[antimedia] antimedia: Al Gore is a liar....

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Posted by antimedia:
Al Gore is a liar....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1151890442.shtml


   ....and [1]he himself admits it in an interview with George
   Stephanpoulos. Gore is pedaling his new moview, An Inconvenient Truth,
   which claims to tell the truth about global warming. Yet nothing could
   be further from the truth.

     According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in
     for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in
     sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and invasions of tropical
     disease, among other cataclysms--unless we change the way we live
     now.
     Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's
     gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and
     Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering
     the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And
     why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific
     community is over."

   The debate is over? Watch this.

     Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes
     after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr.
     Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best
     estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests
     in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that
     scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of
     confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim--in his
     defense--that scientists "don't know. . . . They just don't know."

   If they don't know, as Gore admits, then there is no concensus as Gore
   asserts.
   Furthermore, an atmospheric scientist at MIT (not exactly a backwater
   of the scientific community) and the author of the cited oped points
   out that concensus on global warming is quite elusive.

     The other elements of the global-warming scare scenario are
     predicated on similar oversights. Malaria, claimed as a byproduct
     of warming, was once common in Michigan and Siberia and remains
     common in Siberia--mosquitoes don't require tropical warmth.
     Hurricanes, too, vary on multidecadal time scales; sea-surface
     temperature is likely to be an important factor. This temperature,
     itself, varies on multidecadal time scales. However, questions
     concerning the origin of the relevant sea-surface temperatures and
     the nature of trends in hurricane intensity are being hotly argued
     within the profession.
     Even among those arguing, there is general agreement that we can't
     attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure,
     there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for
     Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be
     global warming because he can't think of anything else. While
     arguments like these, based on lassitude, are becoming rather
     common in climate assessments, such claims, given the primitive
     state of weather and climate science, are hardly compelling.
     A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously
     ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they
     are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all
     change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to
     exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are
     clearly not issues over which debate is ended--at least not in
     terms of the actual science.
     A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by the
     environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook. He concludes that the
     scientific community now agrees that significant warming is
     occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on
     the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some
     level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate
     community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have
     increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past
     century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940,
     decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, increased again until
     the '90s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998.

   Perhaps Gore really believes his own hype, but I take offense when
   someone wants to spend trillions of dollars attacking a problem that
   we can't even prove exists. (Hat tip to [2]Newsbusters.)

References

   1. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
   2. http://newsbusters.org/node/6231