An Inconvenient Truth

[BeanDip4All]

Caught this movie. http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Al Gore is a pretty clever marketing genius, using fuzzy cute polar bears as figureheads.

You should have seen my girlfriends flipping out about them drowning. Every other factoid from the movie was instantly forgotten the second we left the theator, but DON'T LET THE POLAR BEARS DROWN!!!

While this movie was eye-opening for me despite my libertarianism with a conservative bent, I think Gore probably cherry-picked a lot of his data to be portrayed as alarming... much like an MM film, I am sure it's not the whole picture.

And wasn't "environmental cooling" a big alarmist thing in the 1970s?

[Theodore]

...I think Gore probably cherry-picked a lot of his data to be portrayed as alarming... much like an MM film, I am sure it's not the whole picture.

Anyone in the media trying to make a point picks and chooses the info they present. Its been going on for years, and will continue. One side of the coin or the other, its a fact of life.

[PassTheDutchie]

And wasn't "environmental cooling" a big alarmist thing in the 1970s?

Lots of scientists have come up with controversial scenarios of environmental catastrophe over the years. "Environmental cooling" and other like hypotheses were/are discredited over time by other scientists. This is exact opposite of the science pertaining to the greenhouse effect: with the passage of time and further study (20+ years), scientists and science have come to virtual consensus on the issue (with the exception of a few shills and charlatans).

[CUBUCK]

Al Gore is a pretty clever marketing genius, using fuzzy cute polar bears as figureheads.

Of course he is a genius
What did you expect he did "create" the internet

[MassLiberal]

I think you are going for an achilles heel argument there Tacoma, I'd be careful in your logic.

Plus I would point to the fact that he uses scientific fact in his numbers and backs it up by pointing out that there has not been ONE single peer reviewed article that has doubted global warming in the past ten years.

So comparing his facts to Michael Moore is a convenient, and false, way to write off the message of the movie.

[cj001f]

"you the self-satisfied reader may rely on us the self-satisfied academics to dismantle and completely wash away any tendencies in the material under consideration which might in any way jostle or disturb the tranquility of your self-satisfaction."

[splat]

And I thought this thread was about the hunk you dated with a small dick....

[Lurch]

Didn't Al Gore invent the internet..lol thank god I got that prodigy subscription in 1993...If it wasn't for the internet I would have accomplished so much more in life thus far, or watched alot more Cosby Show and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns..lol

http://www.perkel.com/politics/gore/internet.htm

According to Vincent Cerf, a senior vice president with MCI Worldcom who's been called the Father of the Internet, "The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."

The inventor of the Mosaic Browser, Marc Andreesen, credits Gore with making his work possible. He received a federal grant through Gore's High Performance Computing Act. The University of Pennsylvania's Dave Ferber says that without Gore the Internet "would not be where it is today."

Joseph E. Traub, a computer science professor at Columbia University, claims that Gore "was perhaps the first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country. Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the Internet?"


http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

[MassLiberal]

You should have seen my girlfriends flipping out about them drowning. Every other factoid from the movie was instantly forgotten the second we left the theator, but DON'T LET THE POLAR BEARS DROWN!!!

You really don't have to much respect for your girlfriends if you are willing to portray them as screaming fools who are wowed by a 10 second computer animation.

[BeanDip4All]

Plus I would point to the fact that he uses scientific fact in his numbers and backs it up by pointing out that there has not been ONE single peer reviewed article that has doubted global warming in the past ten years.

strikes me as a form of mild McCarthyism.

[CUBUCK]

You really don't have to much respect for your girlfriends if you are willing to portray them as screaming fools who are wowed by a 10 second computer animation.

Sometimes the truth hurts

[MassLiberal]

McCarthyism? are you serious?

Would you rather people just publish their findings without any serious vetting by a scientific community? That's what the oil companies pay their scienists for.

[cj001f]

strikes me as a form of mild McCarthyism.

The Global Warming opposition has always struck me as Lysenkoism.

[MassLiberal]

The Global Warming opposition has always struck me as Lysenkoism.

So true, excellent example.

[BeanDip4All]

McCarthyism? are you serious?

Would you rather people just publish their findings without any serious vetting by a scientific community? That's what the oil companies pay their scienists for.

Have you read "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg? It's probably my favorite book on environmental polcy. He's a Danish environmentalist who wanted to prove the non-alarmist crowd wrong. Unlike many politicos, he is actually mathematically-skilled and computer adept (a man after my own heart! ). After a long study of vast amounts of data, his empirically oriented analysis was that the non-alarmist crowd was, in fact, right. I think the book is a fairly acute assesment of which threats to the environment are real and which ones are over-hyped. Highly recommend.

