The Algore 2006 --- Twice the Lies, Twice the Fun

The inconvenient truth is Algore is a hypocritical windbag:

We might start with the nature of scientific peer review, which Gore asserts is there to keep out ideas scientists disagree with. We should be thankful this is not the case; otherwise prevailing scientific theories would never be challenged. Peer review is actually there to elicit criticism, not suppress it. Editors ask their reviewers whether the article is worth publishing, not whether it is right. Sadly, in the case of climate science, peer review seems to be working exactly as Al Gore describes and not as the scientific model would suggest. Leading scientific journals routinely turn down articles that challenge the alarmist stance, even when they come from researchers concerned about global warming.

Gore is especially angry that Lord Monckton suggests that the Earth might not be that sensitive to the presence of greenhouse gases. Gore asserts that climate sensitivity, which represents how much temperature increase — all other things being equal — we can expect from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is in the order of 3 degrees C. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits that there is a wide amount of uncertainty in their models as to how much temperature change we can expect from a doubling of CO2 — from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C. Yet when Robert Douglass and Robert Knox of the University of Rochester examined the real world effects of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, they found a climate sensitivity of only 0.6 degrees C — well below the 3 degrees Gore claims “the real world evidence” shows.

Gore also dismisses criticism of the “hockey stick” graph of historical temperatures, saying that the National Academies of Science had validated it. This is quite blatant spin. The National Academies’ report most assuredly did not state that “the late 20th-century warming in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the past 1,000 years and probably for much longer than that.” It found that current temperatures were the warmest in 400 years (which no one disputed); that the claim that temperatures were the warmest in a millennium was merely “plausible”; and that we could place very little confidence in reconstructions of temperature records before that. The report also upheld every methodological complaint against the shoddy science that produced the “hockey stick” in the first place. The “hockey stick” is most assuredly broken.

Gore also seriously misrepresents the peer-reviewed literature (ironically enough) on the relationship between disasters and climate change. Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado characterized Gore’s approach here as “deciding to uphold scientific standards only when politically convenient” and contributory to a “pathological politicization” of science. It is the ultimate irony that, when Al Gore complains about people misrepresenting the science, given his massive audience he is probably guilty of more far-reaching misrepresentation than anyone else.

As for the economics, it is no surprise that Gore lauds the Stern Review, which follows his approach in taking a worst-case scenario and exaggerating it to produce an estimate of the cost of global warming and then comparing that figure against a cost of mitigation that is well below the accepted cost estimates of such policies.

Gore also quotes Margaret Thatcher, just as he did Winston Churchill in his movie. In the chapter on global warming in her last book, Statecraft, Mrs. Thatcher warned against “the usual suspects on the left [who] have been exaggerating dangers and simplifying solutions in order to press their agenda of anti-capitalism.” Al Gore’s article fits that admonition exactly.

If Algore is a true neo-Luddite, he may want to dispense with DVDsmanufactured through a process requiring, and reliant for use upon, enormous amounts of carbon-generating fossil fuels prior to its proper deposition within a landfill, where it will remain until the glaciers advance and recede once more.

Since he's simply a hack pol looking to ride the Green tide to the White House, however, no such concerns need trouble him.