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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
Is environmentalism a religion? Almost, says Al Gore:
I really and truly believe this should not be a political issue. It should be understood as a moral issue and an ethical issue. In the largest sense, it’s almost a spiritual issue, because our survival is at stake.
Testify, brother Al!
Two thousand scientists from a hundred countries, for 20 years, have arrived at a consensus on several points: Global warming is real. We human beings are largely responsible for it. The results are bad and headed toward catastrophic. We need to fix it and it’s not too late. And the consensus extends to some of these details that the oil company folks quarrel with—polar bears, for example. There’s a very specific set of findings there. They’ve just been listed on the endangered list.
No, they haven’t. Looks like Al is way ahead of the news cycle.
UPDATE. More from Al-pocalypse Gore:
Speaking from an aircraft [from a what now? – ed] on Wednesday night, the movie’s narrator, former United States vice-president Al Gore, phoned into a Durban cinema audience warning of a “planetary emergency” of a kind never experienced before.
Gore says people have only five to 10 years to avert cataclysmic disasters, one thousand times worse than the terror of September 11 – and all directly due to global warming.
People who say things like this are usually cult leaders.
- How did polar bears become so popular? Everybody talks about them now! You’d think they were Britney and K-Fed.Posted by ushie on 2006 06 18 at 11:48 AM • permalink
- One suspects that the second paragraph is a bit of a narrative Trojan horse. Al starts out by saying that “two thousand scientists from a hundred countries . . “ blah, blah have arrived at a consensus on several points, and then lists not only one point on which there may be something resembling consensus (“global warming is real”), but then continues with “points” concerning which there is no genuine consensus at all (e.g., “the results are bad and headed toward catastrophic”). A person who is thoroughly convinced that things are so bad that he needs to lie in order to get people’s attention has a hell of a nerve wondering why his credibility is so shaky.
- Let’s see, mean, iggerint, self-righteous cracker with a cause and a cable TV network… how is this not a religion again?
Gore is obviously carving out his niche as the Swaggart of the Greens…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 18 at 12:10 PM • permalink
- Sacré bleu! While Al’s blubbering away about polar bears, the Canadians and Norwegians are back to clubbing helpless, innocent baby seals!Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 06 18 at 12:12 PM • permalink
- Bruce — I recommend a 3-wood.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 18 at 12:36 PM • permalink
- Okay, it’s about time we locked each and every enviro-bishop in a big room so they can all decide to burn little bits of paper to make white smoke – scratch that, it won’t help us track our Kyoto targets – make it a giant-hot-shower-eco-love-in-white-steam-fest, to declare Al Gore the first enviro-pope!Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 18 at 12:46 PM • permalink
How did polar bears become so popular?
I blame Coca Cola.
Bush’s administration, says Gore, has turned back the clock on efforts to protect the global environment, revoked critical legislation, refused to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change, fraudulently altered scientific research on the matter and propagated the myth that global warming is a theory, not a fact supported, unanimously at that, by scientific thought.
He is a cult leader. The funny thing is, he barely discussed environmental issues during the 2000 campaign. Didn’t urge ratification of Kyoto, didn’t predict An End To Life As We Know It within 20 years, didn’t promote spending billions of taxpayer dollars on weaning ourselves from an oil-based economy, didn’t do any of that. How come, Al? Guess he must have had his Come to Gaia meeting after the election.
At least we only have to wait 5-10 years to laugh and point fingers at all the egg on brother Al’s face. Can I get an “Amen!”.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 06 18 at 01:33 PM • permalink
- Here’s acolyte Roger Ebert in his review of the movie:
I want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it.
Lotsa luck. Sometimes I wonder if even you read them to the end.
I am a liberal,
You ARE????
but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it,
Fair enough, but beware of mistaking the truth as you understand it for agreement among the world’s experts.
and it represents, I believe, agreement among the world’s experts.
Oops.
Global warming is real.
It is caused by human activity.
Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it.
If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a “tipping point” and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the other species on this planet.
After that point is reached, it would be too late for any action.
For those of you who haven’t yet memorized this rite, it’s on page 336 of the GreenBook of Common Prayer.
These facts are stated by Al Gore in the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Forget he ever ran for office.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Roger?
Consider him a concerned man speaking out on the approaching crisis. “There is no controversy about these facts,” he says in the film.
