Inaccuracies in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth

[Fandango 1,440]

Widge...I don't have time to fix your quotes....but I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist. So why is it ok that his house is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more green than someone who's collecting a Nobel Prize for environmental work?

LOL...oh Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Al Gore didn't win the Nobel for how green his home is. But keep reaching for straws.

Was the Nobel Prize green related? Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? In the field where he rec'd the Prize, he is a hypocrite. Therefore, that is related to the merits which won him the prize in the first place! Dur!

Here's the thing...I don't NEED to reach for straws. You don't like my opinion...well ya can stuff it I'm bored so I'm explaining it...not justifying it or needing your approval by any stretch of the imagination.

So keep your 'oh Lisa Lisa' for the Cult Jam, yeah?

Edited October 14, 2007 by LisaD

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Widge...I don't have time to fix your quotes....but I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist. So why is it ok that his house is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more green than someone who's collecting a Nobel Prize for environmental work?

LOL...oh Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Al Gore didn't win the Nobel for how green his home is. But keep reaching for straws.

Was the Nobel Prize green related? Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? In the field where he rec'd the Prize, he is a hypocrite. Therefore, that is related to the merits which won him the prize in the first place! Dur!

Here's the thing...I don't NEED to reach for straws. You don't like my opinion...well ya can stuff it I'm bored so I'm explaining it...not justifying it or needing your approval by any stretch of the imagination.

So keep your 'oh Lisa Lisa' for the Cult Jam, yeah?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Fandango 1,440]

Widge...I don't have time to fix your quotes....but I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist. So why is it ok that his house is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more green than someone who's collecting a Nobel Prize for environmental work?

LOL...oh Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Al Gore didn't win the Nobel for how green his home is. But keep reaching for straws.

Was the Nobel Prize green related? Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? In the field where he rec'd the Prize, he is a hypocrite. Therefore, that is related to the merits which won him the prize in the first place! Dur!

Here's the thing...I don't NEED to reach for straws. You don't like my opinion...well ya can stuff it I'm bored so I'm explaining it...not justifying it or needing your approval by any stretch of the imagination.

So keep your 'oh Lisa Lisa' for the Cult Jam, yeah?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hey Stevo...you're typing in your sleep again.

Wow, you really can't stay away, can you? :lol:

I love the whole 'can't be bothered to respond' response.

[Widge 0]

Widge...I don't have time to fix your quotes....but I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist. So why is it ok that his house is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more green than someone who's collecting a Nobel Prize for environmental work?

Seriously...he didn't talk about how his house was different and he 'worked at home' and 'carbon credits' and the like. His house is green. No excuses. So doesn't it stand to reason that AG's should be just as green...if not moreso? Let alone being so much worse it's laughable!

oh...forgot to add this: you call it 'perspective' I call it bullsh!t rationalization and excuse making. Justifying a non-green lifestyle by comparing it to war is just a little bit off the mark.

Apples and oranges all the way ........ and actually Al Gore never mentioned his house and life style I think it all stemmed from a "get Gore" campaign from his detractors and nothing anyone says will make his opponents see otherwise, so you will always have ample argument to fit your case ........... just this simple Brit thinks comparing the two houses which are soooooo unalike to be unreal is a bit off the mark and to suggest either are comparitive to average America is ludicrous and then to laugh at any attempt to correct inherrent problems with his house being pooh poohed makes me say he aint ever going to do anyting to please you ............... but then again he won the award for raising awareness and even I doubt you can refute that effect of his work of the last 30 years .............sits back and waits for the inevitable

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist.

Total agreement!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

... but then again he [Gore] won the award for raising awareness ...

And awareness he raised. The swift boat machinery wouldn't be in high gear if nobody had noticed that Gore's message takes hold.

[mendeleev 68]

One of the things that always amuses me about political partisans like GaryC, when they try to comment on scientific topics, is their obsession with something called "scientific proof".

Scientists do not deal in proof. (Mathematicians do, but pure mathematicians are not scientists.)

We deal with the real, natural world, trying to explain and predict its behavior. We deal in probabilities, trends, and observable phenomena.

Most scientists (I suspect, although I haven't seen a poll on the topic) would agree with the conjecture, "The sun will rise tomorrow morning." We think it is a highly probable event. But maybe it will turn out that our knowledge of solar physics is incomplete and that, between now and then, the sun will go nova and there will be no tomorrow. The weight of scientific opinion indicates that this is unlikely. But we can't prove that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Consider gravity. A well-trained scientist, if he stops and thinks before he speaks (just like other people, a lot of us sometimes have issues in this department) will not say something as silly as "I believe in the law of gravity." Belief is a matter of faith or something else, but not science. Now, Newton's so-called law of gravity is a very useful, if limited, scientific generalization that is now seen as a special case in the theory of general relativity. I suspect that GaryC would admit that he believes in gravity. I don't. But it is a very useful scientific theory. And I will not jump out of a window in order to test it. I find that gravity works.

