Comments on: Rating Al Gore's tech cred

Pol who invented the Internet and scares the world about global warming wants to be taken seriously? Why not, says CNET News.com's Charles Cooper.

[Mark Greene]

Impugning a person != impugning an argument

The people smart enough to recommend policy decisions re global
warming aren't stupid enough to care about opinions of Al Gore.
They care about the soundness of the arguments (pro and con). So
there's a lot of wasted breath here.

[drfrost]

add also: praising a person != strengthening an argument

Is it just me or does the author of this work seem to put Al Gore and global warming in the same bucket... if one of them has been wrongfully accused and is actually "good" then the other must be as well?

First off, "his" movie had far more than 9 errors. It's a perfect example of mixing politics and science. The results are decidedly distasteful.

"A politician is someone who can rock the boat and then convince everyone that they're the only ones who can calm the waves."

The earth is warming up. Almost certainly we are at least partially to blame. Read the evidence yourself.... FROM REAL SCIENTISTS and make up your own mind. And then decide if the costs are worth the benefits.

Of all the people who are truly deserving of the peace prize... I still can't believe they gave it to Al Gore for a documentary on global warming... It's not that I can't see the hypothetical connections, it's just that there are people who are VASTLY more deserving. It cheapens the meaning IMO. The selection process has obviously become too political.

[Al57]

THE DIEHARDS ARE SOCIALISTS....

The rest are just tagging along the Global Warming hysteria probably because it sounds good.

Why do I know they SOCIALISTS? Because it's about wealth redistribution. Two international leaders once described Kyoto's intent. Margot Wallstrom, the European Union's commissioner on the environment, said Kyoto is "about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide," and French President Jacques Chirac called it "the first component of an authentic global governance."

SOCIALISTS are hell-bent on pushing it on us, all the while ignoring massive contradictory information.

If it was actually about the environment, they would be looking at options that minimized the effects on people. Instead, the options presented by these people seem to have the most negative effects for people as they can push on us.

I've read that farm animals put out more greenhouse gasses than all forms of transportation combined! Even if it's only half, why aren't the global warming people celebrating??? Surely, some science can find a way to lower the output! (As a matter of fact, I read that some people are working on it now. No reporting in the media, however.)

They will never celebrate success because their measure of success is about slowing down the world, slowing down capitalism, destroying cultural frameworks, etc. As we have all seen, SOCIALISM has never worked. People suffer and die under SOCIALISM.

So I don't believe a word Gore says on the subject and I suggest you all question these poeple too. SOCIALISM sucks.

[lezstar]

socialism has never worked?

Another person absorbing half truths and 'isms'.You just dont get it do you? The fact is capitalism not only has never worked but will NEVER work because it relies on endless economic growth to sustain itself but hey, guess what we live on a planet with a finite amount of resources that are running out rapidly and if you dont beleive that ,the debate ends here.

[rickanigor]

Global Warming and Al Gore

Your artical is using Unitied Nations science for the global warming theroy. There was a magazine that came out in the mid 1970's, which I receive a free issue for, called "Future". I thought that the magazine would be on Science, however, I was wrong. It was a magazine about social engeneering. Basical it drew out a plan in which all govenments would operate under one world govenment and that government would be the only way in which the people could and should be controled.
As with any Socalist view, it required a re-education program in the following fields: popuation control, envoirment as a method of control and profit, the UN as the leading government, and how to lead and direct third world counties.
Population control advocated both, control on those getting old, abortion for those who could not affort a child and third world countries, and a more librial use of government run suicide centers. Also in there program was a effort to promote homosexual behavior as a means to reduce new children coming into the world. That would also require the re-education of children world wide as homosexually as being a normal mode of sexual expression.
The UN as being a leading government it predicted the following; that more socially developed nations would be the service serving nations, and that third world countries would be the suppliers of goods. That countries could have their own laws, however, world law would trump all national laws. Also that richer nations must provide education and resourses, money, to the poorer nations.
In terms of enviorment it would have a two part effect. One in that it could be a fear that would force people to give up indiviual right in order to continue to live. It would also be good for companies and governments in that it would require that items would have a shelf live which would both insure that they would need to be replace, and a recycling program in which to aid in the additional cost of the product. It would also provide a program in which the people would feel that they could help control it. It would be a win win situation. If the claimate continued to change one could say we didn't act fast enough, if it did change one could say it would have gotten worst if our actions had not be put in place.
In terms of the science involved in the globial warming I learned a great deal about it in both college, and in the court,when I worked in them. In college I learned that research is directed by who has the money to support it. If you don't have the results that the provider is searching for you won't be funded again, or good results equals more grants. In court, I saw that depending on who was paying for the witness that is what their studies would show. I was once told by a teacher that in science that todays truths will be tomorrows lies. One only needs to look at the poor planet Pluto to see the truth in that statement.