He’s certainly a gifted enough liar to run for office – maybe he should take it up.
Although, I can envision alGore in ten years ranting on about how we only have another five or ten years to save ourselves.
Wasn’t it noted scholar Ted Danson who predicted the end of human life within ten years, sometime in the early 1990s?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 06 18 at 02:05 PM • permalink
Global warming is real.
It is caused by human activity.
Then we have a hell of a lot of influence, given the warming of Mars, Jupiter, and Pluto.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 06 18 at 02:09 PM • permalink
- “Wasn’t it noted scholar Ted Danson who predicted the end of human life within ten years, sometime in the early 1990s?”
I think that may have actually been the late 1980s; I remember seeing Ted utter those words on TV in some sort of half hour infomercial for the Save Gaia organization du jour. But in any case, those ten years have long since passed.
Of course, no interviewer will ask Ted about that inconvenient truth and risk being dropped from the Hollywood gravy train.
Posted by Ed Driscoll on 2006 06 18 at 02:14 PM • permalink
- A quote by Gorezilla from that interview transcript:
I’m actually enjoying not being in politics.
Translation: “I can show my true colors as a barking moonbat.”
Let’s not forget that Gorezilla said this:
A barking moonbat indeed. I truly hope he never runs for President.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 18 at 02:23 PM • permalink
- I’d like to see Reverend Al explain this:
http://www.scotese.com/newpage12.htmMan’s heatiness goes a ways back in time!
(Andrea, that linkthing won’t let me copy a link. I realize I’m kinda a chucklehead…)
Speaking from an aircraft [from a what now? – ed] on Wednesday night, the movie’s narrator, former United States vice-president Al Gore, phoned into a Durban cinema audience warning of a “planetary emergency” of a kind never experienced before.
It would have been a Rapture-like moment, surely. Gore softly intoning “Believers. I am your lord, speaking to you from above. Prepare to follow me to salvation…”
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 06 18 at 03:47 PM • permalink
- It was a carbon-neutral aircraft, no doubt—perhaps Al’s personal blimp, made of all-natural fibers?Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 06 18 at 04:07 PM • permalink
- OT Steyn-on-fire about the Defeaticrats (don’t remember if Tim linked to Zombie’s World Naked Bike Ride 2006 pictorial).Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 06 18 at 04:16 PM • permalink
- #5 Richard McEnroe:
I’d have to disagree, have you seen the way they’re making those things these days? I just bought a new set of clubs the other day, and while the drivers and fairway woods would be great for smacking a golf ball to kingdom come I don’t think a baby seal would even notice one of the things. These days, you pretty much have to use a five iron and hope you can clear the hazards…
Andrea, that linkthing won’t let me copy a link.
You. Must. Copy. A. Link. First. Using. Conventional. Windows. Text. Copying. Functions. That. Have. Been. Standard. Since. Windows. First. Came. Out. On. The. Market.
You know: Click in the address field of the browser where the url is, drag the mouse button to select, right-click and pick “copy” or else hit the “ctrl” and “C” keys on your computer. THEN you go back to Tim’s comment page, which should be in a different browser window, and paste the link into the url field of the link box. I am now going to smash my forehead into the wall repeatedly. See you later.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 06 18 at 08:49 PM • permalink
- Does seem like he’s trying to start a cult. Wasn’t he creating 1000 clones to distribute around the globe?
What’s really creepy is that this cults grievance is that humans produce too much CO2. The inconvenient truth is that human respiration is by far the leading source of “man-made” C02 production per capita. Do the math.
- Paul Ehrlich ..predicted famine and disaster on a scale unprecedented in world history. In the prologue to The Population Bomb [1968] he wrote, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”
Not only was the world headed for catastrophe, but there was little that could be done to avoid it.
Al Gore is trying to mimic Paul Ehrlich.
Not even original.
Gore says people have only five to 10 years to avert cataclysmic disasters, one thousand times worse than the terror of September 11 – and all directly due to global warming.
Good. Let’s do nothing, and in ten years give these dipshits a big “ha-haaaa!”
Wait. Won’t work. Apocalyptic religions always just pick a new date.
- VexOrg — Well, fortunately, according to Tim and respected high school teachers, you can buy explosives at the hobby shop to left the stubborn ones..Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 18 at 09:28 PM • permalink
- If you thought the Gorester was thinking all this up by himself you’re wrong; he has his very own Karl Rove, and he’s ready and waiting for a global temperature spike.