Theories of climate change are certainly more controversial. The science is newer than the science surrounding gravitation. The science inevitably interacts with aspects of how humanity organizes society. The way we organize society is a topic that some people get emotional about.

However, there are more scientists alive today than ever before and many of us are pretty well trained. I suspect that if we could integrate (in the mathematical sense of the word, you know) over the amount of useful scientific effort concerning climate change and gravitation, we would find that there has been more work on climate change. But this is just my opinion. I'm not sure how I would try to turn my conjecture into measurement. It might be a scientifically interesting measurement, though ...

Twenty years ago, there was a lot more controversy in the scientific literature over the direction of climate change. Feedback loops were very poorly understood then. (And there is still a lot of good work to be done on feedback loops.) The idea that increased CO2 will lead to atmospheric warming has not been controversial for a long time. But, with warming, there is more water vapor in the air and so, more clouds. At that time, there was interesting controversy over whether those clouds would reflect so much incoming sunlight that the planet might, in fact cool. This turns out not to be the case.

Theories of orbital mechanics, which seem to explain the ice ages pretty well, given the recent (past several million years) prevailing atmospheric CO2 levels, predict that we would be entering another ice age sometime soon (either now or in the next few thousand years) if the atmosphere were not perturbed. But humanity is perturbing the chemical composition of the atmosphere at a fantastically fast rate and this is leading to the warming that we are observing. The natural trends indicate cooling, the human induced trends bias the planet toward rapid warming.

These general comments *do* represent scientific consensus as represented by research published in the best scientific journals. Scientists are people, and we are ambitious. We strive to solve puzzles, publish those solutions, and gain the associated prestige from the scientific community. This selection pressure has lead to the creation of premier scientific journals. We want our work to be published in the best possible journals, in order to gain the most notice and secure additional prestige. If you want to know what scientists think is interesting and what is settled, go and read the best scientific journals. Nature and Science are the two general pre-eminent scientific journals in the world. (Nature, a British journal, seems to be successfully displaying Science, published by the American Associated for the Advancement of Science as the "best" single scientific journal in the world.) Start there. These journals, in the past few decades, have started to publish very good news and modest popularizations of the most interesting research articles they publish. They do this primarily to help scientists read accross disciplines. (As a physical and inorganic chemist, it is often difficult for me to penetrate molecular biology or elementary particle physics papers. There is a pretty big gap from my training to those topics.) It is easy to find interesting articles on climate change there. The 8 Feb 2007 issue of Nature is an especially good place to start. It may take a bit of an education to read them, but with persistence they are accessible to anyone with a reasonably good education and good command of English. Follow the citations to find other important journals.

As for a medical doctor (and M.D.'s are not trained to practice science but to live off of medical science that others create) who tried to publish results of a survey (and the science of taking and analyzing a survey is rather interesting in its own right, legitimately subject to peer review) in a third rate scientific journal but was rejected even there -- I repeat there appears to be nothing of interest scientifically to discuss here. This person's opinions might attract a certain attention in the general media and especially amongst political partisans. (It clearly attracted GaryC's attention!) They may try to create the appearance of scientific controversy from the inept attempts of this medical doctor, and only the credulous will be seriously distracted.

The theory of global climate change of very substantial and solid. Human processes forcing warming seem to be overwhelming background natural forces that would tend to cause cooling. The rate of change is frightening fast. Confirmation of certain hypotheses comes much more quickly than I would have expected. Perhaps five years ago a landmark paper was published in Nature, predicting that the intensity (but not the number) of tropical cyclones would, on average, increase in a warming world. Subsequently, the fraction of Category 3 and higher tropical cyclones in the Atlantic to all named storms does seem to be increasing abruptly. This is the first year that two Category 5 tropical cyclones have come ashore in the Americas. They did not attract so much attention, coming ashore in poor parts of Mexico and Honduras. I suspect the political reaction might have been rather different if they had come ashore in the United States of America.

The political debate will continue. People like GaryC will weave and bob, trying in unscientific ways to find isolated tidbits to agree with their preconceived political notions. Scientists will continue our work. It is likely that the scientific basis for theories of global warming will only continue to get firmer. And the planet's climate changes will probably continue to accelerate. And the odd comments of untrained people at places like this will continue to amuse me. I do hope, very much, though, that more and more people will demonstrate common sense, accept the scientific consensus for what it is, and demand effective action.

