CNN reports:
Gore has been an Apple board member for more than eight years, and this is the first time we've seen him let slip even the slightest detail on an upcoming product. Given the company's code of secrecy, such an unwarranted statement in a prepared talk -- he wasn't even being interviewed -- counts as a major breach of discipline.
ADDED: Poor Gore! What must he do to get attention?
You know he tried that "24 Hours of Reality" thing and virtually nobody watched:
Not content with having invented the internet, the great Climate Science communicator Al Gore appears to have developed still more miraculous skills of late: the ability to turn 17,000 into 8.6 million – just like that.
The figures refer to the number of "views" for Gore's special "24 Hours Of ManBearPig" which this column helped celebrate the other day. Gore claims that as many as 8.6 million flocked to his thrilling festival of climate fear; but a nasty cruel man called Charles the Moderator at Watts Up With That? has "done the math" and reckons the figure is probably more like 17,000. And that, he believes, is a generous estimate...
What? He cooked the numbers? Is that something he would do?
Posts
110 comments:
Poor Apple. All this super-cool awesome shit keeps getting leaked, thereby boosting anticipation and sales.
How does it keep happening to them?
Gore can be a useful idiot.
Since AlGore once invented the internet, Apple should cut him some slack.
Al is desperate to be right about anything these days. His last 20 years pushing the industry of World Wide CO2 cap and trading has been a total failure.
Disciplining Al for being an impulsive idiot is like blaming a baby for crying.
This jumpred out at me when I read the article this morning (my emphasis): "Gore, of course, is a heavy-hitter at the company who's done a lot of work on making Apple products more sustainable and reducing his carbon footprint.
Hopefully it's a typo (his/its) rather than an outright wishful fabrication about jet-setting, 9 bathroom mansion buying AlGore.
Maybe ManBearPig, he of 17000 viewers for his AGW marathon, inventor of the internet, and coiner of since-debunked environmental calamities, has insider knowledge that the iPhone 5 will run on polar bear farts and got too excited about to keep from releasing his chakra.
Rush has been saying for weeks now that the new iPhone will go on sale in early November. He based his estimate on rumors he picked up on Apple related message boards.
It's gotta go to market some time.
Maybe he's all excited because it's got Lightsquare circuitry in it.
Apple makes very solid products in the mobile space. It finally even got people to sign onto the tablet market, which has been around for a very long time but never got any foothold until Apple came out with the wildly-successful iPad.
Apple's stuff has been world-changing, over the past few years.
All of that said, who gives a crap about the iPhone 5? At this point, it's just an expected revision of a mature product. That's not a bad thing, by any means. But I'm not sure people will be lining up for every iPhone rev.
I'm sure the iPhone 5 will do fine, whenever it comes out. I'll be interested in a new phone when my contract runs out, just like in the old days. I have a smart phone that works fine, and I eschew debt more than being 2 months behind the first adopters.
The daughter was about to get an iPhone, and now she is waiting.
It might help -5 sales, but it kills -4 sales.
For the 'blame Al Gore for everything' crowd:
Apple iPhone 5 Prototype: Lost in San Francisco Bar?
Depending on whose rumor you believe, the iPhone 5 will be released in early October; customers of Verizon Wireless, AT&T and, for the first time, Sprint, will be able to have it.
My son got an iphone 4 for college. Around the same time, my wife and I picked up a pair of Droid X's.
There's absolutely nothing that the iphone can do that the Droid X doesn't do (or, in fact, do better).
"... ADDED: Poor Gore! What must he do to get attention?.."
I'm guessing a camera phone and a Twitter account somewhere down the line.
So Gore is plugging the iPhone despite the fact that it’s horrible for the environment. Now that just doesn’t make sense does it? Unless it’s completely in line with everything else he’s done to generate personal wealth at the expense of the environment.
Aren't we all glad he never made it to the White House?
"... There's absolutely nothing that the iphone can do that the Droid X doesn't do (or, in fact, do better)..."
Other than not being able to use my itunes playlists, I agree. Love my Droid. I named it Natalie.
Scott M said...
------------
Well, that is capitalism for you, competition and choices and all that sort of thing. While I don't care for the Apple hype, I don't disparage Steve Jobs either. He is a genius and a visionary and has always been from way back.
pm317, what's your opinion on this article? http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64099.html
Other than not being able to use my itunes playlists, I agree. Love my Droid. I named it Natalie.