- #31 Profeti says:
What’s really creepy is that this cult’s grievance is that humans produce too much CO2. The inconvenient truth is that human respiration is by far the leading source of “man-made” C02 production per capita. Do the math.You’ve got it in one, profeti. These Greenies see the real ‘answer’ in reducing human population by billions, as long as it’s not them. Even Australia is vastly overpopulated, according to them.
Erhlich cynically admired Mao, who caused the greatest one year death by famine in history in 1960, 22 million. [Recommended: Jung Chang on Mao. p.471] They ‘need’ leaders like him again.
- What about those flatulent photosynthesising foliage-festooned fuckers? There’s billions of ‘em, and they respirate CO2 all bloody night.
It’s tree terminatin’ time!
- Loft the stubborn ones…Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 06 18 at 10:46 PM • permalink
- So the problem is 1,000 worse than 9-11? And global. REALLY global. Not like that fake global war on terror that the usurper Bush goes on about. Nope. Mr. Gore is leading us in the battle against those who have caused the catastrophic effects of breathing human beings – who almost elected him which would have made his daddy happy since that is why daddy laid down with mother for…oh, never mind that part.
Anyway. Mr. Gore is leading all the people of the whole world to safefy! and he doesn’t give a damn about stinking elections either he’s just going to go on without stinking elections and foul judges and laws and crap… ah, ignore that last bit.
Anyway. You’re all just blind to Mr. Gore’s splendid qualities of leadership. You’d know better if you’d elected him in 2000. He is such a remarkable leader that if he had been president on 9-11, it wouldn’t have happened. After all, the previous administration made sure that America was only attacked overseas, not in New York City or D.C. But it really doesn’t matter because now the whole world needs his leadership in something way more important than just that Iraq quagmire or Iranian nuke, and he is here to give it to us all. Without even having to bother to elect him like his daddy wanted and now he can’t even die in peace because dad will be there to…forget that last part.
- the problem is with the term “global warming”. Some nod and say, “yes, yes, the atmosphere has been warming up slightly of late, next slide please…”
But there’s a semantic sleight-of-hand here. For many people, “global warming” is short-hand for global disaster. So once you get the boffins to agree about global warming, it sounds like they’ve rubber-stamped the whole catastrophe.
Scientists agree that there appears to be some ‘global warming’. They also pretty much agree that human activity (cars, planes etc), are at least having some contribution to this.
However, when they get to the question of how long this will continue, how warm it will actually get, how fast, and what the effects will be, there is less agreement. (oh there’s total agreement? okay then, let’s hear the numbers, starting with the average temperature, and sea level rise, in 2016). Predictions are only as good as the models generating them. The ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ is the most famous of these predictions.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 18 at 11:50 PM • permalink
- Gore says people have only five to 10 years to avert cataclysmic disasters, one thousand times worse than the terror of September 11
What . .. 911,000?
Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 06 19 at 02:13 AM • permalink
- Here’s global warming guru Stephen Schneider, explaining, in 1971, why CO2 would not cause global warming, but in fact aerosols were going to trigger a new ice age.
“The main conclusion of this part of
the study is that even an order of magnitude
increase of CO., in the atmosphere
by human activities, which at
the present rate of input is not expected
within the next several thousand
years, may not be sufficient to produce
a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth.
On the short time scale, if CO2, is augmented
by another 10 percent in the
next 30 years, the increase in the global
temperature may be as small as 0.1°K”Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols:
Effects of Large Increases on Global ClimateS. I. RASOOL
S. H. SCHNEIDER
Institute for Space Studies, Goddard
Space Flight Center, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration,
New York 10025
SCIENCE, VOL. 173
9 JULY 1971I wonder what Al’s position was in 1971. (In Canada, most likely)
Gore says people have only five to 10 years to avert cataclysmic disasters, one thousand times worse than the terror of September 11 – and all directly due to global warming.
So, let me get this straight–global warming is going to cause the Splodeydopes to hijack 4,000 planes and crash them into buildings full of innocent people within the next five to ten years? The hypocrisy of issuing this statement from an airplane is just staggering.
- #23 Thanks Kyda.