[Fandango 1,440]

Widge...I don't have time to fix your quotes....but I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist. So why is it ok that his house is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more green than someone who's collecting a Nobel Prize for environmental work?

Seriously...he didn't talk about how his house was different and he 'worked at home' and 'carbon credits' and the like. His house is green. No excuses. So doesn't it stand to reason that AG's should be just as green...if not moreso? Let alone being so much worse it's laughable!

oh...forgot to add this: you call it 'perspective' I call it bullsh!t rationalization and excuse making. Justifying a non-green lifestyle by comparing it to war is just a little bit off the mark.

Apples and oranges all the way ........ and actually Al Gore never mentioned his house and life style I think it all stemmed from a "get Gore" campaign from his detractors and nothing anyone says will make his opponents see otherwise, so you will always have ample argument to fit your case ........... just this simple Brit thinks comparing the two houses which are soooooo unalike to be unreal is a bit off the mark and to suggest either are comparitive to average America is ludicrous and then to laugh at any attempt to correct inherrent problems with his house being pooh poohed makes me say he aint ever going to do anyting to please you ............... but then again he won the award for raising awareness and even I doubt you can refute that effect of his work of the last 30 years .............sits back and waits for the inevitable

Ok, I'm going to say this one more time just for sh!ts and giggles.

A man who's built his career around environmental issues should walk the walk where his own home is concerned. Now, he may not be lauded solely for his movie...but OF COURSE it's no great coincidence that he rec'd this award NOW...after his movie's been recognized. But the message that he's sent everyone is how we should live a greener life. But he doesn't do it himself.

He didn't have to 'mention his house' and it certainly is germane to his work. It's not a smear campaign to say 'wait a minute...you say this, but you do that!' He tells everyone in the movie to consider 'telecommunicating' instead of flying, but flies to Oslo in a private jet. That's kinda like being lectured to keep your virginity by the town #######. Kinda dilutes the importance of the message. I mean HOW BAD COULD GW ACTUALLY BE? if he's not heeding his own alarmist doomsday warnings?

I don't hate Al Gore...but he didn't deserve this honor. To stand among the likes of MLK, Nelson Mandella, Mother Theresa, Albert Schweitzer, Carl von Ossietzky, et al because he's lecturing the world about global warming? Let alone all the more deserving people who could have been honored this year...people who really LIVED and DIED bringing around peace.

Not Nobel Winners

October 13, 2007; Page A10

In Olso yesterday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.

The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.

Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.

Or to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.

Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.

Or to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians.

Or to Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili who, despite the efforts of the Kremlin to undermine their young states, stayed true to the spirit of the peaceful "color" revolutions they led in Ukraine and Georgia and showed that democracy can put down deep roots in Russia's backyard.

Or to Britain's Tony Blair, Ireland's Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.

Or to thousands of Chinese bloggers who run the risk of arrest by trying to bring uncensored information to their countrymen.

Or to scholar and activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, jailed presidential candidate Ayman Nour and other democracy campaigners in Egypt.

Or, posthumously, to lawmakers Walid Eido, Pierre Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem, Rafik Hariri, George Hawi and Gibran Tueni; journalist Samir Kassir; and other Lebanese citizens who've been assassinated since 2005 for their efforts to free their country from Syrian control.

Or to the Reverend Phillip Buck; Pastor Chun Ki Won and his organization, Durihana; Tim Peters and his Helping Hands Korea; and Liberty in North Korea, who help North Korean refugees escape to safety in free nations.

These men and women put their own lives and livelihoods at risk by working to rid the world of violence and oppression. Let us hope they survive the coming year so that the Nobel Prize Committee might consider them for the 2008 award.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1192233070...=googlenews_wsj

Oh, but we're supposed to be happy cos an American undeservedly won it instead, right?

[Widge 0]

One of the things that always amuses me about political partisans like GaryC, when they try to comment on scientific topics, is their obsession with something called "scientific proof".

Scientists do not deal in proof. (Mathematicians do, but pure mathematicians are not scientists.)

We deal with the real, natural world, trying to explain and predict its behavior. We deal in probabilities, trends, and observable phenomena.