It can. Just subscribe to Rhapsody and not only will it play your iTunes catalog (for the most part), it's AWESOME for scratching that "gotta listen to it right now, don't necessarily want to pay for it" itch.
Other than that, my brother-in-law was dealing with the same issue, but found some 3rd party apps that work. I don't think you have to root the Droid to do it so bonus.
I don't disparage Steve Jobs either. He is a genius and a visionary and has always been from way back.
Agreed. Especially as the former owner of an Apple IIe
What amazes me about the 17,000 figure is that it's not that surprising. Look at the protests, the movies, now the internet marathon--these guys can't even drum up a decent turnout among their strongest supporters.
Good thing Al Gore wasn't dropping any hints about buying stock.
these guys can't even drum up a decent turnout among their strongest supporters.
You'd think we're witnessing the death of a movement, wouldn't you?
Somebody pays for songs in iTunes?
Everything ever recorded is up on YouTube.
When I actually have to learn a song, I connect the audio out line to the audio in line on my iMac and record the song with SoundBooth.
Then, I can burn a CD.
ST
Ever try songsterr.com? It was invaluable when I started out.
That's what's causing global warming, the heat from cooking the numbers.
Gore wants to be a Carl Sagan or Bill Nye level celebrity scientist, but doesn't have the smarts or the knowledge.
"What? He cooked the numbers? Is that something he would do?"
He did not have to cook the numbers. Remember he invented the algorithm.
"What? He cooked the numbers? Is that something he would do? "
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here...
Irene said...
Good thing Al Gore wasn't dropping any hints about buying stock.
You've been watching the ticker.
Better let Poppy do it.
You know I don't care.
At Apple, they like Algore. They really really like him. And, he's done well. Even though he didn't invent the internet. Or anything. And, he tried to make a global grab of sovereignty through global warming; that the UN had already seen done by the Belgium, with the "EURO."
There's a sucker born every minute, and everyone wants to be Barnum.
Yesterday, besides Algore's "slip of a statement" ... Drudge ran a wonderful one. Where the UN got together. Obama got a great slot in the middle. And, he picks up his hand. And, WAVES! I hope it's the korean's face totally hidden.
But it that's what diplomatic snafus look like. I LOVE THEM!
Let's have more.
My guess is they gave ManBearPig the okay to come out of his cage.
After the release of Gore's second chakra, his ratings had a refractory period.
Do you mean to tell me that 24 Hours of ManBearPig ALREADY HAPPENED? Well huh. That was quiet.
What? He cooked the numbers? Is that something he would do?
All the way to the bank.
Now Gore's trying to hide the decline.
"... Other than that, my brother-in-law was dealing with the same issue, but found some 3rd party apps that work. I don't think you have to root the Droid to do it so bonus..."
Interesting. I'll have to check those out then.
When in October?
Because we all know by now that it's going to happen in October.
And if you can't tell me the day in October (so I can go camp out overnight at my nearest Apple Store), then shut the hell up.
I've never bought a single Apple product, ever.
Apparently the hype doesn't work everywhere.
Can he still get laid though?
"He cooked the numbers" with coal-fire burners and caused the globe to warm a couple more degrees.
Yeah, that's a non-event.
Everyone knows the next iPhone is coming on the 4th.
Question: With iPhones and other smart phones, and all the apps, are iPods even relevant anymore?
In other "insider news," leaves will fall off the trees next month in the temperate climate zone. (Less so here in Florida.)
Seriously, Apple has put out their new iPhone/iTouch products in October each of the past few years. That they plan to do so again this year is no surprise at all.
After the release of Gore's second chakra, his ratings had a refractory period.
Perfect.
Question: With iPhones and other smart phones, and all the apps, are iPods even relevant anymore?
The shortest answer is no. The real question, of course, is when the Democrats and the CBC in particular are going to start whining and bellyaching over the inevitable smartphone gap.
With AlGore involved there is a real possibility of I-Phones freezing up.
The whole mid-west needs to send a request for Al to stay away this winter.
I bet Tipper is happier now.
I'm pretty sure Al Gore lost his mind in 2000.
Yes.
I hope Tipper is doing ok.
So what cool shit will the iphone5 has that the iphone4 does not?
Just wondering.
I'm pretty sure Al Gore lost his mind in 2000.
Following him since the 1988 presidential primaries, he's been loopy for a long time. 2000 just put it on center stage.
gerry said...