“What a bleak comment on the bitter divisions in our society that even so all-American a tradition as nude bicycling down Main Street should now be so nakedly partisan. It’s as if the republic itself is now divided into a red buttock and a blue buttock permanently cleaved by the bicycle seat of war.” – Mark Steyn
hehe, love his work.
- You can run but you can’t hide! Bwahahahahaha!Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 06 19 at 06:54 AM • permalink
- Doubt that Gore is saying that the world will end in 5-10 years time. What he and many others (none as well read/researched or alert as posters here) are trying to say is that we do not have much time to change our profligate and destructive ways.
I think he is wrong.
We are already seeing changes that indicate the world’s weather is in dramatic disarray. Considering how massive the sytem is and the amount of energy necessarry to change it, I would say it is well into its stride by now.
Best we can hope to do is ameliorate the effects and prepare to minimise the impact it will have on “human society”.
Yes, previous well intended researchers have sounded warnings. What if Erhlich didn’t forsee the Green Revolution?? Or Schneider obviously didn’t quite understand the problem?
Does that make any difference?
What are a couple of years here or there in the geological time scale? Nothing.
However, humankind can actually predict with some degree of certainty that its own activities are potentially destructive to our only planet. We don’t have a spare.
It would seem wise, to say the least, to take the worst case scenario and act to avoid it. If we are wrong, then we will be better off globally, anyway. If we are right, we may just be around for a few more millenia.I realise that most posters on this site are old, bored and past it, but what about the generations to come??
- drpoll,
We don’t need to “avoid the worst cast”, we need to be able to deal with most likely situations and be flexible enough to change with the varying possibilities. We need to weigh the cost of polilicies with their likely benefit. Nobody has applied risk management techniques to what we know and don’t know. There are some things that might be of some help (but probably not) that don’t cost much to implement, so we mights as well implement them(possible carbon taxes, etc). But the problem is that we have no sound policy proposals, just chicken littles. My of the shit we hear is so asinine, it is likely to be counterproductive.
#49 Wronwright, I need to borrow the–thingy. So’s I can go to the Cambrian era. To hide.—Posted by ushie
What? I think not ushie. The Tardis is used for official business only. If I lent it out to every person here who is in some state of fear or flee from Andrea, I’d never have it to carry out Karl’s orders. I think the answer for you is to try to reason with the Monster from the Lagoon our beloved administrator.
Speaking of which, Paco! Karl ordered us to go back to 960 AD, to a monastery in the Apennine foothills. Apparently he wants us to digitally copy the whole freaking library. Oh, I hope they don’t have a demonology section like that Spanish convent had.
(recalls very frightening experience when paco, Stoop Davy Dave, and Michael Lonie, on an unsupervised rest break, decided to recite verses from the Necronomicon, conjuring up Azazel in the process. Remembers being chased, screaming like girls, through the convent, until cornered on a rampart. It was only the uttering of the name, Karl Rove, that enabled us to subdue the dark spirit. Oh, never again.)
Get hold of goat boy and tell him we’ll be working in Italy for a few weeks. If you can’t find Stoop Davy Dave, don’t bring that Huck Foley person. I don’t trust him. Get MarkL. He’s trying to suck up to prove himself to Karl. I suppose he can prove himself with the copier machine.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 06 19 at 08:59 AM • permalink
- #56: “Apennine foothills”? Is that off I-95 around Zebulon? Can do! Haven’t been back to North Carolina in a month of Sundays.
Don’t mention that Azazel business! And I think Stoop Huck Davey Dave Foley’s cries of terror were faked; I think it was an inside job. Check out this picture.
- drpoll,
May I restate your argument? Then you can tell me where I have it wrong. If you make a declarative statement of fact that you think adds weight to your argument, I would also hope for a link of some kind.It builds on a true statement: Scientists agree that warming from the release of fossilized carbon as Co2 is greater than zero.
Then jumps to this conclusion: The world will end if we don’t implement command economies the world over in the next 10 years because only governments know how to run economies.
- #60 It’s possible (scientists tell us so) that a giant asteroid could hit the planet and destroy all life, at any time, with very little warning. Unlike any other species, we have the ability to predict the future of the planet and alter it. We have the technology to prevent such a catastrophe. It would be expensive, but it could be done. So let’s avoid this worst case scenario. For a few trillion dollars, we can build a massive world-wide asteroid monitoring system and 96 giant “asteroid blasters” strategically placed all over the planet. Probably, there is no asteroid heading towards Earth, but what if there is? Better safe than sorry, as the old saying goes.
