October 8, 2007
Will there be a Nobel Prize for Al Gore? And if, so will he run for President?
Some people think yes, yes. I'm wondering if I want to be one of them. A lot seems to hang on whether his movie was totally honest. It wasn't, but nevertheless, I like Al Gore. Here's my simulblog of "An Inconvenient Truth." I'm glancing back at all my Al Gore posts, trying to see how consistent I've been. There are too many to check, and I'm sure I've mocked him as ridiculous or pompous on many occasions. But I mocked him as ridiculous and pompous back in 2000, and I voted for him. The Republicans got a new guy in Thompson. Time for the Democrats to get someone new. The old crowd is so tedious, especially the topic of whether Hillary is inevitable. Let's have some Al. If he wins the Nobel Prize.
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52 comments:
I'd like to see Al Gore get into the race, if for no other reason than to watch the fireworks between him and the Clintons. With out a doubt, he would immediately surge ahead of Obama and Edwards.
I don't think that he will run.
It was 85 yesterday in Madison, and my green beans continue to grow in October.
Speaking of holes (in time). When did you change the time on the blog to Eatern Time? (It is now 11:57 a.m Eastern time and the time stamp shows 11:25 so it can't still be on central time.) Is this hole in time what allowed sweet the spammer to hit you?
Thanks, too many. I've probably done that before and not realized it. The blog is set to Central, which I can't change or it will change all my old post times. But sometime I have a "Create Post" window open and I do the writing later, so I manually put the time where it belongs. But I look at the time on my computer, which is set to Eastern. I have to remember not to do that.
Clinton pledges $50B for climate change.
Criminals And Moralists Working Together
Enron Carbon Trading And Hansen
Enron And Carbon Trading
It was 85 yesterday in Madison, and my green beans continue to grow in October.
Every planet in the solar system is getting warmer. Why should we miss the fun?
I do believe Gore is going to enter the race, and I do believe he will defeat Clinton if he does.
I like Al Gore. He's a funny guy, having learned the delicate dance of self-deprecation. And his concession in the 2000 election still stands among the class acts of American oratory.
He is certainly way more qualified than Hillary and the complete Democratic line-up so far, as well as half of the Republican roster.
But I can't vote for him because his political views are mostly wrong.
Then again, if he and Tipper are available for dinner some evening . . .
Presenter: [about the predictions of the future] But before continuing, let me warn you now that these predictions of the future are not at all comforting - and I might go on to add that these visions of the past, these warnings of the future, are not the opinions of the producers of this film. They're certainly not my opinions.
(The Man Who Saw Tomorrow 1981)
Personally, were I to win a Peace Prize for something that is supposedly science, I would take it as a rebuke.
I think that "An Inconvient Truth" is not truthful, largely. I would like to see Al Gore get in the race, because I think that he is a better man than he lets on, as he is playing to a strange audience. I had a friend from Tennessee who liked him, in the past, and called him "Albert Gore, Junior". Bill Safire also says that he has good judgment, in his handling of a flight in central Asia, in bad weather, when he was Vice-President. I happen to be "center-right" (I used to be center-left), and I am not saying that he should get, just because he would be a bad candidate. I think that I am influenced, in part, by Christopher Hitchen's assessment of Al.
If you're willing to let Al run again, why not let Jimmy Carter run again? Tanned, rested, ready, and already has his Nobel Peace Prize. He won't get much AIPAC money, but that's the only hitch I can see.
Apparently I'm the only person here that's noticed that Ann's Gore post reads exactly like a diary entry by a 14-year-old girl.
Amazing....
An inconvenient statistic about Ann's Gore post:
Word count:
"I" / "me" / "my": 11
"Gore" / "he" / "his": 10
And it's Althouse, by a nose!
Comic Book Guy: The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity…
(The Simpsons)
Jim, I'm curious -- what exactly are the untruths in IT? (I've not seen the movie). The first link I find in a google search of Lies Inconvenient Truth suffers from bad meteorology.
If he gets the award, it seems to me that it'll be a purely political gesture - a way for the committee to flip the bird to the Bush Administration. Not exactly the sort of thing to put on the resume.
Simels,
you should assume that Ann writes that way to make sure that you can understand it.
Ahhh yes...and the splendid number of Republican candidates just waiting for a call from the Nobel Committee...