Most scientists (I suspect, although I haven't seen a poll on the topic) would agree with the conjecture, "The sun will rise tomorrow morning." We think it is a highly probable event. But maybe it will turn out that our knowledge of solar physics is incomplete and that, between now and then, the sun will go nova and there will be no tomorrow. The weight of scientific opinion indicates that this is unlikely. But we can't prove that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Consider gravity. A well-trained scientist, if he stops and thinks before he speaks (just like other people, a lot of us sometimes have issues in this department) will not say something as silly as "I believe in the law of gravity." Belief is a matter of faith or something else, but not science. Now, Newton's so-called law of gravity is a very useful, if limited, scientific generalization that is now seen as a special case in the theory of general relativity. I suspect that GaryC would admit that he believes in gravity. I don't. But it is a very useful scientific theory. And I will not jump out of a window in order to test it. I find that gravity works.

Theories of climate change are certainly more controversial. The science is newer than the science surrounding gravitation. The science inevitably interacts with aspects of how humanity organizes society. The way we organize society is a topic that some people get emotional about.

However, there are more scientists alive today than ever before and many of us are pretty well trained. I suspect that if we could integrate (in the mathematical sense of the word, you know) over the amount of useful scientific effort concerning climate change and gravitation, we would find that there has been more work on climate change. But this is just my opinion. I'm not sure how I would try to turn my conjecture into measurement. It might be a scientifically interesting measurement, though ...

Twenty years ago, there was a lot more controversy in the scientific literature over the direction of climate change. Feedback loops were very poorly understood then. (And there is still a lot of good work to be done on feedback loops.) The idea that increased CO2 will lead to atmospheric warming has not been controversial for a long time. But, with warming, there is more water vapor in the air and so, more clouds. At that time, there was interesting controversy over whether those clouds would reflect so much incoming sunlight that the planet might, in fact cool. This turns out not to be the case.

Theories of orbital mechanics, which seem to explain the ice ages pretty well, given the recent (past several million years) prevailing atmospheric CO2 levels, predict that we would be entering another ice age sometime soon (either now or in the next few thousand years) if the atmosphere were not perturbed. But humanity is perturbing the chemical composition of the atmosphere at a fantastically fast rate and this is leading to the warming that we are observing. The natural trends indicate cooling, the human induced trends bias the planet toward rapid warming.

These general comments *do* represent scientific consensus as represented by research published in the best scientific journals. Scientists are people, and we are ambitious. We strive to solve puzzles, publish those solutions, and gain the associated prestige from the scientific community. This selection pressure has lead to the creation of premier scientific journals. We want our work to be published in the best possible journals, in order to gain the most notice and secure additional prestige. If you want to know what scientists think is interesting and what is settled, go and read the best scientific journals. Nature and Science are the two general pre-eminent scientific journals in the world. (Nature, a British journal, seems to be successfully displaying Science, published by the American Associated for the Advancement of Science as the "best" single scientific journal in the world.) Start there. These journals, in the past few decades, have started to publish very good news and modest popularizations of the most interesting research articles they publish. They do this primarily to help scientists read accross disciplines. (As a physical and inorganic chemist, it is often difficult for me to penetrate molecular biology or elementary particle physics papers. There is a pretty big gap from my training to those topics.) It is easy to find interesting articles on climate change there. The 8 Feb 2007 issue of Nature is an especially good place to start. It may take a bit of an education to read them, but with persistence they are accessible to anyone with a reasonably good education and good command of English. Follow the citations to find other important journals.

As for a medical doctor (and M.D.'s are not trained to practice science but to live off of medical science that others create) who tried to publish results of a survey (and the science of taking and analyzing a survey is rather interesting in its own right, legitimately subject to peer review) in a third rate scientific journal but was rejected even there -- I repeat there appears to be nothing of interest scientifically to discuss here. This person's opinions might attract a certain attention in the general media and especially amongst political partisans. (It clearly attracted GaryC's attention!) They may try to create the appearance of scientific controversy from the inept attempts of this medical doctor, and only the credulous will be seriously distracted.

The theory of global climate change of very substantial and solid. Human processes forcing warming seem to be overwhelming background natural forces that would tend to cause cooling. The rate of change is frightening fast. Confirmation of certain hypotheses comes much more quickly than I would have expected. Perhaps five years ago a landmark paper was published in Nature, predicting that the intensity (but not the number) of tropical cyclones would, on average, increase in a warming world. Subsequently, the fraction of Category 3 and higher tropical cyclones in the Atlantic to all named storms does seem to be increasing abruptly. This is the first year that two Category 5 tropical cyclones have come ashore in the Americas. They did not attract so much attention, coming ashore in poor parts of Mexico and Honduras. I suspect the political reaction might have been rather different if they had come ashore in the United States of America.