After all, we should do everything we can to avoid the Worst Case Scenario, right?Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 19 at 10:38 AM • permalink
- “How do you “manage” a “risk” like the possible catastrophic implosion of human societies world wide?? “
First order of business, ensure social justice by reining in US capitalism while ignoring emissions from China and India because Social Justice is more important than the planet.
Second order of business, continue to oppose nuclear power on the grounds that it would be better to “implode civilization” than to have waste dumps scattered throughout the globe.
Third order of Business. Impose lifestyle choices on the worlds’ population because you “know better than they do” how people should live. (That’s why the govt needs to control the economy)
I could go on…
- Drpoll,
Daddy Dave is right based on your logic.The obvious solution is conquest of the globe by English speaking powers, and imposition of massive taxes (tribute) on local societies to pay for these blasters, and of course, as a happy coincidence, development of the blaster technology would aid in the conquest.
What would be worse? Extinction of the human race that an asteroid undoubtedly represents, based on several past impacts, or conquest by the US.
And if we are wrong, the world is still better off, right? End of war and all of that?
- #57 paco,
If you’re saying Stooped Over Huck and Foleying is related to the diabolical Azazel, hey, I’d believe it.
For the record, my scream was more of a manly shout of bravado. I wasn’t scared. Not really. At least not like Michael Lonie, who screamed like Janet Leigh in Psycho and waved his arms liked a Southern Cal cheerleader.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 06 19 at 11:43 AM • permalink
- pjw, is that the same Steve Schneider? Really?Posted by Harry Eagar on 2006 06 19 at 12:29 PM • permalink
- Alias SDD, aka HF, aka Azazel the goatboy. That last explains a lot.
Have you ever noticed how it is the knowledge-barers who are demonized? I also note that equating the knowledge of cosmetics with that of warfare displays a mindset I bet any male-woman oppressing-honor loving Muslim would recognize.
P.S. drpoll, You’re a concrete bound little scardy cat who needs to recognize that you belong to a long line of scardy cats who try to stop, and otherwise enslave all of mankind to your fears. In all of written history, not one of you has ever been right. If us older – and wiser – denizens of Tim’s pub seem bored to you, it is because we have seen your like before and know you for what you are. And we’re bored with it.
I also would tell you, so you’ll know what to expect if you make it into old age, that you do not become astranged from your business, your family, your community, or your country as you age. In fact, you’d be surprised how much you care about something in which you’ve invested most of the days of your life and hours of your thought.
It is you who are giving up on human life, not us. We know that man can handle almost anything he puts his mind to handling. If something outside of his ability to control happens, it happens. It is futile to worry about something over which you have no control (you learn that with age). The fact that something may be outside of human control means it also may be within human control, and that one engages in a positively destructive activity by deliberately wrecking the progress mankind has made, because destruction might have a scintilla of an iota of a possibility of maybe coming to pass.
- drpoll,
What is it about the denizens of this part of the web that anything contrary to their ideas uncorks such emotions? I thought this was a debate.
It is. You’re just not paying attention. Let me recap. You said:
We are already seeing changes that indicate the world’s weather is in dramatic disarray.
In other words, global catastrophe is certain, look at the evidence around you! However, you are mistaken. The weather has always been in ‘disarray.’ There’s a whole theory about it called “chaos theory”. Here’s a summary of the responses.
#53 #54 aaron_ satirised the panicked, over-the-top doomsday scenarios that your posts typify. Some here have drawn parallels with y2k – what is your opinion on the comparison? “This time it’s for real?”
#61 moptop took issue with you jumping to conclusions; ie global warming= global catastrophe; and the fact that the solution just happens to involve implementing socialist policies in every major economy in the world. therefore, draw your own conclusions but moptop smells a rat.
#62 You were appalled at applying the concept of risk management, so I used the scenario of asteroid protection to show you that we already apply risk management to the environment, as shown by the fact that nobody is doing much to stop rogue asteroids hitting the earth.
#63 Dave S asked you for some specific predictions about the coming catastrophe. He did this because he knows you can’t produce any predictions, because there aren’t any predictions. e.g., how far will the sea level rise by 2016? something like that.
