Patterico's Pontifications

12/15/2009

Al Gore’s Chilly Reception

Filed under: Environment — DRJ @ 2:03 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Earlier this week, Al Gore told the Copenhagen climate change conference that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years:

“In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.”

Al Gore just can’t catch a break: The only things that seem to be melting down are Gore and this summit.

— DRJ

38 Responses to “Al Gore’s Chilly Reception”

  1. Al Gore lied. He betrayed us. He played on our fears.

    Heh.

    A.W. (e7d72e)

  2. Al Gore can’t catch a break? He’s steadily approaching a net worth of 10 digits. Dude could build his own aircraft carrier if he wants, which would be helpful, since he loves private jets.

    He’s following L Ron Hubbard’s advice precisely. The best way to get rich is to start a religion. Of course he knows there’s going to be an icecap in 5 years.

    Dustin (44f8cb)

  3. Gore is such a fool. I had the impression that, as VP, he was pretty competent. I wonder if 2000 and all the fury of the Democrats unhinged him.

    Mike K (2cf494)

  4. It’s OK for Algore to make outlandish and unsupported predictions of imminent doom, after all there’s no controlling legal authority to prevent him from lining his pockets while claiming we’re all going to die, the ice is melting, the ice is melting!

    ropelight (5883b5)

  5. Al Gore’s habit of misrepresenting the science is long standing. The faux documentary he made, “An Inconvenient Truth” is filled with howling factual errors … none of which ever cut against the thesis of the film.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  6. I thought he wasn’t even going to go to Copenhagen.

    cassandra in MT (5a5d33)

  7. as VP, he was pretty competent

    That’s because Gore was doing a job so easy that Joe Biden can do it.

    Official Internet Data Office (0a4bf0)

  8. I would have said that there was no such thing as an incompetent Vice President … until Joe Biden came along.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  9. The country longs for Jack Garner, who knew the place of the VP in society & government.

    AD - RtR/OS! (7e8f29)

  10. How is Biden not competent as Vice-President? He knows how to warm a chair, bangs a gavel in the Senate, and says dumb things from time to time.
    Was Dan Quayle more polished as Vice-President?

    Official Internet Data Office (0a4bf0)

  11. OIDO, yes, Dan Quayle was more polished than Joe Biden.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  12. And just how many newspapers will run the retraction? Bet you that CNN is still quoting Gore.

    Kevin Murphy (3c3db0)

  13. OIDO, yes, Dan Quayle was more polished than Joe Biden

    The worse thing the media could ever say about Dan Quayle was that he followed the rules of Spelling Bee’s; which, of course, they conveniently overlooked.

    AD - RtR/OS! (7e8f29)

  14. The worse thing the media could ever say about Dan Quayle was that he followed the rules of Spelling Bee’s; which, of course, they conveniently overlooked.
    Comment by AD – RtR/OS! — 12/15/2009 @ 3:09 pm

    Actually, I think the media distortion of his “Murphy Brown” comment was worse. Al Gore was, and Joe Biden is, largely transparent as VP(s), drawing fire as the President needs but doing little on their own. Gore has my vote as the worst ex-VP locked up right now though.

    Stashiu3 (44da70)

  15. Amen, Stashiu. Amen.

    JD (8607be)

  16. The interesting thing about Murphy Brown, was that Quayle was proven right, which Candace Bergin acknowledge in a back-handed way.
    It was, in its’ time, another Tina Fey moment; where the public bought the distortion even though the reality was much more powerful.

    AD - RtR/OS! (7e8f29)

  17. If memory serves, Bergen actually made that concession quite clearly, and she’s made more than a few comments about Diane English’s disgraceful behavior towards the GOP during her sitcom heyday on CBS.

    Dmac (a964d5)

  18. “The worse thing the media could ever say about Dan Quayle was that he followed the rules of Spelling Bee’s; which, of course, they conveniently overlooked.”

    – AD-RtR/OS!

    And that he said a bunch of dumb stuff. There’s always that…

    Leviticus (30ac20)

  19. He needs to go looking for his blamket.

    All the computer models use the same start point the CRU fraudulent dataset, and all predict that there should be a CO2 signature in the atmosphere, centered around the equator. And guess what, it’s not there. Computer models and their theory are falsified.

    bill-tb (541ea9)

  20. Gore also had that lesbian manliness coach. I don’t think Quayle had to stoop that low.

    daleyrocks (718861)

  21. Leviticus : Please furnish some examples of all the “dumb stuff” that Dan Quale is alleged to have said. Be careful – don’t take things out of context and make sure that the quotation was actually made by Dan Quale. Running a Tina Fey remark as a comment by Sarah Palin, in the time of the internet, doesn’t work except for the “usual suspects” who believe anything. In Dan Quales time, it was possible to do a “drive-by” quote and have many believe it. After all, Leno, Letterman and others fell for the potato/potatoe story.

    Longwalker (996c34)

  22. Astonishingly, it appears that Gore didn’t lie about this claim. I am not making this up.

    [Morano Statement: No, hell has not frozen over (but is extremely cold here in Copenhagen). Climate Depot’s defense of Gore’s version of events is part of Climate Depot’s role to meet and exceed the journalistic standards practiced by much of the media when it comes to global warming reporting. Based upon the evidence, it now appears that Gore may be owed an apology or at least a detailed explanation by Professor Maslowski. ]

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (aedc3a)

  23. I wouldn’t be surprised if they manage to clear the arctic ice during a warm summer in the next five years by using ice breaker vessels and submarine released chemicals or nuclear heat to break up and melt the ice. I think the mysterious ‘noctilucent’ clouds that have been showing up over the arctic for the last few years has something to do with this effort.

    j curtis (5126e4)

  24. Part of the problem is that most of us agree that the planet has been warming since 1850. The issue is whether it is man made and whether it is dangerous. The dispute is about manipulating data that concerns the Medieval Warm Period or the Roman Maximum or the Holocene. Mann’s hockey stick eliminated all those eras.