Mr. Guliani...for...? dress?
Mr. Thompson ...the culinary prize (consumption category)
Mr. Brownback ...science is a hoot prize and Einstein didn't exist memorial trophy. Mr. Romney ...Did I say that? award for reflective revisionism
Mr. Huckabee ... Least likely last name prize
Duncan Hunter ... Duck and cover. (no prize this year thats for sure)
Alan Keyes ...hmmm a lawyer. better not win on principle so he is up for the "anyone can be a lawyer" prize
Mr. McCain ...I'll say anything and will speech price
Mr.Paul ..the peace prize
Mr. Tancredo ..the eugenics prize
it's o'k ya'll. I'll stick with Al.
The idea that Hillary! would just pack it up and go back to her day job in the Senate if AlGore got the Nobel Prize is ludicrous. By the time she was done with him, he would appear to us as a convicted child molester, or worse.
What must be remembered is that Algore did as well as he did in 2000 partially because he had some of the Clinton machine behind him. Not the whole thing, because an Algore presidency might have cut into Hillary's chances in 2004 or 2008. But enough to help with the fund raising.
Hillary! would bury Algore in fund raising, and then the best opposition research in politics would be unleashed against him.
So, no, he isn't going to be the 2008 Democratic nominee - 2012 maybe if Hillary! bombs in the general election, but not 2008. Sorry.
Alternative Trooper York:
Criswell: Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?
My question though is whether he would have to give it back when it turns out that the man caused Global Warming is grossly overblown and/or humans are overall better off with with a slightly warmer planet. After all, much evidence shows that food production rises as the planet warms (and the atmosphere fills up with CO2).
Be vewwy vewwy careful there Bruce Hayden. Are you implying that Global Warming may have some benefits?
I see the science twins are at it again.
I want Gore to get into the race. It's unclear whether Gore will be able to overcome Hillary, but at least he will change the dull debate rut the Democrats have fallen into. He's also vastly qualified for the job -- the only candidate for whom that's not even a question.
But there's a more important reason for him to join. Gore claims to have moved on from trying to persuade people as to the fact of global warming and will only discuss solutions. That's good. How we're going to address GW is a critical debate, which I believe should not be limited to bureaucrats, activists and professional conference attendees, but should involve voters.
Some of Gore's ideas are good, some of them are terrible. His candidacy will bring his ideas into the political arena, forcing his Democratic opponents and later his Republican rival to develop their own proposals to counter him. Right now, they're all sitting on the sidelines, and the clueless media types are letting them get away with mushy generalities.
Second only to the war against the jihad, the institution of policies to reverse and/or adapt to global warming promise to have the most profound effect on people's lives over the next 25 years. But these policies are not really being exposed to voters as choices they can make. Voters are not being given an opportunity to look at the options, the trade-offs, the costs, the benefits.
There's no question that Al Gore wants to accumulate a significant amount of power over our lives. As of now, however, he wants to exercise that power through unelected factotums. It's only fair that he seek the power he needs to do the things he believes are necessary the old fashioned way, by getting our votes. And it's urgent that the discussion involve all of us.
The Ruler: With your ancient, juvenile minds you have developed explosives too fast for your minds to conceive what you are doing. You are on the verge of destroying the entire universe. We are a part of that universe. This is our last...
[cuts off]
(Plan 9 From Outer Space 1959)
Nobel Prize? If Carter and Arafat can win them, why not? Will he run? I think he would like to set up a draft; I've blogged about this, and I see from Instapundit that there is a new Gore for President website, much better looking than the old one.
MadisonMan, taking down the scientific errors in An Inconvenient Truth is so easy that a 15-year old high school student did it as an extra credit project for her Earth Science class. Ponder the Maunder, mirrored at Global Warming Hoax.
Happy Columbus Day to all.
What has Gore done that would deserve a Peace Prize? Even if you think that raising awareness of global warming merits such an award, he is just one voice of many, and he hasn't actually accomplished anything in the way of change yet.
Did Plitdown man win a Nobel Prize for Science? Perhaps Gore's Piltdown Warming might, as well.
Gore is far too stupid to be the President of the United States.
Not knowing an extra chromosome causes Down's Syndrom is far worse than adding an 'e' to potato.
Talk about "born on third base thinks he hit a triple", it is almost worth him becoming president so all the CHIMPY crowd can squirm when Monsieur Malaprop opens his mouth.
