April 24, 2009

Al Gore, Today.

Via Thinkprogress:


The transcript can be found here. Gore finishes with:
It is on the front page of the New York Times today, by Andrew Revkin. They themselves conducted review and found a science about it's valid. And to the point you made a moment ago: they verified in their own studies that man-made global warming is raising temperatures and causing this crisis. Like Bernie Madoff, and they lied about it in order to make money. And they themselves profited. The ceo of the largest got a onetime payment of $400 million. Now, again, those who have trusted them and believed them are due an apology. These corporations ought to apologize to the American people for conducting a massive fraud for the last 14 years.
The article Gore's talking about is here. Here's how it begins:
For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.
How did they do it? Glad you asked:
Environmentalists have long maintained that industry knew early on that the scientific evidence supported a human influence on rising temperatures, but that the evidence was ignored for the sake of companies’ fight against curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. Some environmentalists have compared the tactic to that once used by tobacco companies, which for decades insisted that the science linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was uncertain. By questioning the science on global warming, these environmentalists say, groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action.

George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.

“They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed,” Mr. Monbiot said, “only to cause as much confusion as possible.”

Of the Global Climate Coalition, the Union of Concerned Scientists had this to say in January, 2007:
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science
So this is nothing new.

12 comments:

  1. Heir, I follwed your first link to the science and policy institute or whatever Monckton's pet group is called. I read part of a thing, maybe a speech, maybe a paper. Monckton cited once in the several paragraphs he wrote, and the citation was a nebulous "University of Colorado". Maybe he has serious papers somewhere, but they are not in evidence that I could see.

    You attack Al Gore personally, but the post is ab out a NYTimes article. You could make a case that there is no reason to get upset about a group that disbanded in 2002, but you are acting as if a bunch of scientific groups with impressive sounding names don't agree on global warming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_on_climate_change_controversy). If you have some actual evidence to present from something other than a right wing know nothing blog, please, by all means ... (may I suggest the NYT Sunday magazine piece on Freeman Dyson a couple of weeks ago). Otherwise you marginalize yourself and more importantly, your arguement.

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  2. Hmmm. If we are not to take people seriously for not debating, that would make just about every conservative talk show host a political nebbish, eh, Mein Heir?

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  3. If Monckton and other climate "deniers" are such uneducated fools with no facts to back up their assertions, wouldn't it make the Republicans look foolish if the "brilliant" Goreacle was to debate the guy they put forth and destroy his arguments without appealing to authority by just repeating "consensus".
    Of course Al Gore could not debate George W. Bush and just blustered and acted morally outraged about his conflict of interest and progressives spin it as Gore embarrasses another Republican.

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  4. You're right, Mein Heir. It is ridiculous for Gore to embarrass Republicans. They do that so well themselves.

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  5. It is ridiculous for Gore to embarrass Republicans. They do that so well themselves.Democrats are unable to be embarrassed.
    "I did not have sex with that woman" while pounding the podium.
    "The surge has failed."

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  6. Heir, I for one am fine with the idea of Al Gore debating Lord Monckton. I have zero influence over the process, though, so it doesn't matter what I think.

    I thought that at least part of the AGW skeptics' argument is that there is no consensus on climate change. Perhaps I was mistaken about that.

    I notice that you yourself did not present any argument against AGW.

    Also, you might have strayed a bit off post with your last comment.

    Since you did, I believe Bill Clinton was tried, in part over his comment and I believe his law license was suspended.

    As for the Surge working, what would happen if we pulled all our troops out today?

    Meanwhile, wasn't there something about WMD's in 2003?

    And why couldn't Republicans, with majorities in both houses (Jan 2003- Jan 2007) and holding the White House, head off the financial crisis, or even stop deficit spending?

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  7. Looks like the Goreacle lied when he blustered and acted morally outraged.
    Gore lies to Congress about personal financesLooks like Al Gore lied in his bluster and sighs.
    "every penny that I have made, I have put right into a non-profit, the Alliance for Climate Protection,"
    ...
    "Now hes making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.
    Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC"
    Now begins the progressive walkback excusing and moving the goalposts to defend Al Gore.
    Al Gore did not lie about WMD's to start a war in Iraq!!!!"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002

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  8. Hmm, it looked to me like the quote (from a blog "Green Hell", presumably an unbiased source) read: "Every penny that I have made has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, the book… uh… from any investments from renewable energy. " As a whole, that quote might mean every penny Al Gore has made since leaving office, or every penny made from the book, the movie and investments in renewable energy sources. He might have made money speaking on other topics, from other books he's written, from other investments.

    And Al Gore was not, I believe, in government in 2002. Any information he had at the time would be public information made available from the government. It seems to me that it is reported that someone else received a briefing from the director of the CIA and asked plaintively "Is that it?". I wonder who I could be thinking of?

    Does discrediting Al Gore actually discredit AGW? Is it now not true that the Global Climate Coalition claimed there was doubt about the role of greenhouse gases in global warming when there own scientists reported to their member organizations that the question was in fact settled?

    Do you have any science you would care to share?

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  9. It's 85 F well after dark in April in Pittsburgh.

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  10. Not apparently a Y2K bug, at least according one source. ANd one year does not a trend make.

    As for the hurricanes, we should be celebrating that we haven’t been too punished since Katrina (although the planet has not escaped entirely), but we are hardly out of the woods yet: “Katrina is used in the film as a legitimate illustration of the destructive power of hurricanes, our inability to cope with natural disaster, and the kind of thing that could well get worse in a warmer world. Nowhere does Gore state that Katrina was caused by global warming. We discussed this attribution issue back in 2005, and what we said then still holds. Individual hurricanes cannot be attributed to global warming, but the statistics of hurricanes, in particular the maximum intensities attained by storms, may indeed be.”

    Thank you for the science, though, that was a good effort. But you didn’t say who said “Is that all you’ve got?”.

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