#64 moptop questioned the whole politics behind the global-warming-green movement, essentially accusing it of hypocrisy, and having a hidden socialist agenda.
I think this is a more detailed and careful response than you deserve, given your slander of people who post here.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 20 at 11:08 AM • permalink
- oh and I forgot to mention
#68 saltydog, who thinks that this is just the latest in a long line of doomsayers throughout history, none of whom have been right.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 20 at 12:14 PM • permalink
- People, you are questioning drpoll’s assertions. Don’t you know that in the alternate universe whence drpoll resides, assertions = scientific facts?
Get with the program, people, else I’ll use the Tardis to get Gore elected in 2004. That’ll larn ya!!!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 20 at 03:02 PM • permalink
Doubt that Gore is saying that the world will end in 5-10 years time. What he and many others (none as well read/researched or alert as posters here) are trying to say is that we do not have much time to change our profligate and destructive ways.
drpoll, this is a direct cut&paste from the article in question:
Gore says people have only five to 10 years to avert cataclysmic disasters, one thousand times worse than the terror of September 11 – and all directly due to global warming. Posters of penguins traversing a desert are being used to market the film which opened Durban’s 27th International Film Festival this week.
Tim merely quoted another source about Al Gore’s comments.
If you doubt that Gorezilla said that, contact Fred Kockott, the author of the article. May I suggest using the IOL feedback site?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 06 20 at 03:11 PM • permalink
else I’ll use the Tardis to get Gore elected in 2004
you woudn’t dare! Would you? Nah, you’re just kidding with me. Right? I mean, you were joking, right?
Hey, don’t. JeffS, step AWAY from the Tardis. Don’t go any closer. The joke was funny before, but now you’re taking it too far, and now it’s got to stop. Please. This isn’t funny any more.
Can someone move JeffS away from the TARDIS? Where’s wronwright when you need him?Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 20 at 04:27 PM • permalink
- (hears Yippy, the attack dachsund yipping away)
Who’s in my basement? Dag gone it. Game six of the NBA Championships is playing right now. This isn’t soccer. This means something!
And of course some distraction arises that takes me away from it. I swear to Allah, if that’s Stoop Davy Dave and paco in my mead cellar again, I’m taking out that Klingon death sword I got in Gatlinburg and Ima go hunting.
(regrets mentioning death sword, hopes Andrea didn’t read it)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 06 20 at 10:15 PM • permalink
- 72.. Daddy. Thanks for listing your understanding and that of your fellow posters, of what I posted. I was getting a little confused there as to what had set you all off.
1)I wrote:
“We are already seeing changes that indicate the world’s weather is in dramatic disarray.”
Hardly contentious.
Your response:
“In other words global catastrophe is certain, look at the evidence around you!” This is a rather simplistic and deliberate misunderstanding, assigning to my phrase “dramatic dissarray” meaning, emphasis and urgency I was unaware of.
I am sure that you can use Chaos Theory to predict what might happen.. Just need much bigger numbers and my Cray has “bsd”
2) What exactly was “over the top” about my posting, other than I have a different view to you?
3) moptop. Ahh So.. Thanks for explaining that/those confused response(s). I re-read ‘em 2 or 3 times and still didn’t understand what he/she was saying.
a)See above about moptops “issue” He/she is the one jumping..
b)Imagine global changes will be very hard for many (particularly us in the West) and would cause some social upheaval and require some central control.. Have you tried to put a different exterior house colour past your local council lately??
Whats that?? moptop has a CONSPIRACY THEORY?
How quaint, how “leftwards” of you moptop
4) Your scenario of a “rogue” (?? as opposed to a “friendly”) asteroid is a simple example of “reductio ad absurdum”. That not withstanding and energy requirements apart, such a scenario would require an unprecedented global scientific and social effort that would make terraforming Mars look like a walk in the park. Further more, an event above 8 on the Torino scale isn’t really due (statistically speaking) for about another 10,000 – 100,000 years. Probably long enough for us (or perhaps the next dominant species) to be able to cope with it 🙁
5) Gosh YES, Dave S is absolutely RIGHT..
My crystal balls are a bit foggy at the moment. I can’t even predict the next set of lotto numbers or whether or not there will be 2cms of rain this month or 2.5… The point is??
***********************************
What is saltydog on?
I really appreciate good ‘ol old Granddad taking time to tell me what I can expect to experience in my old age (and you think I am how old??).
