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Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

corplinx

JREF Kid
corplinx
Joined
Oct 22, 2002
Messages
8,952
Al Gore is releasing a new book on global warming as well as promoting the film where he scours the globe cherrypicking his data to promote his environmental agenda.

Let's take bets now on how many global warming myths and how much pseudoscience Gore serves up?

(for the record, I haven't dont enough research on the subject of global warming to form an opinion about it, I am just anti-bull)

Here is the website related to his project:
http://climatecrisis.net/

I notice on this page there is a picture of hurricane katrina or rita:
http://climatecrisis.net/aboutthefilm.html

We are changing the Earth's climate. Heat-trapping gases from human activities are causing glaciers to melt, seas to rise, storms to strengthen and disease to spread. Concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere are now higher than at any time in human history and climbing sharply. This planetary emergency compels us to act.
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Sounds like a bastion of credible scientific data.

Two people from the Byrd Polar Research Institute are on the scientific advisory panel. Gee, I wonder if they informed Gore that while sea-ice is melting (thus not increasing sea levels) the antarctic icecap is thickening. One member of the scientific advisory panel is merely an MD turned bureacrat. Hillary Clinton summarily dismissed Michael Chrichton's senate testimony about bad global warming advocacy because he was an MD and worse an author.

Looks like it may be fun to pick apart bad advocacy. Here's hoping.
 
corplinx said:
Al Gore is releasing a new book on global warming as well as promoting the film where he scours the globe cherrypicking his data to promote his environmental agenda.
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This was mostly about Kerry, but the reference to Al Gore seems appropriate to the thread:

http://www.truthlaidbear.com/archives/2006/01/26/john_al_paris_nicole.php#002140

"Kerry has become the Paris Hilton to Al Gore's Nicole Ritchie on the stage of American politics: creatures whose fame has become self-sustaining; and who remain in the public eye not because of any achievement or acumen, but who are simply famous for being famous."
 
corplinx said:
(for the record, I haven't dont enough research on the subject of global warming to form an opinion about it...
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Yet with comments like...

corplinx said:
Al Gore is releasing a new book on global warming ...where he scours the globe cherrypicking his data to promote his environmental agenda.
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Let's take bets now on how many global warming myths and how much pseudoscience Gore serves up?
Click to expand...

Looks like it may be fun to pick apart bad advocacy. Here's hoping.
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you seem to have your mind pretty much made up?

Edit to remove corps quote which was the title of Gore's book and not his commentary.
 
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DavidJames said:
Yet with comments like...





you seem to have your mind pretty much made up?
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Can't one identify Gore as a crackpot with an axe to grind without dismissing the subject altogether? I mean, Hitler was a vegetarian but I don't think you could condemn healthy eating because of it.

Sorry about invoking Godwin's so early, but it was the first example I could think of.
 
corplinx said:
Al Gore is releasing a new book on global warming as well as promoting the film where he scours the globe cherrypicking his data to promote his environmental agenda.

Let's take bets now on how many global warming myths and how much pseudoscience Gore serves up?

(for the record, I haven't dont enough research on the subject of global warming to form an opinion about it, I am just anti-bull)
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...Yet you see nothing wrong with deciding ahead of time that Gore is "cherrypicking" and that he'll serve up "myths" and "pseudoscience."

Well, as long as you're objective and all... :rolleyes:
 
DavidJames said:
I don't know what you're asking, can you rephrase the question?
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I suspect Jocko's point is that bad advocacy is bad advocacy, regardless of the side you're on. When a wingnut promotes a cause you believe in using flawed logic and bad data, it's still a good thing for your own side, in the long run, to smack that person down.
 
Ziggurat said:
I suspect Jocko's point is that bad advocacy is bad advocacy, regardless of the side you're on. When a wingnut promotes a cause you believe in using flawed logic and bad data, it's still a good thing for your own side, in the long run, to smack that person down.
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Ok, but the book isn't out yet and he said he hasn't researched global warming, yet he seems to have reached conclusions. Show us the "cherry picking" "bad advocacy" and "flawed logic". Remember, the book isn't out until April.
 
Cleon said:
...Yet you see nothing wrong with deciding ahead of time that Gore is "cherrypicking" and that he'll serve up "myths" and "pseudoscience."