After the release of Gore's second chakra, his ratings had a refractory period.
====================
While the sliming of Algore by a masseuse slut grubbing for money is in a sense as delightful for his political opponents as the Duke Rape Case was for Leftist haters of "white pivilege" and black racists - this bimbo accuser has all the credibility of Crystal Gayle Mangum.
Remember, the bitch was laughed out of court, didn't collect a cent - and her whole story reads like some 4th rate writer trying to do a chapter in a Harlequin Romance novel.
Algore has done enough on his own to damage his reputation without giving the masseuse slut any credence.
After all, you still have members of the Duke Faculty that remain proudly unapologetic about trashing the Lacrosse students because "innocent or guilty, sliming them advanced the proper political narrative".
and her whole story reads like some 4th rate writer trying to do a chapter in a Harlequin Romance novel
As a fourth-rate writer, I resent that intolerant remark.
few people who know anything about global warming consider Al Gore an expert on the issue. That's how the Rush Limbozo and Fox types think, or rather, don't think: global warming? you mean like AlGore's crap? yuk yuk yuk
Like...Ahouse sheeples
I've never bought a single Apple product, ever.
I bought some stuff off itunes, but then I got irritated at the process for converting itunes crap to mp3’s for my (non apple) mp3 player and I haven’t been back since.
I may check the price on the sprint iphone, but I’m sure it will be more than I want to spend (which is true of just about everything apple!) I do need a new phone sometime...
When you think of Gore, you remember that we have had some pretty bad choices for President in recent decades. And that is a part of our decline as a nation, though not the only reason.
Open Borders that have created 50% black unemployment in US cities.
Free Trade that gutted middle class jobs.
Tax cuts for the wealthy that didn't create the promised jobs from the rich "Jobs Creators", after all.
An accelerating gulf in wealth between the very rich and the rest of us.
Dereg of Wall Street and the financial industries on reasoning the execs knew what was best to keep their industries healthy.
Building McMansions for illegals instead of building flat screens for export.
I am going for real reform, real change ahead of the pack.
1. Voters emplace a military Junta. Constitution suspended pending revision. All civilian courts suspended. No habeas corpus.
2. 20% tariff on all Chinastuff. Tariff reciepts used to paydown the Debt.
3. All regulations that block building US infrastructure and kill US competitiveness - suspended.
4. US Tax code tossed, a simple progressive tax code with no loopholes, no deductions put in place.
For starters.
If Al Gore knows much about global warming, it is hard to tell from anything he has said publicly.
What about you, J, are you a believer?
How much global warming has there been? +/- what degree of precision?
For that matter +/- what degree of accuracy?
And what should the temperature of the Earth be anyway?
John Henry
Dereg of Wall Street and the financial industries on reasoning the execs knew what was best to keep their industries healthy.
Bipartisan all the way, C4--Clinton following orders from Gramm/Gingrich (and Larry Summers,G-man sachs etc). Which is to say, like Clinton, Gore's taken to be a liberal but he's actually centrist, pro-Israel at any-cost, corporate etc. That said he probably would have been preferable to BushCo (Jeb and the boys took care of that,with help from DonScalia)
Cedarford,
Kudos. Your rant about Gore's second chakra was a perfect parody of an indignant humorless lefty.
1. Voters emplace a military Junta. Constitution suspended pending revision. All civilian courts suspended. No habeas corpus.
Surprise, surprise, C4.
Better, are you a Foxbot denier, Johnny? read this (funded in part by the Kochs): Mueller/LA Times.
the temps have risen approx. .80 centigrade
"Gore had 180,000, not 8.6 million, visitors"
"... the temps have risen approx. .80 centigrade.."
Clearly a sign of the impending apocalypse.
Clearly a sign of the impending apocalypse.
And it's never happened before...ever, ever.
It's an anomalous temp. increase. Now,when you find some time away from the meth lab google that one up, Hoosier hick.
1. Voters emplace a military Junta. Constitution suspended pending revision. All civilian courts suspended. No habeas corpus.
Well that sounds like an awesome idea that will have no negative repercussions whatsoever!!
It's an anomalous temp. increase
oooh, 50cent words are scary! You know what is normal, weather wise, for earth? Wide, wide swings in temperature! Ice ages and droughts and all that. Normal! A teeny increase over the short period of time we have actually been tracking things that closely is not a big deal.
