Journal Timex's Journal: The Truth really *is* inconvenient 25
I read this over on the National Review. The article has been quoted below, in its entirety, as fodder to think about. Failure to point out weaknesses in Al Gore's fantasies will only lead to bolster support for them.
Any takers for odds that as scientific support for Gore's film crumbles away (or is shown to have been virtually non-existent), it will disappear, just like any commentary that Gore had for The Day after Tomorrow?
Inconvenient Truths
Novel science fiction on global warming.By Patrick J. Michaels
This Sunday, Al Gore will probably win an Academy Award for his global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, a riveting work of science fiction.
The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland's 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.
Where's the scientific support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent Policymaker's Summary from the United Nations' much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore's film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.
Even 17 inches is likely to be high, because it assumes that the concentration of methane, an important greenhouse gas, is growing rapidly. Atmospheric methane concentration hasn't changed appreciably for seven years, and Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland recently pronounced the IPCC's methane emissions scenarios as "quite unlikely."
Nonetheless, the top end of the U.N.'s new projection is about 30-percent lower than it was in its last report in 2001. "The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica for the rates observed since 1993," according to the IPCC, "but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future."
According to satellite data published in Science in November 2005, Greenland was losing about 25 cubic miles of ice per year. Dividing that by 630,000 yields the annual percentage of ice loss, which, when multiplied by 100, shows that Greenland was shedding ice at 0.4 percent per century.
"Was" is the operative word. In early February, Science published another paper showing that the recent acceleration of Greenland's ice loss from its huge glaciers has suddenly reversed.
Nowhere in the traditionally refereed scientific literature do we find any support for Gore's hypothesis. Instead, there's an unrefereed editorial by NASA climate firebrand James E. Hansen, in the journal Climate Change -- edited by Steven Schneider, of Stanford University, who said in 1989 that scientists had to choose "the right balance between being effective and honest" about global warming -- and a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was only reviewed by one person, chosen by the author, again Dr. Hansen.
These are the sources for the notion that we have only ten years to "do" something immediately to prevent an institutionalized tsunami. And given that Gore only conceived of his movie about two years ago, the real clock must be down to eight years!
It would be nice if my colleagues would actually level with politicians about various "solutions" for climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, if fulfilled by every signatory, would reduce global warming by 0.07 degrees Celsius per half-century. That's too small to measure, because the earth's temperature varies by more than that from year to year.
The Bingaman-Domenici bill in the Senate does less than Kyoto -- i.e., less than nothing -- for decades, before mandating larger cuts, which themselves will have only a minor effect out past somewhere around 2075. (Imagine, as a thought experiment, if the Senate of 1925 were to dictate our energy policy for today).
Mendacity on global warming is bipartisan. President Bush proposes that we replace 20 percent of our current gasoline consumption with ethanol over the next decade. But it's well-known that even if we turned every kernel of American corn into ethanol, it would displace only 12 percent of our annual gasoline consumption. The effect on global warming, like Kyoto, would be too small to measure, though the U.S. would become the first nation in history to burn up its food supply to please a political mob.
And even if we figured out how to process cellulose into ethanol efficiently, only one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. Even the Pollyannish 20-percent displacement of gasoline would only reduce our total emissions by 7-percent below present levels -- resulting in emissions about 20-percent higher than Kyoto allows.
And there's other legislation out there, mandating, variously, emissions reductions of 50, 66, and 80 percent by 2050. How do we get there if we can't even do Kyoto?
When it comes to global warming, apparently the truth is inconvenient. And it's not just Gore's movie that's fiction. It's the rhetoric of the Congress and the chief executive, too.
-- Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.
All in one answer. (Score:3, Informative)
I predict (Score:2)
Due to CO2 emissions.
Again.
And we will only have 10 years to totally gut our way of life before we are doomed forever.
Again.
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But I will most likely be very disappointed.
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I keep hoping that this abject failure called "global warming" will finally drive a stake through the heart of leftwing alarmism.
But I will most likely be very disappointed.
You will be disappointed, thanks to a neat little tool called "revisionist history".
When the whole hypothesis of "global warming" collapses because none of the foretold problems come to bear, the alarmists will do one of two things: they will claim either that we've done what was necessary to buy some time (even though we've managed to do practically nothing), or (and this is more likely) they will conveniently forget that they were ever talking about "global warming".
Thirty some-odd years ago, alarmists w
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Thirty some-odd years ago, alarmists were going on and on about "global cooling". It turned out they were wrong. Do you think they remember that they were talking about that? No chance.
But they don't deny it was said. They only refuse to bring it up at parties. It is too well-documented.
And that's what is so great about global warming: what they are saying is extremely well-documented. It wasn't a several-year fad, this has been The Most Important Challenge In The World for more than a decade. A movie about it has won an Oscar (so I hear? I am not really sure). They won't be able to deny this, or make people forget about it.
Ow (Score:2)
Yes, Al Gore exaggerated. It may take 200 years for Ground Zero to be flooded. There is some doubt as to the speed of Global Warming, and it's very-long-term effect. It's entirely possible that the C02/Heat correlation that was the real centerpiece of An Inconvenient Truth is just a coincidence. It's certain that he exaggerated to get his point across.
But the broad strokes of a politician in a movie are no excuse for simply bad logic. In order:
*
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Certainly. Liberals are always choosing "the right balance between being effective and honest". That's why I don't trust them.