Failed out out of divinity school? HOW THE F*$# DO YOU FAIL OUT OF DIVINITY SCHOOL?
Buzz word bingo for all.
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1996/gore/front_large.gif
"If he gets the award, it seems to me that it'll be a purely political gesture"
Simon, you say that is though it's ever been anything other than a purely political gesture. Don't be silly.
[after Scott introduces himself as Mary and shows them the pants he hand-stitched]
Gerry Fleck: Well you must be very "proud Mary".
Scott Donlan: Oh my goodness. Who are you all of a sudden?
Stefan Vanderhoof: Good baby boomer gag.
Cookie Fleck: Who's that in the burgundy jacket? Mr Hip.
(Best in Show 2000)
I would relish Al Gore getting into the race. Strictly for the fireworks between Hillary and he.
I think that you might be misdescribing AG as "new". I would differ and say he is one of the old crowd himself, and just as tedious. Or will be....
Damn you, Stodder! I was going to quote Criswell!
Oh, well.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Warmer might be better--but the world's gonna get cooler. Man doesn't have a say in it.
Having said that, tho', I'd love to see Al enter in the race. He has a lot of genuinely good characteristics, I think.
I'd like to see Al Gore get into the race, if for no other reason than to watch the fireworks between him and the Clintons.
Yessssssss. A rousing debate between these two automatons... delicious.
Prof. Strowski: Now I am here, sent to bring you home.
Dr. Eric Vornoff: Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, Living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
(Bride of the Monster 1955)
Sorry. This is a monumentally dumb and disturbing post.
Commented on at Instapunk.com:
http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=1137
A Nobel Prize for Al Gore? That would have to be in one of the recently-added categories, right? Let's see, there's Demagogery, Hypocrisy, and (added just year after a proposal by our host) General Lameness.
So yeah, I think his chances a pretty good.
On the other hand, maybe a SAT-style analogy will point out another possibility--
Arafat:Peace::Gore:Science
Then again, the Literature prize is awarded, more often that not, to writers of fiction.
Hmmm, too many choices....
Mr. Burns: Oh, so mother nature needs a favor? Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys.
(The Simpsons 1989)
Jenna Zank: You know what punkers don't do? Call themselves punkers.
(Freaks and Geeks 1999)
"If he gets the award, it seems to me that it'll be a purely political gesture"
Simon, you say that is though it's ever been anything other than a purely political gesture. Don't be silly.
There have been some deserving, non-political winners... well, one, anyway.
Did Plitdown man win a Nobel Prize for Science?
I assume you mean "Piltdown Man".
There is no Nobel Prize for "Science" -- just Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace. Paleontology falls into none of those categories, so even if the Piltdown Man discovery had been deemed significant enough to merit that level of praise (which is unlikely) the hoaxers who "discovered" it would not have been eligible for a Nobel Prize for it.
Limborg who wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist also wrote a column recently arguing that global warming will about a half million lives a year. About a half million people every year freeze to death in northern countries.
This makes Al Gore a major serial killer. If he manages to make the bad weather come back he might save a few polar bears, but he'll kill at least half a million people per year.
So he's a common killer. How could you vote for such a man?
(I did, too.)
What do you think of Jim Gilmore or Duncan Hunter? Is it already time to get the electric football game out and let Hillary and Rudy rumble toward one another, buzz buzz buzz. At this point I guess most of the candidates are rumbling against the sideboard, lost, no traction.
But at least they're not genocidal killers like Gore, trying to freeze everybody to death.
Doyle: Hi, I'm Doyle.
Bud: And I'm Bud.
Bud, Doyle: And when where not saving the environment, we're thinkin' of you, naked, thigh deep in tofu.
(Biodome 1996)
(With Pauly Shore, the Al Gore of
the American Theatre)
Let's have Al, for sure.
The flaws in the movie don't undermine it's credibility. Most of the kvetching I read was scientists, so given to caveats, complaining Gore didn't lay out all the caveats under the sun and that the timlines he was discussing weren't always clear to the audience.
Yeah. Whatever. He also reached about a billion or two more people than the usual cautious scientific paper. Scientific couching doesn't play well in the mass markets, but people can investigate more and find that.
Gore was slimed by the press big time in 2000.
Biodome is a deeply underappreciated film.