[Al57]

Yes, and here is more...

Great article in American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/global_warming_as_pathological.html

The beginning of the article is here:

Trofimko Lysenko is not a household name; but it should be, because he was the model for all the Politically Correct "science" in the last hundred years. Lysenko was Stalin's favorite agricultural "scientist," peddling the myth that crops could be just trained into growing bigger and better. You didn't have to breed better plants over generations, as farmers have been doing for ages. It was a fantasy of the all-powerful Soviet State. Lysenko sold Stalin on that fraud in plant genetics, and Stalin told Soviet scientists to fall into line --- in spite of the fact that nobody really believed it. Hundreds of thousands of peasants starved during Stalin's famines, in good part because of fraudulent science.

There is such a thing as pathological science. Science becomes unhealthy when its only real question --- "what is true?" --- is sabotaged by vested interests, by ideological Commissars, or even by grant-swinging scientists. Today's Global Warming campaign is endangering real, honest science. Global Warming superstition has become an international power grab, and good science suffers as a result.

Freeman Dyson, one of the great physicists alive today, put it plainly enough in his autobiography:

"...all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. ... I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. ... They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in."

[alm49er]

The Other Nobel Prize winners

The Wall St. Journal has posted a couple of articles by members of the other half of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here is a quote from Mr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville:
"It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days." You can read the rest his comments at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423.html?mod=most_emailed_month

It appears that not all Nobel Peace Prize winners are in agreement with Mr. Gore regarding the source of global warming or what we should do about it. All of us ought to calm down and think rationally about this issue rathering than either succumbing to the Chicken Little syndrome or ignoring it completely as junk science.

[drfrost]

And I should care because?

I don't care what Al Gore's SAT scores were. I'm much more concerned with his education and work experience and neither, IMO, qualify him as an expert on global warming. If he wanted to spearhead this issue that's perfectly fine, but he should have done so from behind the scenes, letting the top experts in the field present the evidence from all sides.

Real science is a rigorous process. It's about peer review, repeatable experiements and subjecting your work to scrutiny.

There is no point in science when something becomes "unquestionable."

[iangs]

Spokesmen

Scientists have a problem pulling together stuff in the way Al Gore did. All Gore did was pull a lot of well researched Science together and present it well.

One of the best Science books "for the rest of us" in recent years was "A short history of nearly everything" by Bill Bryson - An English Professor!

[iangs]

How do you have the Gore?

I don't normally put down a whole nation in one go, but when in the hell are you Americans going to pull your heads out of the sand. We are seeing unprecedented changes in climate, and we did it. And YOU are doing nothing to make it better.

I work in the Insurance industry and we gave up wishing the problem would go away over 7 years ago (although predictably our US brethren are taking a little longer to get it). Daily headlines in Insurance rags show this is no game and the big thing at the moment is improving catastrophe (CAT) planning and models. And I won't even go into the the rise of Insurance linked securities and why that is happening.

I picked up 5 RANDOM issues of a respected insurance daily and got
"France planning CAT fund for cities"
"Kamp Re claims unsettled two yeasr after Katrina"
"Noel poses threat to Bermuda"
"RenRe Q3 results solid despite UK flooding losses"
"US leading a charmed life on storms"
"California fires : memories of 2003"
"CAT bonds can save Latin America : Ozendo Quake"
and these where just those I could put here without explaining the relevance.

Oh, and as I picked up the last issue, what should drop out but an invitation to "The Insurance Day Event on GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE" on Dec 5/6 in London. Perhaps some of you should shake the sand off and go learn what the money guys are saying.

I Ain't no socialist, and nor is the Insurance industry. Get out there and do something for your kids.

[cjoki]

Al Gore does not deserve the nobel by my measure

There are more deserving scientist that are making discoveries about climate change.

Our problem is we see the world around us and look at it as a unchanging constant. This is false as everything is changing and may effect the climate we live in.

Some recent discoveries about our planet:
- Earth is on its 3rd atmosphere, the first two were not able to support life, as we know it.

- The earth is believed to have frozen solid at one point in its early development.

- A new theory on the demise of the dinosaurs is contributed to a massive gamma ray burst, that killed off the majority of life on the earth. There is a suspicion that the climate was also adversely affected.