However, to follow his crusty logic, we should all sit contentedly on our porches, in our rocking chairs, benignly watching the next generation gamble about at our wise and bunioned old feet, whilst somebody else fixes up the mess (perhaps)we have ignored..
That supposes a number of prerequisites, foremost of which is an abundant non polluting source of energy.
Your candidate(s) is/are??
Wouldn’t it be better to think about trying to avoid such possible mess in the first place?
What is it about such a suggestion that causes so much angst and grief?
- drpoll:
1) Hardly contentious. Then reference please, and not with websites.2) What exactly was “over the top”
what about: “catastrophic implosion of human societies world wide”3-4) so I guess you have no problem with the logic: “the world is going to end. it’s the fault of capitalism. Quick, let’s introduce command economies everywhere!”
5) here’s the one everyone dodges, including you. This is why Dave_S just doesn’t believe it.
drpoll: “It’s the end of the world! Do something!”
Dave_S: “Oh no. What’s going to happen?”
drpoll: “I don’t know. You think I can predict the future? I don’t have a crystal ball!”6) saltydog was just responding to your ageism.
That supposes a number of prerequisites, foremost of which is an abundant non polluting source of energy. Your candidate(s) is/are??
But if all the energy runs out, why would you care? Wouldn’t that solve the entire problem?Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 21 at 12:54 PM • permalink
- #79 Oh, and thanks for explaining to me that my argument was
a simple example of “reductio ad absurdum”.
I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 21 at 01:27 PM • permalink
- *sigh*
Dave_S, we still didn’t get a bloody answer. I want to know when Maitland is going to become beachfront real estate.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 21 at 09:21 PM • permalink
- 79.. Daddy_d
1) Read sufficient credible newspapers, scientific journals and analyses.
2) Read “possible catastrophic implosion of human societies world wide?? “
I think you accidently overlooked the first rather important qualifier.
3-4) Don’t think I said or even thought that..
I did?? You read my thoughts?? Ohh…
5) Ditto.. Thats why you are confwused and lonely out there.. You don’t actually listen.
6) Touch touchy for one so much older that Father Time??In other posts about this very topic a reasonable response by hal was sneered at by one of the incumbents, on the transparently wrong grounds that it was not following “scientific principles”. So taking that as a guideline, please use scientific principles in your criticism.
No science, as you have to know (don’t you?) can be so precise and accurate as to predict what Dave_S is asking for. You do understand that (don’t you?? You don’t?? Oooh…) Anybody who thinks otherwise really hasn’t got all their balls on the table.
So keep it sensible, OK??
- drpoll: man, every post is dripping with sarcasm. okay, here we go.
1) “credible” newspapers don’t count. However, scientific journals do. So, where is an undisputed meta-analysis showing that the climate is ‘erratic’ or whatever word you want to use. This is not a rhetorical question.2) so you’re saying it all might be a false alarm? Maybe you’ll feel as stupid as I did after Y2K fizzed.
3) this is exactly the reasoning Moptop was taking issue with, and you attacked him for it. Therefore, I assumed you were defending this position.
4) you don’t have a crystal ball, yet the entire debate is about events in the future. The problem is, either you’re predicting something (“possible catastrophe”) or you’re not (“no crystal ball here”). You can’t switch from one to the other as convenience dictates. And btw, yes I understand that predictions can be probabilistic. (but if they are, then let’s have some probabilities).
Dave_S was trying to smoke out either some kind of prediction, or an admission that we don’t know what the hell is going to happen. To his credit, Al Gore makes predictions, but they are wrong. But if we don’t have any predictions (and you’re the one protesting you don’t have a crystal ball), why spend trillions running from a phantom?
6) your continuing ageist bigotry is unseemly.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 21 at 11:41 PM • permalink
No science, as you have to know (don’t you?) can be so precise and accurate as to predict what Dave_S is asking for. You do understand that (don’t you?? You don’t?? Oooh…) Anybody who thinks otherwise really hasn’t got all their balls on the table.
I hate to be pedantic, but I am going to be.
When you say “no science” you actually mean “climate science.” For example, Newtonian physics can predict trajectories of moving bodies with remarkable precision. We know exactly the position of the earth relative to all the other planets in 10,000 years time.