The flaws in the movie don't undermine it's credibility
The British courts found that Gore's film was primarily political, being that it presented only one side of the debate.
In addition, they found numerous false claims in the film:
- That global warming is responsible for vanishing snowcap on Kilimanjaro. It is not.
- That ice cores demonstrate a connection between rising CO2 levels and rising temperatures over the last 650,00 years. In reality CO2 levels trailed temperature during most of that period.
- That Greenland's ice cap will melt. The scientific consensus is that this will not happen for thousands of years.
- Gore claimed that the Antarctic ice cap is melting. In reality it is growing; it is the Arctic ice cap that is shrinking.
- Gore claims that sea levels will rise by over 20 feet in the next century. This is pure science fiction, far outside the predicted rise of 30-50cm.
- The disappearance of Lake Chad is falsely blamed on global warming. In reality the fault lies with overuse of irrigation.
- Gore falsely claimed that a study showed polar bears had drowned due to disappearing ice. The report actually showed that the bears (all four of them) had drowned in a storm.
In addition, Gore made a number of claims that, while not provably false, are without sound scientific basis:
- That global warming was behind Katrina.
- That global warming will disrupt the Gulf Stream.
- That global warming has caused species loss.
Scientific couching doesn't play well in the mass markets
Of course -- fantasy has always been more popular than reality.
ahhh Revenant....you certainly are a Mr. Wizard aren't you. God bless your ignorance. It must be bliss.
That global warming is responsible for vanishing snowcap on Kilimanjaro. It is not.
There is ongoing debate among atmospheric scientists over this. Some satellite data do show warmth -- others show less snowfall. But why the decrease in snowfall? There are many predictions that snow on Kilimanjaro will be gone in our lifetime.
Gore claims that sea levels will rise by over 20 feet in the next century. This is pure science fiction, far outside the predicted rise of 30-50cm.
Twenty feet is not out of the question. If, for example, Greenland becomes an archipelago rather than a big ol' icecap, 20 feet is quite an underestimate of sea level rise. The character of ice over Greenland has been changing in the past decade as more old ice melts than in the past. The extra warmth at high latitudes, however, allows for greater snowfall.
Re: Lake Chad. Most of the studies I've read (by Coe, for example) attribute land use issues to Lake Chad's drying. If you overgraze land, it becomes much more prone to desertification.
Re: The Gulf Stream. Global warming absolutely can affect the Gulf Stream. If you melt the Greenland ice cap and flood the north Atlantic with fresh water, the Gulf Stream will deviate to the south as deepwater formation stops.
Be vewwy vewwy careful there Bruce Hayden. Are you implying that Global Warming may have some benefits?
We are sure that it has some benefits. The question that no one seems to want to ask is whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
A poster above pointed out that a lot of people every year freeze to death. Some of them are still going to die, like those climbing Everest. But some won't.
But I think that food is a bigger issue. Last weekend, I was held hostage to a monologue on how the French starved during the Little Ice Age because they refused to switch from wheat to tubers like potatoes. And this is just part of the evidence that part of the cause of the Dark Ages was global cooling.
But it doesn't end there. Just look at a globe of the Earth, and notice where the land is situated. The two biggest countries in the world, stretching most of the way around the planet between them, are two of the most northern, with much of each unfarmable. For every 100 miles that you move the line where it is warm north, well over a billion acres of farmland is owned up to farming across those two countries. And that doesn't take into account that throughout much of Eurasia and North America, the crops can be upgraded below that. Add to that that plants use CO2 to generate O2 through photosynthesis. The very same CO2 supposedly causing this whole mess.
I frankly don't know whether we would be better off or worse off if the planet were a couple of degrees warmer. Right now, I would lean towards better off. But what is not being done is looking at both sides of the issue, trying to balance the good and the bad.
And, realistically, only someone who had received a C- and a D+ in the only two (IMHO bonehead) science courses he took in college could believe the 20 ft. sea level rise (and even if it were true, I would still be unmoved).
As someone pointed out, what is the optimal temperature at which to set the Earth's temperature? Assuming that we could set it, where should we set it? Man has lived with it higher and with it lower. And it looks right now that we may be actually better off with it higher.
Arafat:Peace::Gore:Science
Kirk you're a genius.
Revenant's bumper sticker:
"Pedants for Gore"
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