Well, as long as you're objective and all... :rolleyes:
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Descriptions I've read of the film describe him visiting some thawing glaciers and such. How can that not be cherrypicking? I'm sure he mentions how many glaciers there are in the world, discusses how many of them are thawing, discusses which ones are due to human-induced global warming and which ones are due to local phenoma and I will most likely have to apologize for making this prejudgement.

Should I add a rolleyes to my response?
 
DavidJames said:
Ok, but the book isn't out yet and he said he hasn't researched global warming, yet he seems to have reached conclusions. Show us the "cherry picking" "bad advocacy" and "flawed logic". Remember, the book isn't out until April.
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I always like these doom and gloom books. Reminds me of the "End of the World", again! The earth has been warmer and colder than it is right now many times. I can't wait to read it.
 
corplinx said:
that while sea-ice is melting (thus not increasing sea levels)
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(my emphasis)

Sorry, this is counter-intuitive to me. If sea-ice is melting, why would sea levels not be increasing? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand the leap to a "thus".
 
corplinx said:
Descriptions I've read of the film describe him visiting some thawing glaciers and such. How can that not be cherrypicking? I'm sure he mentions how many glaciers there are in the world, discusses how many of them are thawing, discusses which ones are due to human-induced global warming and which ones are due to local phenoma and I will most likely have to apologize for making this prejudgement.

Should I add a rolleyes to my response?
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No, you've pretty much already stated, point blank, that your mind is made up.
 
Upchurch said:
(my emphasis)

Sorry, this is counter-intuitive to me. If sea-ice is melting, why would sea levels not be increasing? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand the leap to a "thus".
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Since corps made this comment without any references it's anyone's guess what he meant. This publication by the EPA appears to me to say quite clearly, rising sea levels will occur as a result of increasing global temps.

Climate modeling studies generally estimate that global temperatures will rise a few degrees (C) in the next century. Such a warming is likely to raise sea level by expanding ocean water, and melting glaciers and portions of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Warmer polar ocean temperatures could also melt portions of the Ross and other Antarctic ice shelves, which might increase the rate at which Antarctic ice streams convey ice into the oceans. Warmer polar air temperatures, however, would probably increase annual snowfall, which would partly offset the rise in sea level caused by warmer temperatures. Along much of the United States coast, sea level is already rising 2.5-3.0 mm/yr (10 to 12 inches per century).
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http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/ResourceCenterPublicationsProbability.html
 
Upchurch said:
Sorry, this is counter-intuitive to me. If sea-ice is melting, why would sea levels not be increasing? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand the leap to a "thus".
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An object of a given mass floating in a liquid will only raise the level of that liquid by an amount proportional to its weight, not matter it's density.
 
Upchurch said:
(my emphasis)

Sorry, this is counter-intuitive to me. If sea-ice is melting, why would sea levels not be increasing? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand the leap to a "thus".
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I think he's referring to the fact that you can have a full glass of ice water in which the floating ice is actually above the top of the glass, but when the ice melts, the glass will not overflow (because the ice contracts when it melts). Archimedes stuff.

I would think the same principle would apply on a global scale, but I'm no expert.
 
strathmeyer said:
An object of a given mass floating in a liquid will only raise the level of that liquid by an amount proportional to its weight, not matter it's density.
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I believe the salient point is the increasing temperature which may cause the ice to melt will also contribute to increasing the temperature of the water causing it to expand and raise sea levels.

http://www.bigelow.org/virtual/handson/expansion.html
 
Upchurch said:
Sorry, this is counter-intuitive to me. If sea-ice is melting, why would sea levels not be increasing? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand the leap to a "thus".
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Just to add a little further on previous comments, there are two big sources of water locked up outside of the ocean: the ice sitting on land in Antarctica and Greenland. It's only significant melting of this ice (which does not currently displace any sea water) which would significantly increase sea levels. Whether or not it does do so, however, is not a simple matter, and it depends on more than whether or not global warming occurs. Sea ice is always in contact with the ocean, so if global temperatures increase, ocean temperatures generally will too, and sea ice will melt. But most of Antarctica is below freezing temperatures year round. Increases/decreases in water trapped there comes from the rate at which glaciers flow out to sea and the rate at which new snow falls. When the air gets very cold, as it is over much of Antarctica, it's not able to hold much water at all and so cannot produce heavy snowfall. So global warming might actually increase snowfall over Antarctica, and thus increase the amount of water trapped on land there. So basically the problem of how sea levels will respond to global warming is highly nontrivial, and not all the effects are even necessarily going to push it in the same direction.
 
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