The political debate will continue. People like GaryC will weave and bob, trying in unscientific ways to find isolated tidbits to agree with their preconceived political notions. Scientists will continue our work. It is likely that the scientific basis for theories of global warming will only continue to get firmer. And the planet's climate changes will probably continue to accelerate. And the odd comments of untrained people at places like this will continue to amuse me. I do hope, very much, though, that more and more people will demonstrate common sense, accept the scientific consensus for what it is, and demand effective action.

**applauds** excellent post

[one...two...tree 2,762]

One of the things that always amuses me about political partisans like GaryC, when they try to comment on scientific topics, is their obsession with something called "scientific proof".

Scientists do not deal in proof. (Mathematicians do, but pure mathematicians are not scientists.)

We deal with the real, natural world, trying to explain and predict its behavior. We deal in probabilities, trends, and observable phenomena.

Most scientists (I suspect, although I haven't seen a poll on the topic) would agree with the conjecture, "The sun will rise tomorrow morning." We think it is a highly probable event. But maybe it will turn out that our knowledge of solar physics is incomplete and that, between now and then, the sun will go nova and there will be no tomorrow. The weight of scientific opinion indicates that this is unlikely. But we can't prove that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Consider gravity. A well-trained scientist, if he stops and thinks before he speaks (just like other people, a lot of us sometimes have issues in this department) will not say something as silly as "I believe in the law of gravity." Belief is a matter of faith or something else, but not science. Now, Newton's so-called law of gravity is a very useful, if limited, scientific generalization that is now seen as a special case in the theory of general relativity. I suspect that GaryC would admit that he believes in gravity. I don't. But it is a very useful scientific theory. And I will not jump out of a window in order to test it. I find that gravity works.

Theories of climate change are certainly more controversial. The science is newer than the science surrounding gravitation. The science inevitably interacts with aspects of how humanity organizes society. The way we organize society is a topic that some people get emotional about.

However, there are more scientists alive today than ever before and many of us are pretty well trained. I suspect that if we could integrate (in the mathematical sense of the word, you know) over the amount of useful scientific effort concerning climate change and gravitation, we would find that there has been more work on climate change. But this is just my opinion. I'm not sure how I would try to turn my conjecture into measurement. It might be a scientifically interesting measurement, though ...

Twenty years ago, there was a lot more controversy in the scientific literature over the direction of climate change. Feedback loops were very poorly understood then. (And there is still a lot of good work to be done on feedback loops.) The idea that increased CO2 will lead to atmospheric warming has not been controversial for a long time. But, with warming, there is more water vapor in the air and so, more clouds. At that time, there was interesting controversy over whether those clouds would reflect so much incoming sunlight that the planet might, in fact cool. This turns out not to be the case.

Theories of orbital mechanics, which seem to explain the ice ages pretty well, given the recent (past several million years) prevailing atmospheric CO2 levels, predict that we would be entering another ice age sometime soon (either now or in the next few thousand years) if the atmosphere were not perturbed. But humanity is perturbing the chemical composition of the atmosphere at a fantastically fast rate and this is leading to the warming that we are observing. The natural trends indicate cooling, the human induced trends bias the planet toward rapid warming.

These general comments *do* represent scientific consensus as represented by research published in the best scientific journals. Scientists are people, and we are ambitious. We strive to solve puzzles, publish those solutions, and gain the associated prestige from the scientific community. This selection pressure has lead to the creation of premier scientific journals. We want our work to be published in the best possible journals, in order to gain the most notice and secure additional prestige. If you want to know what scientists think is interesting and what is settled, go and read the best scientific journals. Nature and Science are the two general pre-eminent scientific journals in the world. (Nature, a British journal, seems to be successfully displaying Science, published by the American Associated for the Advancement of Science as the "best" single scientific journal in the world.) Start there. These journals, in the past few decades, have started to publish very good news and modest popularizations of the most interesting research articles they publish. They do this primarily to help scientists read accross disciplines. (As a physical and inorganic chemist, it is often difficult for me to penetrate molecular biology or elementary particle physics papers. There is a pretty big gap from my training to those topics.) It is easy to find interesting articles on climate change there. The 8 Feb 2007 issue of Nature is an especially good place to start. It may take a bit of an education to read them, but with persistence they are accessible to anyone with a reasonably good education and good command of English. Follow the citations to find other important journals.

As for a medical doctor (and M.D.'s are not trained to practice science but to live off of medical science that others create) who tried to publish results of a survey (and the science of taking and analyzing a survey is rather interesting in its own right, legitimately subject to peer review) in a third rate scientific journal but was rejected even there -- I repeat there appears to be nothing of interest scientifically to discuss here. This person's opinions might attract a certain attention in the general media and especially amongst political partisans. (It clearly attracted GaryC's attention!) They may try to create the appearance of scientific controversy from the inept attempts of this medical doctor, and only the credulous will be seriously distracted.