Will the iPhone 5 retain the feature that compels users to insist on showing you all the features and apps it has and annoying the shit of you?
alas Dr Shanna I doubt you know like the normal distribution from yr favorite douche flavor. It's not merely a heatwave--it's, well, too complicated to explain to an Alttard.
It's not merely a heatwave--it's, well, too complicated to explain to an Alttard.
It's not called E-grade--it's, well, too complicated to explain to someone who has never once admitted he was mistaken about something. Isn't that right, bench-presser?
Whats that squat the stupid fuck-you still haven't figured out E-series pay grade for Fedjobs? (including most military--ie, Navy--as stated weeks ago) Maybe because you never had one, dumbass
you still haven't figured out E-series pay grade for Fedjobs? (including most military--ie, Navy--as stated weeks ago)
Yes. And everyone that works in those jobs, including myself, refers to their "e grade" don't they? Others here stated that fact weeks ago, but you wouldn't admit you didn't know what you were talking about past having googled or wiki'd it.
You border on pathetic, Jolly.
Neither jimspice nor Gabriel Hanna has popped up to defend their man Al.
I seriously doubt Gabe would claim manbearpig as his.
"What? He cooked the numbers? Is that something he would do?"
Too funny, but it says it all.
Aside from the fact that I can not take you seriously when you use “yr” as if it an actual word, saying “it’s too complicated for you so I’m not going to bother to explain” just says that you are incapable of backing up your own point. Why don't you come back when you have something substantial to say and you've learned to use proper English.
So no decent person ought to be repeating it.
Granted, but even if a fourth-rate writer DID come up with "release my second chakra" it's still funny as hell, made even more so because it's easy (if unsavory) to picture.
Why not?
Hanna defends Jim Hansen.
Alright. Betski. Five of these $$$$$.
Newsweek, April 28, 1975: The Cooling World. Brought to you by the Infallible Scientific Consensus Which is Never Wrong™
"... It's an anomalous temp. increase. Now,when you find some time away from the meth lab google that one up, Hoosier hick..."
If you put your ear up to J's ear you can hear the ocean.
I'm on the fence about J. He reminds me of Jeremy but with ADD and Tourettes so that makes him kind of endearing.
He reminds me of Jeremy but with ADD and Tourettes so that makes him kind of endearing.
Rottweilers are endearing. The hole you dig for a latrine is not, nor what goes in it. J's both.
With the amount of money Apple is ciphoning off the American public, we could easily solve the deficit problem!
Hoosier,
"If you put your ear up to J's ear you can hear the ocean."
But is it rising or falling?
And while I don't generally like to go into AOL Mode ("me too"), for this case I think it's important:
Hello, Generalissimo Cedarford!
"If you put your ear up to J's ear you can hear the ocean."
But is it rising or falling?
It must be falling, since Obama is President.
Sorepaw,
So no decent person ought to be repeating it.
You should not defend Cedarford. He introduced the story to the thread--no one else.
And what makes you the tribune of decency?
sorepaw said...
Cedarford,
You really want
Voters emplace a military Junta. Constitution suspended pending revision. All civilian courts suspended. No habeas corpus.
Yeah, I can believe that.
===============
I said I would jump ahead of the Pack....Don't see it happening tomorrow, but we have a rapidly collapsing country. And it really doesn't matter who is elected President...one Party may hasten the collapse (Obama) the other may have good incremental changes that slow the collapse - like shutting the watertight doors and starting the bilge pumps slowed down the Titanic's sinking. (Perry and Romney).
But both Parties are equally at fault for America's collapse over the last 30 years of decision-making. The political parties are not the only cause of America's slow-motion collapse. We also have an ossified Constitution and lawyers oozing out of every crevice that block the substantial, systemic revamping of America that is necessary. We have moneyed elites that have permeated the System and who put their wealth or special foreign interests ahead of the nation.
Nor does a suspension of the Constitution and a dysfunctional democracy mean "Nazis!!" or similar such bogeymen.
This happens a lot. Mainly in 3rd World countries where democracy and the legal system fail and elites corrupt it all. Your typical bout of military rule tries cleaning up the mess the lawyers and politicians couldn't, then heeds the will of the People about when it is time to give control back to the civilians. (Turkey, Thailand, S Korea, misc Latin countries). Countries doing so don't say "How wonderful it is that our system and politicians and lawyers all failed"....they regret the necessity for having a period of military rule, but generally not denying the necessity itself in later years.
