrat administration with a large win, a majority in the house and supermajority in the senate, ala Obama in 2008. While I like most of Trump’s policies, the country may just be tired of cringing by Nov. of 2020.
He might be right. The weather events are quite regular, but the way they are being touted as the most extremists of extreme by a lot of the media, it does get to a lot of people. The moving / multiple goalposts of “climate change” have been politically quite successful so far, as without them the global warming movement would likely have died ten years ago.
This should be a call to action for people to point out the fallacies spouted by mainly climate change advocates, but also regular people now (and the fallacious statements by “deniers” as well).
“No, there aren’t more extreme winds, droughts or rain”,
“No, the Golf stream is not slowing down, especially not due to smelt ice, otherwise it would do that every summer (and this slowdown would actually lessen if there was less ice in the future)”,
“No, we aren’t experiencing extreme temperatures, we just have a short history of temperature measurements”,
“No, the models have still not predicted climate, not once”.
Gore is probably right about about being close to a political tipping point.
Look at the recent polling showing the changing views of the public.
https://morningconsult.com/2018/12/06/more-voters-linking-human-activity-to-climate-change/
Most voters (58%) now say climate change is caused by human activity. Only 30% say it is a natural phenomenon.
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_US_112918/
A majority of Americans (54%) currently say that climate change is a very serious problem, which is up significantly from 41% in Monmouth’s 2015 poll.
Forty years ago was 1978. Al Gore was not talking about global warming or climate change forty years ago. Forty years ago he and his family were busy cashing tobacco support cheques and leasing ground for lead/zinc mining.
Al Gore and truth are complete strangers.
Not only tobacco, oil, gas and coal too, it’s the source of his family wealth. However, for one to encounter a stranger, one has to encounter a…stranger. Al Gore has never met truth and there is nothing strange about that IMO.
Since there will be no environmental tipping point, Gore might as well look for a political one.
2020 earth is cooler than any year of past two decades. Then those alarmists and fearmongers start to say that CO2 is cooling this planet. 😀
So is Al saying we have to wait till 2020 before tar and feathering charlatans like him?
I take comfort in Al’s record for truth and accuracy and his ability to correctly predict the American Voter.
Given the past cycles of mass hysteria and popular fads, Man Controls Climate to Catastrophe ,Meme is in it’s dying days.
This scare will live in history.
The end of the first age of Industrial Enlightenment?
Most of our institutions are tottering as we have left them to the care of fools and bandits.
Renovation is expensive painful work even when the structure is sound.
Building anew is usually more cost effective.
Will brick and mortar universities survive?
It is inexcusable for parents to frighten their children with climate change cataclysm. It is even worse when they use their kids as props and propaganda.
It’s even worse when their primary school teachers do it, then send the children home to guilt their parents.
I’m looking forward to this public fight over CAGW.
The Democrats are going to have to provide some evidence that CAGW is real before we go spending tax money on fixing things.
The problem for the Democrats is they have no evidence. I welcome the opportunity to have this pointed out in public. Let’s have this argument. It’s been a one-sided argument in public so far. With this new push by the Democrats, that will change.
The problem is, they won’t. All they will do, just as always, will be to use Appeals to Authority (the ipcc, etc.), Ad Hominems (“deniers”, etc.), and repeat, ad nauseum the “weather is worse now” lie and all of its variations. As far as they’re concerned, “the debate is over”, and has been for years, even decades.
“The problem is, they won’t. All they will do, just as always, will be to use Appeals to Authority”
That’s exactly right. What we have to do is insist that we hear from the authorities they cite. We want Congress to hear it right from the horse’s mouth, not secondhand from some clueless politician who is just parroting the so-called experts. We want the experts to provide the evidence that tells us CAGW is real. Second-hand heresay science from clueless people is not sufficient. Invoking “consensus” is not acceptable.
The Alarmists have to make their case. Claiming they have already made it is not good enough because it is not true, and the taxpayers shouldn’t be spending trillions of dollars for something that may not exist. Prove CAGW exists, or give it up..
I want to see the day Al Gore gets tarred and feathered
In spite of the fact that the establishment view on global warming/climate change has become thoroughly entrenched everywhere you look (97% of scientists, the media, government, blah, blah), the implementation of their grand plan still requires a political tipping point. What never occurs, except occasionally, is the acknowledgement that we do not have the technology or the economic wherewithal to accomplish what they want. Of course, what they want more than anything is the “political tipping point”, and were they able to achieve that, we would soon find out they can’t do any of the things they claim are being blocked by this rag tag band of deniers, so they would just continue to exaggerate and blame the this rag tag band of deniers. It’s what they do.