The theory of global climate change of very substantial and solid. Human processes forcing warming seem to be overwhelming background natural forces that would tend to cause cooling. The rate of change is frightening fast. Confirmation of certain hypotheses comes much more quickly than I would have expected. Perhaps five years ago a landmark paper was published in Nature, predicting that the intensity (but not the number) of tropical cyclones would, on average, increase in a warming world. Subsequently, the fraction of Category 3 and higher tropical cyclones in the Atlantic to all named storms does seem to be increasing abruptly. This is the first year that two Category 5 tropical cyclones have come ashore in the Americas. They did not attract so much attention, coming ashore in poor parts of Mexico and Honduras. I suspect the political reaction might have been rather different if they had come ashore in the United States of America.

The political debate will continue. People like GaryC will weave and bob, trying in unscientific ways to find isolated tidbits to agree with their preconceived political notions. Scientists will continue our work. It is likely that the scientific basis for theories of global warming will only continue to get firmer. And the planet's climate changes will probably continue to accelerate. And the odd comments of untrained people at places like this will continue to amuse me. I do hope, very much, though, that more and more people will demonstrate common sense, accept the scientific consensus for what it is, and demand effective action.

**applauds** excellent post

I second that. Amen.

[no name 1]

The first scientific meeting I ever attended on climate change was at Texas A&M University back in 1988. TAMU is not exactly a hotbed of liberalism. If posters criticizing Gore try to dispute that -- well -- let me just say I worked there for a couple years. It is not liberal.

A lot of the presenters, in hallway conversations, revealed themselves to be pretty conservative, as in "I'm not sure I can vote for George Bush because I'm not sure he's a real Reagan Republican".

One of those presenters gave a talk on the disappearing snowcap on Mt. Kilimangaro and how it appeared to be an indicated for climate change.

Another presented model reports discussing the stability of the Greenland ice cap, and how increased temperatures would no be expected to cause melting there. The evidence has since then changed that guys mind. More recently, he has been an author on scientific papers documenting how some of the ice caps in Greenland are melting much more quickly than can be accounted for by modern climate models. In hallway conversations, this scientist has now been wonderful if a "climate runaway" -- like Venus -- might not be implausible. He hasn't said this yet, though, in peer reviewed literature.

I could go on.

There is a very substantial scientific consensus that global warming is real and caused by human activity. Let's keep in mind that IPCC is also awarded the Prize.

I find it fascinating that, in the popular media, climate change is discussed as though it were an idea full of scientific uncertainty. That is *not* what I see, as a practicing scientist (and a chemist, in a field rather far away from atmospheric science) reading Nature, Science, Geophysical Research Letters, and the like over the past decade or so. I guess the popular media VJ needs to find controversy even where there really isn't any.

[no name 1]

Widge...I don't have time to fix your quotes....but I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist. So why is it ok that his house is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more green than someone who's collecting a Nobel Prize for environmental work?

Seriously...he didn't talk about how his house was different and he 'worked at home' and 'carbon credits' and the like. His house is green. No excuses. So doesn't it stand to reason that AG's should be just as green...if not moreso? Let alone being so much worse it's laughable!

oh...forgot to add this: you call it 'perspective' I call it bullsh!t rationalization and excuse making. Justifying a non-green lifestyle by comparing it to war is just a little bit off the mark.

Apples and oranges all the way ........ and actually Al Gore never mentioned his house and life style I think it all stemmed from a "get Gore" campaign from his detractors and nothing anyone says will make his opponents see otherwise, so you will always have ample argument to fit your case ........... just this simple Brit thinks comparing the two houses which are soooooo unalike to be unreal is a bit off the mark and to suggest either are comparitive to average America is ludicrous and then to laugh at any attempt to correct inherrent problems with his house being pooh poohed makes me say he aint ever going to do anyting to please you ............... but then again he won the award for raising awareness and even I doubt you can refute that effect of his work of the last 30 years .............sits back and waits for the inevitable

That's a popular VJ M.O. Add lots of emoticons & try to make yourself look smarter.

PS: post #74 & #85. Authentic stuff tends to get buried or nitpicked fast.

Edited October 14, 2007 by devilette

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Widge...I don't have time to fix your quotes....but I will say this: Bush is no environmentalist. So why is it ok that his house is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more green than someone who's collecting a Nobel Prize for environmental work?