- another theory involves the suns radiation output, having a large spike.

- One other dealt with plate tectonics and the ocean conveyor system. If the continents change position enough could they shut down the ocean conveyor system that regulates global temperatures?

My quest is like so many others ...does global warming exist, I think so. But the real questions are; does human activities cause it and if so can we change it? Is it a natural planetary process? Or even a Solar Process? And here is a big one....Can we survive it?

We have to many variables to consider a quick solution right now, the science is just not there and we may not know for certain for some time to come.

So we can only guess at the out come of current climate changes and look at our planets climate history. From that we see a cycle of very cold (ice ages) to above average warming trends at an interval of about 10k years. If we are just on this same cycle, what part of that 10k are we in?

My issue with Gore and his movie/presentation is he only shows one point of view and does not open it up to debate, alternate theories or even current science. He presents it as a final fact with a conclusion that us humans are to blame. If that is what passes for science these days then we all need to return to school to look at the scientific method. Climate and Planetary sciences are too new and more theories and discoveries are bound to add to the debate...

[truedorian]

Here come the zealots, as predicted...

As if to hammer home Mr. Cooper's point about the irrational hatred of Al Gore, droves of (presumably) right-wing zealots have inundated the TALKBACK forum with tons of anti-Gore hysteria.
(Ask these folks about G.W.B., and they slip you a look like a wounded puppy and claim "disappointment". Press them for more detail, and they might espouse things like "the war wasn't handled properly" and "there HAVE been a few too many scandals, of late", in a noticeably measured (albeit morose) way.

Ask these same people about Gore or Clinton (Mr. or Mrs.) and watch the spit and blood fly! They will go on, presumably for hours, about how Gore and the Clinton's are "liberal" blah-blah-blah's, going on to list, point-by-point the evils of Gore / Clinton. Self-introspectiveness, it seems, is NOT on the agenda for these Fox News-indoctrinated , emotionally infantile, so-called "patriots".

Al Gore is a career politician, and as such, he's prone to many of the same flaws that seem to be a prerequisite for any politician looking to acquire or solidify power. However, give credit where credit is due: , Al Gore spent these past years trying to spotlight an urgent cause that is impacting everyone, everywhere.

Our current president, on the other hand, has spent the past 8 years trying to obfuscate and re-write any empirical scientific data regarding the environment that did not suit their pro-corporate agenda (not to mention discrediting, firing or smearing any scientist or scientific organization that challenged them).

If only all of that misplaced anger over Gore and Clinton was channeled into something more constructive... like the SURVIVAL of Earth as we know it!

[rickanigor]

You are correct

Yes it is a world socialist view, for a one world government. For more information you might check out a abstract on an old magazine that came out in the 1970's called Future. It gives insight into the entire program.

[Shilar]

9 Errors explained

These "nine errors" not even mentioned are not minor errors (like the 2 inches=20 feet rule, as from Al Gore's movie), but major flaws. Simply looking up "inconvenient truth errors court" gets you the results. What's bad is that more errors are being discovered through SCIENTIFIC research (one found was that Antarctica is gaining more mass on one side, and the loss seen is on the other). CC is not causing polar bear deaths (they actually have increased in population), Mount Kilimanjaro's snowcap to melt (been doing this well before global warming was even in a paper, the 1850's), Lake Chad vanishing (overpopulation and resource abuse causes this), etc. Those were just a few errors. Need I quote the biggest one?

[aemarques]

Nah... THIS is enough

What? Me, worry...?
http://www.news.com/2300-11395_3-6235636-1.html?tag=nefd.pop

[daver208]

Ah, but here is the problem with your argument. How much support for 'fixing' global warming would dissapear if the cause wasn't man made. If it could be shown that 100% of the warming was natural all of a sudden the industrialized countries are no longer liable for messing up the environment. There are many scientists who believe that a slightly warmer climate would be "better" for humanity in general. So if you take the Human induced portion out of it you loose a lot of support. I can only infer that most people want to help the planet and would like to leave the earth a better place than when they got here. I understand that, and agree with it, but lets do it for the right reason.

Additionaly, when is true science ever settled? How many headlines do you hear every year where something that was "scientifically inpossible" (Search meta-materials, negative refractive index for an example, magenetic super-conductors for another). The climate is VERY complex system, and as such should continue to be researched. Period. But people shouldn't BELIEVE science and or scientists, they should always question. Following the road of belief has been done before, its called religion....