I believe that all people that consider true science to be a noble endeavor of humanity need to be very worried about this impending “tipping point”: if within the next 2-5 years Earth indeed starts a somewhat long (say greater than 10 year-duration) decline in average global temperature—whatever that means as long as it is calculated consistently— then global humanity will simply lose faith in, and respect for, the scientific method. Populations around the globe have been assured for decades that “the science is settled” and that as much of “97% of all scientists agree” that climate change since 1850 is due predominately to mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases, specifically CO2.
How do you imagine the average person will react when they realize that “science” has basically lied to them? I predict that the reputation of science will not be recovered for more than two generations (i.e., about 50 years).
It is despicable that AGW alarmist “scientists” have willing put the scientific method in such danger with their hidden agendas.
“How do you imagine the average person will react when they realize that “science” has basically lied to them? I predict that the reputation of science will not be recovered for more than two generations (i.e., about 50 years).”
It was said back in 1950 (in the title of a book) that “Science Is a Sacred Cow.” Maybe the Pranksters on Olympus have engineered AGW alarmism in order to take science and its “groupies” (epitomized by the various Skeptical organizations worldwide that have bought into the alarm), down a peg or three.
The true political tipping point will be when it starts to affect the general public hard in the wallet. Then the whole ponzi scheme of supposed manmade global warming will be thrown into the dustbin of history along with the ones espousing this wealth distribution scheme. Canadians say they want action on global warming as long as it costs them $00.00 personally.
Gore knows that the future is the past defined by those who control the present. But he won’t live long enough to see it (like me and many of his age, I should say). Can I say that I hate the man? (IMO)
Which tip are we gonna dump Gore on?
France had a yellow vested political tipping point on global warming via the carbon tax on fuels a couple of weeks ago.
The Yellow Vests are out in the street again today. Macron seems to have awakened a sleeping giant.
Brazil had a tipping point last year—in the skeptical direction.
I find myself wishing that there was something like lightning, but cold, that instantly froze a very unlucky person to death if it struck them.
Guess who is the only person I would like to see flash frozen?
Michael Mann?
“France had a yellow vested political tipping point”
DAVIS:-
Well not really.
If you actually listened to what they say, and the whole debate in France, (in FRENCH, like today on BFM) one thing which is notably ABSENT, is any kind of debate on the global warming orthodoxy.
Instead you have a 2 cycles of violence, one absolutely certainly on the part of the government with the CRS deployed en masse, gassing innocent people with tear gas for the slightest move, and on the other side, the more and more extreme positions which victims of such behaviour provokes.
THERE IS NO DEBATE on Macron’s primary lies, which involve ratcheting up pressure on the middle/working class to pay for “energy transition”, supported by 2 total Cretins- Nicolas Hulot (who has now left the government just in time) and Segolene Royal, this failed nutcase who with her cronies, brought in some of the most stupid ideas of all time (eg. closing the voie express sur berges!!!)
I keep trying to inform people they FIRST have to see through the primary smokescreen of lies from the current government, see for themselves it’s a gigantic scam, and then take action.
The current French government is no different from its predecessors,- champagne corrupted nepotistic socialism, which started under Mitterand, and led to the current EU non elected elite.
All that has changed is the faces and the methods.
The French have to GET IT.
Macron and his “climate change cronies” are just a paradigm of the control of the people through a variety of brutal methods, – finance, bankers, and some of the highest taxes in the world.
When the people revolt you have to give them sound argument.
The only sound argument to bring in alternance is to realise the enormity of the giant sham democracy and enormous scam.
This whole attitude was fomented by French intellectuals in the 1950’s as post modernism.
Against the rules of the post modernist philosophy, because these intellectuals happened to be marxists, they slipped marxism in as well.
As Marxism has been proved to be a failure, we now have post modernist neo marxism, which really all boils down to a whole lot of hypocritical wind where all they really want is power (Stephen Hicks explains it on you tube, as well as Jordan Peterson.)
Thanks for the look under the hood of France.
Perhaps Algorithm really meant to say “political tipper point” after the ex-missus.
And by the way, what is the time span for a “looming crisis”, as in “Forty years ago, it was not easy to get people’s sustained attention for this looming crisis.”?
An event that may happen in 40 years is hardly “looming”. Unless he meant “blooming”.
40 year ago we only had a few years to take immediate action.
Perhaps Algorithm really meant to say “political tipper point” after the ex-missus.
And by the way, what is the time span for a “looming crisis”, as in “Forty years ago, it was not easy to get people’s sustained attention for this looming crisis.”?
An event that may happen in 40 years is hardly “looming”. Unless he meant “blooming”.
Funny, Kathleen!
Seems to me that it’s now unquestionable what the whole climate change issue has really been about all along – political power and ideological supremacy… never actually about doing something good for the environment.
The Goracle and Arnold are the most awesome spokes hypocrites for the religion. I love when they make predictions or sanctimonious statements. They just throw fuel on their own symbolic burning at the stake of public ridicule and hypocrisy. I can only hope there is a real reckoning some day- the second coming of common sense and reason?