Al Gore is not.

video

Hat tip to PJM Tel Aviv, aka Allison Kaplan Sommer.

Daniel Clark observes. The whole business is just a part of the feminization of modern society.

He’s right, too.

If a guy is shown a picture of a sad-looking polar bear adrift on an ice floe, his first thought will be something like, “I’ve heard that bear steaks are tough, but maybe if you marinated them in beer, they’d turn out all right.” At that point, the alarmists’ emotional ploy is foiled. In a world without guy stuff, however, his vacant mind may be invaded by irrationalities like, “Who will take care of the polar bears’ children?”

In this chicken-and-the-egg scenario, the success of the global warming movement is both the cause and effect of our society’s emasculation. It would have never gotten this far if the “Nineties Man” hadn’t paved the way. When “I feel your pain” became a successful presidential campaign slogan, we should have known that charcoal-grilled steaks would soon be on the endangered list.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen Myers.

Melanie Phillips points out a Guardian book review by “Mike Hulme, professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — a key figure in the promulgation of climate change theory,” which inadvertently spills the beans about which comes first from the eco-leftie point of view, the facts or ideology.

Too often with climate change, genuine and necessary debates about these wider social values – do we have confidence in technology; do we believe in collective action over private enterprise; do we believe we carry obligations to people invisible to us in geography and time? – masquerade as disputes about scientific truth and error…

The danger of a “normal” reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow…

If only climate change were such a phenomenon and if only science held such an ascendancy over our personal, social and political life and decisions. In fact, in order to make progress about how we manage climate change we have to take science off centre stage…

This is not a comfortable thing to say – either to those scientists who still hold an uncritical view of their privileged enterprise and who relish the status society affords them, or to politicians whose instinct is so often to hide behind the experts when confronted by difficult and genuine policy alternatives.

Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists – and politicians – must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.

It is always hilarious when the mask starts to slip.

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

Reports, like MSNBC’s today, of Global Temps setting a record are pretty easy to refute. In the first place, there is no such thing as a uniform global temperature whose changes can be monitored, recorded, or modeled, as three scholars recently noted in a paper published in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics.

UPI:

A Danish scientist said the idea of a “global temperature” and global warming is more political than scientific.

University of Copenhagen Professor Bjarne Andresen has analyzed the topic in collaboration with Canadian Professors Christopher Essex from the University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph.

It is generally assumed the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans have grown warmer during the recent 50 years because of an upward trend in the so-called global temperature, which is the result of complex calculations and averaging of air temperature measurements taken around the world.

“It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth,” said Andresen, an expert on thermodynamics. “A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate”.

He says the currently used method of determining the global temperature — and any conclusion drawn from it — is more political than scientific.

The argument is presented in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics.

Syun-Ichi Akasofu of the International Arctic Research Center takes issue with IPCC Report.

There seems to be a roughly linear increase of the temperature from about 1800, or even much earlier, to the present. This warming trend is likely to be a natural change; a rapid increase of CO2 began in about 1940. This trend should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years. Thus, there is a possibility that only a fraction of the present warming trend may be attributed to the greenhouse effect resulting from human activities. This conclusion is contrary to the IPCC (2007) Report, which states that
“most” of the present warming is due to the greenhouse effect. One possible cause of the linear increase may be that the Earth is still recovering from the Little Ice Age. It is urgent that natural changes be correctly identified and removed accurately from the presently on-going changes in order to find the contribution of the greenhouse effect.

Many older people like myself have no difficulty at all recalling that, back in the 1970s (when we were experiencing some colder winters), environmentalists were predicting a new Ice Age resulting from emissions produced by human industrial activity.

Al Gore, however, must be getting senile. A New York Times article, devoted to brushing away scientific criticism of Gore’s exaggerated claims of imminent doom (“…in terms of the big picture, he got it right.”), admiringly quotes Gore’s self-deprecatory assessment of his own performance:

He said that after 30 years of trying to communicate the dangers of global warming, “I think that I’m finally getting a little better at it.”

Actually, though the weather began getting milder after the late 1970s, awareness of a “Global Warming” crisis dates back only to 1988, when NASA scientist James Hansen testified to Congress of a “cause and effect” relationship between human emissions and a warming climate.

Of course, though Gore would have been working to avert Global Cooling, not Global Warming, 30 years ago, by a curious coincidence, he was undoubtedly advocating precisely the same solutions: bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation and restriction of energy consumption.

Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.

The Telegraph reports:

Scientists who questioned mankind’s impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global warming has been “hijacked” by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.

One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.

“Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened,” said the professor…

Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology… recently claimed: “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges.

“Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science.”

The need to stifle debate indicates all too clearly the quality of the science behind Anthropogenic Global Warming theory.

The full documentary is now available.

1:15:56 video

Channel 4’s documentary was broadcast yesterday evening in Britain. Some excerpts have already been uploaded.

2:12 Part 1

3:14 Part 2

3:13 Part 3

2:56 Part 4

4:30 Part 5

4:11 Part 6

I expect that the entire program will soon be available.

Britain’s Channel 4:

In a polemical and thought-provoking documentary, film-maker Martin Durkin argues that the theory of man-made global warming has become such a powerful political force that other explanations for climate change are not being properly aired.

The film brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus that a ‘greenhouse effect’ of carbon dioxide released by human activity is the cause of rising global temperatures.