    Mike K (2cf494)

  25. Brother Bradley,

    I didn’t think Gore lied but I thought he might have exaggerated. What’s interesting to me is that the climate change proponents are starting to publicly back off claims they used to proclaim near and far.

    DRJ (84a0c3)

  26. Well, there was the time VP Gutted a Airline Safety Commission results (no dates, no funding) to get lobbyist funds from the Airlines:

    On September 19k, ten days after the release of the draft report (on improving airline security), Gore sent a letter of appeasement to Carol Hallett, president of the ATA (airline lobbyist group). “I want to make if very clear,” Gore wrote, “that it is not the intent of the administration or of the commission to create a hardship for the air transportation industry of to cause inconvenience to the traveling public.”

    The day after Gore’s letter was released, TWA–the airline whose crash had triggered the commission’s work–gave $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee. In the next two months leading up to the 1996 presidential election […] the airlines gave the DNC a total of $585,000…

    BfC (5209ec)

  27. DRJ,
    In this case, it appeared Gore was not exaggerating. I don’t think Marc Morano would have written what he did were he in any doubt. He’s not exactly a Gore groupie. As Morano said, he’s practicing the fairness he’d like to see from the AGW activists.

    Mike K.
    Mann’s hockey stick eliminated all those eras.
    Moreover, the AGW activists have focused nearly all their attention on carbon dioxide as the Darth Vader warmer, downplaying other factorss such as soot. And this is not “denialist” science, it’s from standard AGW scientists. I have a post on it. Since the research shows curbing these other factors would slow warming faster, why the near-exclusive emphasis at Copenhagen on CO2?

    Bradley J. Fikes, C. O.R. (a18ddc)

  28. > Al Gore just can’t catch a break: The only things that seem to be melting down are Gore and this summit.

    Couldn’t happen to a better person.

    O Bloody Hell (8ca3a3)

  29. #27 Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R.:

    why the near-exclusive emphasis at Copenhagen on CO2?

    Just guessing, but it really isn’t about AGW, but something else …more sinister?

    EW1(SG) (b52493)

  30. I quoted this comment over on CSPT; I may as well quote it here.

    James DeLong said

    Richard Lindzen (MIT) and Alan Carlin (EPA) point to research done recently that indicates, with empirical evidence, that the feedbacks triggered by increases in CO2 are negative (that is, they reduce any warming effect) rather then positive. All 20+ climate change model that are in use assume that the feedback is positive, even though there is no empirical reason to make this choice. (Except the empirical need to keep the grant money flowing.) Links can be found at http://convergencelaw.typepad.com/convergences/2009/12/dominant-information-climate-change.html

    Bradley might find info for another article since that quote and a 90-minute video over at Climate-Skeptic.com provide bad news for CO2 alarmists. The 90-minute video looks at Algore’s graphs regarding Greenland ice cores. There are 2 graphs: 1 for temps and another for CO2 and both look amazingly similar. But a closer focus shows the CO2 graph to actually be following the temperature graph.

    As I’ve read, as the temperature rises, the oceans release more CO2 into the atmosphere. As Algore’s graphs, when looked at closely, show, CO2 followed the temp up and down instead of preceeding it. As the dude from MIT and the dude from EPA said, CO2 acts as a restraint on global warming and not a catalyst for it.

    John Hitchcock (3fd153)

  31. Well, also, plants green up when there’s more C02, and process more of it. There’s a reason this kind of content’s instability is measured in tiny increments… nature will keep up with it before it gets to some kind of extreme.

    but like I said, there’s a reason this easily proven and well established theory is only proven in secret by crooks. This is a new religion, and Al Gore is playing his crowd like a fiddle. I seriously doubt he believes what he’s saying. For one thing, he is very wealthy, but not pushing Global Warming for free. He lives like an Oil Sheik. Those who don’t agree with him are not given more evidence and better, smoother arguments… they are compared to Nazis.

    Dustin (44f8cb)

  32. John Hitchock, thanks for that suggestion. Good fodder, indeed. The Climategate gang would rather ignore Lindzen.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (9eb641)

  33. A Sceptics Guide

    The Guide Book

    Warren has done some of the best stuff I’ve seen, very complete and easily verified because he shows you his data and it’s sources!

    TC (0b9ca4)

  34. My mother always told us that telling the truth was so much simpler than trying to remember all the lies.

    Guess Gore’s mom never gave him that advice after singing the “Union Label” song to him as a lullaby…hmmm didn’t someone prove that song wasn’t penned until after Gore was in college??? Has Gore EVER told the truth?

    in_awe (a55176)

  35. Hey, Algore invented the intartubes when his daddy was in Congress fighting to get blacks all the rights they deserved. (It’s in there. You just have to scroll down to find it. His daddy did try to get blacks all the rights he thought they deserved.)

    John Hitchcock (3fd153)

  36. I love CO2

    Appears to be a site of interest. Spent no time there yet, but whatever, it might have something of interest in it.

    It’s late as can be, gotta go feed the fish.

    TC (0b9ca4)

  37. Look don’t you know Al Gore is super cereal?

    Manbearpig (e7d72e)


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