I am thinking why wait until we are a 3rd World country and a resource& raw material satellite nation to China to do so??
Our system is broke, the laws and systems are now too rigid to accomodate change...and American voters know that their vote doesn't matter much in substantial areas of DC decision-making.
ddh said...
Sorepaw,
So no decent person ought to be repeating it.
You should not defend Cedarford. He introduced the story to the thread--no one else.
===============
My point with Gore is he is not just a laughing stock, but part of a long line of leaders who have led America into being a decaying, declining nation. And even more able Presidents like Reagan and Clinton are in many ways just tools of the interests that "freed Wall Street" from oversight, gave us the destruction of our jobs and industries under free trade, expanded unfunded entitlements, sold missile secrets to China, spent 3 trillion on neocon wars of adventure, and gave half a billion to a failing green energy firm.
All reinforced by a court system that wants America ossified, processes paralyzed, and power to the lawyers, not the voters
Gore, much derided, is but one of many such creatures that have put America on a path to ruin.
Gee, this might bring the entire company down.
91 comments whining about Al Gore.
What a bunch of intellectual midgets.
Regardless of the whiners here, Mr. Gore appears be on the right track regarding global climate change...not that anybody here knows anything about that:
Here’s the data on the number of U.S. records broken or tied in the month of July of 2011:
All-Time Highest Maximum Temperature: 70
All-Time Highest Minimum Temperature: 175
Monthly Highest Maximum Temperature: 125
Monthly Highest Minimum Temperature: 330
Daily Highest Maximum Temperature: 2,125
Daily Highest Minimum Temperature: 4,787
Raul,
Recently you suggested that "many" here want Bachmann to get the nomination. I asked for you to name three.
Have you found three yet?
Well, a gold star for J. She does know that the warming is about 0.8 degrees C.
There are some others, like East Anglia that say it is a bit less, like .65 or .7 but the UN IPCC says .8 and that is the number I've been using for the past 4-5 years.
One of the reasons I asked her is that I have asked this same question of perhaps 100 warmists over the past 5 years or so. Probably 10% knew it was around .8 Most have no idea and I've had a lot of people give me answers in the 5-10 degree range. Not .5, 5.
Two things to keep in mind about the 0.8 number:
It does not measure the trend. It is the difference between the coldest year (1933 or so) and the warmest year (1998) since 1900 (or so. Some start as early as 1880)The warming by the trend line from 1900 to 1910 is considerably less than 0.8.
The other thing is the precision of the 0.8 degrees. I asked J what the plus/minus was on the 0.8 and she didn't answer.
Nobody else is very forthcoming either. UN et al tells us 0.8 +/- (mumble)
As best I can determine, it is +/- 3 to 4 degrees.
It is also an extremely noisy system. I suspect that there is no place on Earth that doesn't have at least a 5-10 degree swing every day of the year. Very few places do not have at least a 20-30 degree swing over the course of the year and for most of the globe it is closer to 50+ degrees.
In other words, 0.8 does not tell us that there is global warming. The calculation is just too imprecise to know. There might be 0.8. There might ever be 1.8 or more.
It is just as likely that there is 0.8 (or more) of cooling.
The measurements are just not precise enough to know.
I have serious doubts, having studied the issue, that it is even theoretically possible to measure the temp of the entire Earth with enough precision to detect warming or cooling in the small amounts claimed.
John Henry
PS-You seem to be in thrall to scientists. I have both undergrad and grad science degrees so kneel before me.
So what if my MS is in education :) ? You can still kneel down and blow me.
John, I figure that between harangues [for dough] Algore is building the biggest thermometer *EVAH*!! and will use it to measure the global temperature.
It will be approximately 50 miles tall with a 1/4 mile diameter. It will measure in 1000ths of a degree.[He's being a bit cagey about what substance he's putting in it, since mercury is right out.]
That should fix the +/- problem.
Cedarford and Sorepaw,
My point of my crack about Gore's second chakra was humor, in this case, a joke for regular readers of the Althouse blog. As E. B. White said, "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."
You guys lack a sense of humor. Even if you think that Gore is a politicians who has led this country to ruin, he is no Quisling, but he is mockable. Few politicians are more unnatural or inauthentic than he.