Seriously...he didn't talk about how his house was different and he 'worked at home' and 'carbon credits' and the like. His house is green. No excuses. So doesn't it stand to reason that AG's should be just as green...if not moreso? Let alone being so much worse it's laughable!

oh...forgot to add this: you call it 'perspective' I call it bullsh!t rationalization and excuse making. Justifying a non-green lifestyle by comparing it to war is just a little bit off the mark.

Apples and oranges all the way ........ and actually Al Gore never mentioned his house and life style I think it all stemmed from a "get Gore" campaign from his detractors and nothing anyone says will make his opponents see otherwise, so you will always have ample argument to fit your case ........... just this simple Brit thinks comparing the two houses which are soooooo unalike to be unreal is a bit off the mark and to suggest either are comparitive to average America is ludicrous and then to laugh at any attempt to correct inherrent problems with his house being pooh poohed makes me say he aint ever going to do anyting to please you ............... but then again he won the award for raising awareness and even I doubt you can refute that effect of his work of the last 30 years .............sits back and waits for the inevitable

That's a popular VJ M.O. Add lots of emoticons & try to make yourself look smarter.

PS: post #74 & #85. Authentic stuff tends to get buried or nitpicked fast.

You said the 'A' word. Uh-oh... (looking for shelter)

[Widge 0]

Ok, I'm going to say this one more time just for sh!ts and giggles.

A man who's built his career around environmental issues should walk the walk where his own home is concerned. Now, he may not be lauded solely for his movie...but OF COURSE it's no great coincidence that he rec'd this award NOW...after his movie's been recognized. But the message that he's sent everyone is how we should live a greener life. But he doesn't do it himself.

He didn't have to 'mention his house' and it certainly is germane to his work. It's not a smear campaign to say 'wait a minute...you say this, but you do that!' He tells everyone in the movie to consider 'telecommunicating' instead of flying, but flies to Oslo in a private jet. That's kinda like being lectured to keep your virginity by the town #######. Kinda dilutes the importance of the message. I mean HOW BAD COULD GW ACTUALLY BE? if he's not heeding his own alarmist doomsday warnings?

I don't hate Al Gore...but he didn't deserve this honor. To stand among the likes of MLK, Nelson Mandella, Mother Theresa, Albert Schweitzer, Carl von Ossietzky, et al because he's lecturing the world about global warming? Let alone all the more deserving people who could have been honored this year...people who really LIVED and DIED bringing around peace.

Oh, but we're supposed to be happy cos an American undeservedly won it instead, right?

Uhm has Mr Gore ever been to Oslo on his private jet???????? or could you be falling into even more "get Gore" propoganda (the ceremony in Oslo isn't until December)

......... which if true kinda ........ oh never mind

Officially the nominees apparently aren't released for 50 years, or so I just read, so I have no idea if your comprehensive list were or weren't ..... for whatever reason the panel saw fit, Mr Gore was nominated and jointly won and as I have no intention of dissing the panel I stand by their decision and had I been an American I may have been proud of his achievement .............. and I'm afraid your saying its undeserved, his personal footprint ####### and balances to amend it count for nothing, and any other spurious charges you level actually when balanced against his work over 30 years culminating in that film dont add up

[HAL 9000 96]

One of the things that always amuses me about political partisans like GaryC, when they try to comment on scientific topics, is their obsession with something called "scientific proof".

Scientists do not deal in proof. (Mathematicians do, but pure mathematicians are not scientists.)

We deal with the real, natural world, trying to explain and predict its behavior. We deal in probabilities, trends, and observable phenomena.

Most scientists (I suspect, although I haven't seen a poll on the topic) would agree with the conjecture, "The sun will rise tomorrow morning." We think it is a highly probable event. But maybe it will turn out that our knowledge of solar physics is incomplete and that, between now and then, the sun will go nova and there will be no tomorrow. The weight of scientific opinion indicates that this is unlikely. But we can't prove that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Consider gravity. A well-trained scientist, if he stops and thinks before he speaks (just like other people, a lot of us sometimes have issues in this department) will not say something as silly as "I believe in the law of gravity." Belief is a matter of faith or something else, but not science. Now, Newton's so-called law of gravity is a very useful, if limited, scientific generalization that is now seen as a special case in the theory of general relativity. I suspect that GaryC would admit that he believes in gravity. I don't. But it is a very useful scientific theory. And I will not jump out of a window in order to test it. I find that gravity works.

Theories of climate change are certainly more controversial. The science is newer than the science surrounding gravitation. The science inevitably interacts with aspects of how humanity organizes society. The way we organize society is a topic that some people get emotional about.