Instead the documentary highlights recent research that the effect of the sun’s radiation on the atmosphere may be a better explanation for the regular swings of climate from ice ages to warm interglacial periods and back again.

The film argues that the earth’s climate is always changing, and that rapid warmings and coolings took place long before the burning of fossil fuels. It argues that the present single-minded focus on reducing carbon emissions not only may have little impact on climate change, it may also have the unintended consequence of stifling development in the third world, prolonging endemic poverty and disease.

The film features an impressive roll-call of experts, including nine professors — experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, environmental science, biogeography and paleoclimatology — from such reputable institutions as MIT, NASA, the International Arctic Research Centre, the Institut Pasteur, the Danish National Space Center and the Universities of London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Winnipeg, Alabama and Virginia.

The film hears from scientists who dispute the link between carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures.

‘The ice core record goes to the very heart of the problem we have’ says a respected climatology expert in the documentary. ‘They said if CO2 increases in the atmosphere, as a greenhouse gas, then the temperature will go up’.

In fact, the experts in the film argue that increased CO2 levels are actually a result of temperature rises, not their cause, and that this alternate view is rarely heard. ‘So the fundamental assumption, the most fundamental assumption of the whole theory of climate change due to humans, is shown to be wrong.’

‘I’ve often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue, that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system,’ says an emminent earth science expert. ‘Well I am one scientist, and there are many, that simply think that is not true.’

Go into business selling licenses for energy use in excess of legally defined limited amounts. The WSJ explains how it’s done:

The idea of a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. has become all the rage. Earlier this year, 10 big American companies formed the Climate Action Partnership to lobby for government action on climate change. And this week the private-equity consortium that is bidding to take over Texas utility TXU announced that, as part of the buyout, it would join the forces lobbying for a cap on carbon emissions.

But this is not, as Lenin once said, a case of capitalists selling the rope to hang themselves with. In most cases, it is good old-fashioned rent-seeking with a climate-change patina.

Start with the name. Most of those pushing this idea want you to think about it as cap-and-trade, with emphasis on the trading part. Senator Barbara Boxer touts all the jobs that would be created for people trying to game the system — er, save the planet. And her colleague Jeff Bingaman calls cap-and-trade “market based,” because, you know, people would trade stuff.

But for that to happen, the government would first have to put a cap on CO2 emissions, either for certain industries or even the economy as a whole. At the same time, it would allocate quotas for CO2 emissions, either based on current emissions, or on energy output, or some other standard. If a company then “over-complied,” which means it produced less carbon dioxide than it was allowed to under the rules, it could sell the excess allowance to someone else. That someone else would buy the right to produce CO2 if doing so cost less than actually reducing emissions.

In this way, emissions would be reduced in an relatively efficient way: Those for whom reductions were cheap or easy would reduce, and if they reduced enough, they could sell their excess allowance to someone for whom the reductions were harder or more expensive. This kind of trading works, and we’ve argued in these columns that cap-and-trade beats the pants off just plain capping by lowering the overall economic burden of a cap.

The difficulties don’t lie with the trading, but with the cap, which is where the companies lobbying for restrictions come in. James Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, put it plainly earlier this year: “If you’re not at the table when these negotiations are going on, you’re going to be on the menu.” Translation: If a cap is coming, better to design it in a way that you profit from it, instead of being killed by it.

Make no mistake, this “vital environmental policy measure” is on the way. Al Gore is already in the business, and will probably make billions.

Saving the earth has got a lot in common with the sarcastic old song about the profit potential in the old days in the other kind of salvation:

My father’s a missionary preacher.
He saves fallen women from sin.
He’ll save you a blonde for a guinea.
My God, how the money rolls in!

Al Gore’s light bill is $1200 a month.

Wow! And I thought I left too many lights on all the time. Memories of my father finding a superfluous light on in my childhood, and demanding indignantly: “What do you think? Have you got shares in the PP&L?” often bring a smile, and I’ve sometimes thought of buying a few shares of PPL, just so I could rhetorically justify my irresponsible habits in my own mind.

A day after a film about his efforts to combat global warming won an Oscar, former Vice President Al Gore was called a hypocrite by a Tennessee group that said his Belle Meade home is consuming too much energy.

The home’s average monthly electric bill last year was just under $1,200, according to bills that The Tennessean acquired from Nashville Electric Service.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk (the) walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, identified as a free-market think tank.

Al Gore’s house.

But Al Gore is rich enough, you see, to justify himself in even better and more creative ways.

Gore purchased 108 blocks of “green power” for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills.

That’s a total of $432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources.

The green power Gore purchased in those three months is equivalent to recycling 2.48 million aluminum cans or 286,092 pounds of newspaper, according to comparison figures on NES’ Web site.

But this greenie site points out that Gore is buying those credits from his own firm.

So, where does Gore buy his ‘carbon offsets’? According to The Tennessean newspaper’s report, Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management. a company he co-founded and serves as chairman:

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe…

As co-founder and chairman of the firm Gore presumably draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management – he buys stocks

Cool! Albert Gore takes some money out his right pocket, buys some carbon offsets from himself, and then puts the money in his left pocket, and voila! he has saved enough of the planet by that clever transaction to immunize himself from Don Surber‘s description of him as some kind of an alleged:

born-to-the-manor, overfed, limousine liberal who consume(s) 22,000 kilowatts of electricity each year* in just one of his three homes.

* More than 20 times the National average.