I alluded to the alleged incident in Portland, but I didn't supply details or explain how the allusion relates to Gore for those who didn't know. Cedarford did that deed. So, I wasn't trying to have you guys argue with each other. Each of you seems more than capable of starting your fights without any help from anyone.
I believe my joke was decent. But no gentleman, decent or otherwise, calls a woman a slut or a bitch.
As I said, you guys really need to get a sense of humor. It helps with perspective.
"There's absolutely nothing that the iphone can do that the Droid X doesn't do (or, in fact, do better)."
Comes down to some of the specialized apps (like iGore)...and that cool feeling of being part of the iHerd.
It's an anomalous temp. increase.
I think what is interesting here is that there are several definitions of that word, and they (singular) failed to specify which they meant. Unprecedented? Irregular? Unusual? Incongruous? Equivocal? The angle between the direction of periapsis and the current position of an object on its orbit?
Also note that they only talked about global warming of .8C or so, and not AGW. Big step that seems to be skipped blithely over so often by warmists. In order to actually show AGW, one would need, at a minimum, to eliminate/control for all other known causes of changes to a global temperature, such as the amount of solar radiation, cosmic rays, cloud cover, heat stored in the oceans, etc, first.
The problem is that we do know, for example, that the amount of solar radiation received by the earth from the sun has an effect on the global temperature (whatever that is). When the sun sends more energy our way, the Earth heats up a bit, and when it sends less, the Earth cools a bit. Similarly, when the Earth is closer to the sun, the Earth tends to get more radiation, and heats up a bit - which is probably the biggest reason that the temperature of Mercury is higher than of Venus, which is higher than Earth, which is higher than Mars, etc.
One of the big problems that AGW proponents have to face, and have not adequately answered yet, is that there are a lot of things that we have a lot higher confidence affect the global temperature, and the noise involved in those factors, and the uncertainty/error terms of the major constituents swamp whatever small part of any increase may be caused by man caused CO2 increases into the atmosphere.
So, I view the .8C or so figure to be of negligible value to the debate. Even if it were .8C, I think that it is likely that the error term would be much higher than the +/-2C suggested above.
Finally, that .8C figure may show correlation, but that does not translated into causation.
Well, I now regret my purchase of an iPhone this summer. Yes, it has a lot of great apps. But it comes at a big cost. One of those costs is horrible battery life.
I asked a friend how he keeps from draining his battery in his iPhone. His answer is that he almost always has it plugged in. Think about that - the only way to effectively use an iPhone is if it is not used as a mobile phone at all, but as a mini-microcomputer, since without being plugged in, the battery life is so absurdly low (e.g. 40% of battery life in two or three hours of standby, with all of the obvious power sinks (i.e. WiFi, BlueTooth, Location Services, etc.) disabled).
But my iPhone says that I am hip and sophisticated, so it is just fine that it fails so miserably at what should be its primary functionality - making telephone calls.
I had no idea it was that bad with the iPhone's battery. I used a 3rd party app to rip some DVD's into my desktop then convert them into a format the Droid X could use properly. My wife and daughters were going on a three-hour flight and I wanted to give her some bribery material for the girls.
She spent some time on the phone, they watched Shrek and part of Wall-E, and she did email and texts at both airports. She said her battery was right around 20% by the time she reached our in-laws and plugged it in.
On normal use for me, phone calls, texts, emails, and non-charger use for music/comedy on my commute home, plus around 30 minutes of kindle app reading at night, I usually have 40% or so remaining before I plug it in to the media dock on the nightstand each night.
My wife and I agree that the Droid X' we own have been one of the most satisfying purchases we've ever made and we're constantly finding new ways to use them.
It's an anomalous temp. increase.
What is a bit scary is that the Als and Js in this world really do not comprehend the complexity of the subject. They think that using a word like "anomalous" with temperature, they have somehow jumped around all of the problems with the numbers. They haven't. And, I would suggest that in both cases, it is likely because they really don't understand science well enough to understand how accurate their numbers are. I am pretty sure AlGore doesn't, given his rock bottom grades in college in his two bone-head science classes.
At some time in the distant past, most likely in freshman/sophomore chem or physics, the first prof started beating into us that providing bogus digits in an answer was scientifically dishonest. Thus, an answer of 98.57257 +/- 2 is an unscientific, and partially bogus, answer to, for example, the question about the average human body temperature. Most of those decimal digits are bogus. Sure, the scientist may have run his calculations and because he used a computer, come up with all those digits, but that is mostly just an artifact of how easy it is to generate long numbers with a computer. (And, this doesn't even consider the problem that computer arithmetic can also be inaccurate, esp. if you are using floating point numbers).