By the way, I'm not disputing that global warming is real and caused by human activity, however I'm pretty sure that most of the warming over the past century happened between 1900 and 1940. Freon wasn't even invented until after 1938, and if you think about it, most Americans didn't start owning cars until after WWII... then again I'm not a scientist, but neither is Al Gore.

[MassLiberal]

That guy has been pretty thoroughly discredited, the Danish Committees on scientific honesty found his reasearch "to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty," and to be "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice."

He also used non peer reviewed research in order to get his numbers.

[Cono Este]

Caught this movie. http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Al Gore is a pretty clever marketing genius, using fuzzy cute polar bears as figureheads.

You should have seen my girlfriends flipping out about them drowning. Every other factoid from the movie was instantly forgotten the second we left the theator, but DON'T LET THE POLAR BEARS DROWN!!!

While this movie was eye-opening for me despite my libertarianism with a conservative bent, I think Gore probably cherry-picked a lot of his data to be portrayed as alarming... much like an MM film, I am sure it's not the whole picture.

And wasn't "environmental cooling" a big alarmist thing in the 1970s?

You just made the black list.

Single! Single!

[cj001f]

That guy has been pretty thoroughly discredited, the Danish Committees on scientific honesty found his reasearch "to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty," and to be "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice."

He also used non peer reviewed research in order to get his numbers.

It is illustrative that the glowing reviews trend from non-scientific publications (the Economist, the Washington Times, etc.) and the critical reviews from scientific publications (Nature, Scientific American, etc.). But he tells people what they want to hear in a manner they like so he must know something. As I said earlier:
"you the self-satisfied reader may rely on us the self-satisfied academics to dismantle and completely wash away any tendencies in the material under consideration which might in any way jostle or disturb the tranquility of your self-satisfaction."

[Tippster]

Just to point out one thing: Without Sen. Al Gore championing the idea that the Federal Government should help fund a way for universities to share information electronically as long as that technology was then made available to the public at large who knows if there'd be an "Internet."

Did he invent it? No. Did he have a very major hand in bringing it about? Absolutely.

[RootSkier]

Of course he is a genius
What did you expect he did "create" the internet

Why do people keep claiming this? Oh yeah, I forgot, they want to prove to the world how retarded they can be.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

[CUBUCK]

Why do people keep claiming this? Oh yeah, I forgot, they want to prove to the world how retarded they can be.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

Calm down tough guy just trying to have some fun.

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

I Know noone on the left in here has ever taken anything out of context

[Schmear]

he did "create" the internet

And an anti hurricane and tornado machine.

[Cono Este]

I think we all know what Al Gore meant when he said that. Obviously he did not create the Internet. But I think it just put a bad taste in everyones mouth, and it should. Its about as bad as Kerry standing in front of the town hall meeting in St. Louis, claiming that no one in the room makes as much money as he or Bush does. Its just painfully arrogant and insulting to alot of people.

[Tippster]

No, what he said is he didn't want to Raise the audience members' taxes, he wanted to raise his... and the President's. They WERE the richest guys in the room, or at least in the top 1% - which was the topic of discussion - and the audience, thanks to Fox News' constant blathering about his wife, the Heinz Ranch etc. etc., knew that. Get over yourself. Not everyone thinks they're stupendously wealthy or are just about to be. He flat out, unequivocally said I want to raise taxes on ME. That shows owning up to a responsibility in my book, not braggadocio or contempt.

I really enjoyed the very cut-and-dried response to Bush's claim that Kerry and the Democrats were going to raise "all" taxes.

[Cono Este]

NOOOOOO, what he said went something like this. "I bet the president and I are the only ones in the room to be effected by my tax increases". More or less..

It was a mistake. I am sure ml is right, he proably is a decent guy, but you cant blame the handlers for that one. I believe Kerry and his wife file seperately, I knew that at the time, and it still pissed me off. The guy made a assumption and a generalization about a room full of people. Not smart. I thnk the next guy to ask a question was a doctor.

Tipp, I learned never to assume anything about other peoples finances, its flat out low class to do so. Especially when you are trying to justify taxing people more. I have known peole who smell and look like a bum in a park who make 10x what kerry does and I respect them more than any yuppie with a hard on for a leased BMW.