However, there are more scientists alive today than ever before and many of us are pretty well trained. I suspect that if we could integrate (in the mathematical sense of the word, you know) over the amount of useful scientific effort concerning climate change and gravitation, we would find that there has been more work on climate change. But this is just my opinion. I'm not sure how I would try to turn my conjecture into measurement. It might be a scientifically interesting measurement, though ...

Twenty years ago, there was a lot more controversy in the scientific literature over the direction of climate change. Feedback loops were very poorly understood then. (And there is still a lot of good work to be done on feedback loops.) The idea that increased CO2 will lead to atmospheric warming has not been controversial for a long time. But, with warming, there is more water vapor in the air and so, more clouds. At that time, there was interesting controversy over whether those clouds would reflect so much incoming sunlight that the planet might, in fact cool. This turns out not to be the case.

Theories of orbital mechanics, which seem to explain the ice ages pretty well, given the recent (past several million years) prevailing atmospheric CO2 levels, predict that we would be entering another ice age sometime soon (either now or in the next few thousand years) if the atmosphere were not perturbed. But humanity is perturbing the chemical composition of the atmosphere at a fantastically fast rate and this is leading to the warming that we are observing. The natural trends indicate cooling, the human induced trends bias the planet toward rapid warming.

These general comments *do* represent scientific consensus as represented by research published in the best scientific journals. Scientists are people, and we are ambitious. We strive to solve puzzles, publish those solutions, and gain the associated prestige from the scientific community. This selection pressure has lead to the creation of premier scientific journals. We want our work to be published in the best possible journals, in order to gain the most notice and secure additional prestige. If you want to know what scientists think is interesting and what is settled, go and read the best scientific journals. Nature and Science are the two general pre-eminent scientific journals in the world. (Nature, a British journal, seems to be successfully displaying Science, published by the American Associated for the Advancement of Science as the "best" single scientific journal in the world.) Start there. These journals, in the past few decades, have started to publish very good news and modest popularizations of the most interesting research articles they publish. They do this primarily to help scientists read accross disciplines. (As a physical and inorganic chemist, it is often difficult for me to penetrate molecular biology or elementary particle physics papers. There is a pretty big gap from my training to those topics.) It is easy to find interesting articles on climate change there. The 8 Feb 2007 issue of Nature is an especially good place to start. It may take a bit of an education to read them, but with persistence they are accessible to anyone with a reasonably good education and good command of English. Follow the citations to find other important journals.

As for a medical doctor (and M.D.'s are not trained to practice science but to live off of medical science that others create) who tried to publish results of a survey (and the science of taking and analyzing a survey is rather interesting in its own right, legitimately subject to peer review) in a third rate scientific journal but was rejected even there -- I repeat there appears to be nothing of interest scientifically to discuss here. This person's opinions might attract a certain attention in the general media and especially amongst political partisans. (It clearly attracted GaryC's attention!) They may try to create the appearance of scientific controversy from the inept attempts of this medical doctor, and only the credulous will be seriously distracted.

The theory of global climate change of very substantial and solid. Human processes forcing warming seem to be overwhelming background natural forces that would tend to cause cooling. The rate of change is frightening fast. Confirmation of certain hypotheses comes much more quickly than I would have expected. Perhaps five years ago a landmark paper was published in Nature, predicting that the intensity (but not the number) of tropical cyclones would, on average, increase in a warming world. Subsequently, the fraction of Category 3 and higher tropical cyclones in the Atlantic to all named storms does seem to be increasing abruptly. This is the first year that two Category 5 tropical cyclones have come ashore in the Americas. They did not attract so much attention, coming ashore in poor parts of Mexico and Honduras. I suspect the political reaction might have been rather different if they had come ashore in the United States of America.

The political debate will continue. People like GaryC will weave and bob, trying in unscientific ways to find isolated tidbits to agree with their preconceived political notions. Scientists will continue our work. It is likely that the scientific basis for theories of global warming will only continue to get firmer. And the planet's climate changes will probably continue to accelerate. And the odd comments of untrained people at places like this will continue to amuse me. I do hope, very much, though, that more and more people will demonstrate common sense, accept the scientific consensus for what it is, and demand effective action.

As a scientist myself, I have to predict that the global warming from the heat generated in this post will surely prolong the drought in the Atlanta area even more... I hope they get some rain soon!

Now as for the following:

"Peer review isn't something that is done for surveys."

A scientific survey is known as a Review, and such articles are subject to particular approval at each of the peer-reviewed journals to which many a times, authors are asked to provide a review submission.