* An Inconvenient Truth's main point was broad: "Global Warming is happening, and it's our fault." The specifics were secondary, and for illustrative purposes.
A la "fake but accurate"?
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What makes you think that "Conservatives" are any better? (Or to use words that really mean anything, Right-Wingers).
Politicians lie. They have lied in this country since the first Continental Congress. They rarely lie for anything that isn't either an already stated goals ("Iraq has WMDs!" because Iraq is a state sponsor of terrorism and so should be put down) or a party-politic
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Whereupon Bill Dog takes the english language out back and attempts to bludgeon it to death with a garden hose.
Anyway, sounds pretty dark in your world, mate. Don't envy all that fear and loathing, not one bit.
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After submitting that, it occurred to me, it's as if, in D&D terms, Liberals view each other and everyone else as being of Lawful Evil alignment -- all a bunch of rotten lying bastards, but at least predictable in what they'll lie about. Dark world indeed.
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The right-wing is Chaotic Good -- they believe that individualism is the best way to help everybody.
Neither are evil. Mostly they aren't even neutral.
(And "liberal" and "conservative" should not be used to mean something that they don't! Bush has brought more change than Clinton, egro BUSH is the liberal!)
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All true. BTW, I capitalize the C and L when I'm referring to political idealogies, vs. tendency to want change. So for example, I perceive this country to have swung so far to the Left, that I see Liberals as being mostly conservative (wanting to maintain all the ground they've made), and Conservatives as liberal (wanting to change most of it back).
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you can't trust what they say,
I never said that. I said that politicians will lie, which is different than saying that they can't be trusted.
By and large, politicians don't lie. They do, on occasion, say things that they don't believe, usually in support of some other cause. ("This is an important bill" being probably the most-told lie, but they have to work to get the bill passed if they want support for the bill they came to Washington to pass.)
Now, there are some politicians who don't stand for anything. But they are fairly quic
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200 years? Considering Gore invented a figure of 20 feet to replace the IPCC's less "convenient" figure of 17 inches over the next century, it'll take a lot longer than that - and when you inflate a figure by more than an order of magnitude, somehow "exaggerated" doesn't quite cover it.
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George W. Bush won the 2000 Presidential Campaign because Al Gore (the center-left candidate) and Ralph Nader (the far-left candidate) couldn't agree to work together.
It doesn't matter if you think Al Gore should be President or not. Hell, it doesn't matter if you think a word he said in his speech-on-film was true, either. What matters is that he framed the issue, and if you think that something needs to be done, then
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Assuming you mean election, rather than campaign, that's true, just as Clinton won in much the same way a few years earlier - so what?
Well, if Nader's involvement in Gore's loss invalidates it, that logic leads you to the conclusion he shouldn't even have reached the White
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George W. Bush won the 2000 Presidential Campaign because Al Gore (the center-left candidate) and Ralph Nader (the far-left candidate) couldn't agree to work together.
I don't know what that has to do with this discussion, but you could say the same thing (except moreso) about Clinton -- the only President ever to win consecutive terms without garnering 50 percent of the so-called "popular vote" in either election -- only winning in '92 because Perot and Bush did not work together.
It doesn't matter if you think Al Gore should be President or not. Hell, it doesn't matter if you think a word he said in his speech-on-film was true, either. What matters is that he framed the issue, and if you think that something needs to be done, then the only reasonable response is "Gore was right on the basics, but wrong on the details."
When someone lies, the only reasonable response is to point out the fact that they lied.
Accusing him of lying only servers to argue against his policy proposition -- and hurts this country.
Lying about major policy propositions hurts this country.
I am going to Foe you now, and I am going to t
Falsehood != lie. (was Re:Ow) (Score:2)
Your grasp of the English language continues to amaze me, Pudge.
I did not admit that Gore lied. A lie is a deliberate falsehood. I conceded that Gore may have told literally untrue statements, and I acknowledged that Gore's emphasis was more on getting the issue framed than having a scientifically complete discussi
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Your grasp of the English language continues to amaze me, Pudge.
Coming from someone who condones lying, that's not surprising.
I did not admit that Gore lied.
I am well aware of that. But you did say that whether or not he was lying is irrelevant, because all that matters is that we are all going to die from global warming anyway.
For Gore to have lied, you need to not only prove that what he said was false--but that he knew that it was false when he said it.
Not quite, no. You have to show that he knew that it was not necessarily true. If I say, "Planesdragon is literally retarded, according to his IQ tests," that is not a lie according to you: I don't know whether it is true or false. But it IS a lie, because I state it as
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It may take 200 years for Ground Zero to be flooded.
There's no evidence that it will ever be flooded.
* Science Fiction is intentionally false.
It was a joke.
* An Inconvenient Truth's main point was broad: "Global Warming is happening, and it's our fault."
First, as said by others, there is no evidence it is all our fault. There is only evidence we have contributed to it, and no one can tell how much.
Second, we don't know, in fact, that we have even contributed in any significant way. Even the IPCC said they are only "90 percent" certain that man is causing any global warming, and that "90 percent" is not even a scientifically quantified number, it's just saying something like "we're pretty s
IANAC (Score:2)
But regardless of the debate over global warming, we need to start working really hard on reducing our dependence on foreign energy sources. We need to do this for strategic security reasons; the threat of possible climate change is secondary t
STOP IT! (Score:2)
I hate it when you do that.
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I'm getting real tired of this argument (Score:2)
That's if the only thing you can make ethanol ou