The problem when it comes to a global temperature is that we have a three, four, or more, dimensional problem, that is being approximated by a minuscule number of data points of varying accuracy, and it turns out that the data point values themselves are somewhat suspect - for one thing, many were not taken consistently from the same location over time, but rather, interpolated and estimated from other data points, that themselves moved over time. Throw in that the data points are also not distributed uniformly throughout the world, but rather, are highly concentrated in certain areas, such as in the more inhabited portions of several of the larger land masses (and largely ignoring, or at least underestimating, the heat effects of urbanization on these more and more urban measuring locations). Thus, temperature measurement locations are almost entirely missing in the oceans and the less inhabited portions of the planet. In other words, 99.9+% of the world's surface. Combine this with the reality that the recording locations for the few data points we have are likely far from representative of the rest of the rest of the world's surface.
Going forward, ultimately we may get much better measurements from satellites. But, for almost all of the periods of time that the scientists have claimed to estimate temperature, we haven't had the requisite satellites. Moreover, it turns out that the satellite temperature databases were then tweaked (or "calibrated"), at least to some extent, using the Hadley/CRU temperature database that was the center of the climategate scandal of a year or two ago. Nevertheless, if climate scientists come to us a couple decades from now, and tell us that the surface of the earth has apparently heated up .8C, based on satellite data, it will be much more credible than the claims we are seeing right now.
My contention then is that it is not that climate scientists cannot estimate global temperatures, but rather, that they cannot do so with any useful degree of accuracy over more than the last decade or so (and that only because of the satellite data).
Bruce mentions accuracy of the measurements and that too is a problem. I had been speaking of the precision of the measurements and had not gotten to accuracy, though I probably should have.
Bruce probably knows the difference but most people think that accuracy and precision mean the same thing.
They don't.
A good short explanation is regarding time.
If I say that it is about noon (when it is 11:50 to 12:10 minutes of noon) this is accurate but not precise.
If I say that it is 11:58 and 32.77 seconds, that is precise but may not be accurate as it might be 11:59.
I wrote at greater length about this in my newsletter a few years ago:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/quickchangeover/message/128
John Henry
ddh,
My point of my crack about Gore's second chakra was humor, in this case, a joke for regular readers of the Althouse blog.
You still don't get it. Your remark wasn't funny.
Al Gore is supremely mockable.
For that very reason, there's no need for cheap shots against him.
Funny you should mention product leaks. I currently work in the belly of the Microsoft beast, and you may have heard of their Next Big Thing, Windows 8. We had a meeting this morning in which our team was warned that careers had already ended for leaking information and even offering opinions to partners and to the public regarding the latest Windows effort.
My role is centered around "evangelism" of MS technology to our technology partners...and I've just been given a direct order not to evangelize MS's hottest new product (on which they're essentially betting the farm) on pain of termination.
I knew there was a reason I was a developer and not a business person. It's because I'm not in the least schizophrenic or paranoid, and prefer to work with things that make sense once you figure them out.
It's not just Apple and MS, either. My observations lead me to the inescapable conclusion that all businesses everywhere that reach a certain size, say over 1,000 employees or so, invariably go utterly gibbering insane and need to be watched carefully.
GJoubert asked: With iPhones and other smart phones, and all the apps, are iPods even relevant anymore?
Yes, sort of.
The iPod Touch is "iPhone without the radio and contract", and is very relevant. The sales figures are great*.
The rest of the iPod line is not nearly as relevant, though they still sell pretty well and lead the mp3 player market.
(That market is set to decline as more and more people get phones that are completely sufficient mp3 players.)
(* Half of all iPod sales are Touches - 10 million or so of them 4Q 2010.
And if the old 2008 number of Apple having about 75% of the MP3 player market [US?] still hold, that tells us that ... over a third of the MP3 players sold in the US are iPod Touches.)
Sorepaw,
In fact, you're kinda funny yourself because you take yourself so seriously. You come across like Magaret Dumont.
If you thought my joke was unfunny, ignore it, don't belabor the point.
If you think people shouldn't mock Gore because he is too easy to mock, get used to it. Did you carry on with all the other people who made jokes/cracks/disparaging remarks? Your work will never be done.
You still need a sense of humor.
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