But point taken. Climate science cannot make accurate predictions far into the future. But if that is the case, why are nations making huge policy decisions based on a hazy science with no predictions? There’s the problem. The magnitude of the panic relative to the vagueness of the risk.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 21 at 11:53 PM • permalink
- Ol’ rockin’ chair’s got me,
Cane by my side;
Fetch me that gin, son
‘Fore I tan your hide.
Can’t get from this cabin,
Ain’t goin’ nowhere,
Just sittin’ here grabbin’
At the flies ‘round this
Ol’ rockin’ chair.– And I’ll give the second verse just for drpoll,
My dear old Aunt Harriet,
In heaven she be,
Send me sweet chariot
For the end of these troubles I see.
Ol’Rockin’ chair gets it.
Judgment day is here.
I’m chained to my old
Rockin’ chair.…but he won’t get it.
- 85&86.. Daddy_dave..Thanks for entering into a discussion with some point..
1) I do not have to hand a database of the required articles but a solid search of the net on the reputable journal sites will provide a sufficient collection that will meet the criteria you set. I would not really bother with a meta-analysis. A major statistical wank. It is akin to dice tossing and is rather like looking at pink pears and blue grapes and thinking the qualities of blue pears can be deduced!!
There are no final firm utterly convincing articles and on those grounds you will not find anybody disagree with you.
2) Yes, Y2K may have fizzed, but did it?? Did all those billions (was it??) spent on rewriting archaic and arcane code and updating systems prior just might have prevented some major catastrophes. After all, plenty of systems have failed from errors far less significant than wrong date, I would venture to say.
3) I try not put my words into other people mouths or my meaning into their words. I do not accept it from others as a genuine debating practice.
4) Having spent some time looking around this site, I will not be such a dummy as to give you such a prediction!!
We all accept that the science is inexact but it is exact enough for many of its earlier predicted outcomes to be observable now. Furthermore, the mainstream players, who, it should be considered, are highly trained, intelligent and dedicated people, are almost unanimous in their conclusions as to the direction we are taking our planet.
The devil, as always, is in the unfilled detail, but the trend is quite clear, “little iceage” aberrations and all.So, arctic ice cover is thinning..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5034026.stm
So what?? Well..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4290340.stm
It has been a common ploy to suggest that what we are seeing is a natural perturbation, part of a long term cycle. Be that as it may, these two article suggest that we are heading towards a situation (Or rather the North Pole of our planet is) that has not been seen for approx 55 million years.. That is a very big time line, considering we have been around as a species for approx 1 million years and burning carbon reserves for 100..
The exact date is anybodies guess, the direction isn’t.
That is the crux of the entire debate..
What do we do to minimise the LIKELY disruption to our societies??
Certainly some will benefit (Estate agents selling water front properties, manufacturers of mozzie repellant, water wing manufacturers etc etc ).
But most?? After all, we are considering many hundreds of New Orleans here..
Whether we like it or not, changes will be forced upon us with the end of easy oil.
We may as well take the opportunity to try and get it right..Actually, I did mean “science”.
To take your celestial calculation example further, we can only make such an accurate calculation
assuming nothing changes in the system you describe. That is a big ask in 10000 years.
So I stand by what I meant to type..
- We have a prediction! On the arctic ice sheet, no less.
The current rate of shrinkage they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060.
That is, indeed a lot of ice to lose. But when you read the article more closely, you learn that it may or may not be due to humans (“it’s a controversial issue”) and the ice may not be disappearing at all, just moving around. According to the article, the north pole has had tropical-style conditions in the far distant past, and clearly, the ecosystem was not destroyed.
If you don’t like meta-analysis, I’ll settle for an uncontested major literature review.
Look, of course humans screw up the environment. Look at the Aral sea. Now there’s a catastrophe. (created entirely by communism, by the way).
But local, temporary, screw-ups are not the same thing as (a) sea level is going to rise substantially (b) we’re in for a runaway greenhouse effect, or (c) it’s the end of the world as we know it.
These things are just not substantiated by the science.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 22 at 10:13 AM • permalink
- drpoll,
I note that, to your credit, your observations are laced with equivocations and acknowledgements about the limits of our current knowledge. You will find no such realism or humility in Al Gore’s movie. Look at the over-the-top predictions that Tim put in this very post, and think about whether you want side with such ranting nonsense.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 06 22 at 10:22 AM • permalink
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