In my ongoing quest to show that I could never be stupid enough to be on the conservative side of the aisle, I must dive once again into the dung heap that is Noel Sheppard and the Scaife-funded Newsbusters/MRC. Sheppard is in the midst of concocting a conspiracy in which former Vice President, Nobel Prize Laureate, and Oscar and Emmy winner Al Gore is hyping global warming in order to enrich himself.
In order for Gore to set his diabolical plan in motion, he went back in time to 1992 to write Earth In The Balance and sowed the seeds for global warming. As we all know it is super lucrative to write a wonky book about environmentalism and then go on to serve as vice-president for eight years. Big time bucks! ($171,000/year at the time).
After serving his time, Gore went into the lucrative world of private business, capitalizing on his eight years in the White Hou… oh, wait, no he didn’t. He ran for president. Somehow Al Gore made himself richer by devoting 1999 and 2000 to running for president. Well, at least if you’re Noel Sheppard that’s the kind of bull you buy.
Okay, okay, now after Bush was selected president, Gore sold himself to the highest biddder - following in the footsteps of other ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents by sitting on the corporate boards of defense contractors and the oil industry, speaking across the world for huge fees, and of course selling his tell-all memoir to the highest bidder.
Oh wait, none of that happened.
Gore spoke out against the war. For free. Gore started a cable channel about youth empowerment. Gore went across the world giving a presentation about that oh-so-dishy global warming. As far as corporate boards, Gore joined Apple and works as a senior advisor to Google - neither company known for their role in the defense contracting or their long track records of bilking the government for millions (like Halliburton). The money-hungry Al Gore then hit the ultimate jackpot: he made a documentary. Then Gore joined an environmental venture fund and donated his salary.
Clearly the path to financial nirvana is making documentaries about global warming. That is, if you’re a stupid conservative. Like Noel Sheppard, and the Media Research Center.
This fallacy is based on the myth that the environmental movement is richer and more powerful than the oil/gas/coal lobby.
You have to be beyond retarded to believe that.
These are the same people who’s trademark platform is the utter rejection of every known science. Evolution. Climate change. Biology. Astronomy. Physics.
It is also tellingly inconceivable to them that anyone might push for knowledge of climate change because it’s important to mankind and the right thing to do. They figure he must be playing an angle because that’s all they know.
“They figure he must be playing an angle because that’s all they know.”
It’s projection, pure and simple projection.
Not any known science, just that which is incovenient to the profits-making process of the military industrial complex. Which, to be sure, covers most of it.
Have you seen this?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/71011
Yes, and your point is what? Al Gore could make easy money - he’s one of the most admired and popular people in the world, the idea that his environmental advocacy is the way to riches is ridiculous.
There’s also this article:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3281925
His proposed “solutions” funnel financial activity right through businesses he owns or gets paid by, so he makes a profit from that.
The point is that he’s making money off pushing global warming. Which was the very claim you’re trying to dismiss.
Except that Gore’s wealth is incidental to his environmental activism. On the contrary, most pols who pursue careers in the oil industry do it TO get rich. Which Gore could have accomplished much more easily than the path he took.
The path Gore took financially is exactly the ideal Republican, entrepreneurial path. He took an idea he believed in and invested in it. I guess being an entrepreneur is only alright if you’re a Republican. Why someone would think that capitalizing on 9/11 to get rich (Guiliani) is more virtuous than capitalizing on the need for alternative energy (Gore) is beyond me. Then again, it’s beyond me how anyone could be a Republican.
Incidental? You admit that the path he took (global warming alarmism) is what he invested in and is now making money from that. That’s not incidental, that’s intentional. Which was the original claim which the blog post is trying to dismiss.
Being an entrepreneur is great, but doing it honestly is the issue. Global warming alarmism isn’t about the science, it’s about the agenda and the profits, as you admit Gore is doing. You are validating that the claims made in the above post are incorrect, as you admit Gore is using global warming as an entrepreneur to make money. That was the whole point the post was trying to criticize.
The difference with Giuliani is that he’s not hyping and creating an issue where none exists like Gore is. 9/11 happened, and talking about that is vastly different from instilling fear based upon false claims and then making money from people who take action from that.
I don’t know how anyone can be a Republican these days. I’m not, I’m a conservative. The current Republican party no longer represents my values. It’s easy to be a conservative, because it means dealing with facts and truths and not pure ideological agenda.
” Global warming alarmism isn’t about the science, it’s about the agenda and the profits, as you admit Gore is doing. You are validating that the claims made in the above post are incorrect, as you admit Gore is using global warming as an entrepreneur to make money. That was the whole point the post was trying to criticize. ”
Bzzzz. Gore isn’t “using” global warming to make money. Gore is putting his money where his mouth is and investing in what he believes in.
I might believe you on the global warming is a hoax meme, but please show me ONE peer reviewed study that contradicts global warming as caused by human activity.
“Bzzzz. Gore isn’t “using” global warming to make money. Gore is putting his money where his mouth is and investing in what he believes in. ”
That’s just semantics.
Peer reviews aren’t what you think they are. You can get whatever outcome from a peer review that you wish, because the author gets to pick who they want to review their study. There is a ton of valid, indisputable evidence which proves it’s a hoax. The most basic? Remember that graph from Gore’s movie where he has a graph of the global temperatures and a graph of the CO2 in the atmosphere, and they are split by a couple feet? Ever wonder why he didn’t overlay them? It’s because if he would have put them together, it would have shown that CO2 levels increase anywhere from 200 to 800 years AFTER temperatures change, not before. There is zero indisputable evidence to show that man is causing any warming. The earth warms and cools all on it’s own, it’s been doing that since the Big Bang. Even in the claims of the alarmists you can discover the truth, such as when they say that it hasn’t been this warm in 5,000 years or 20,000 years or whatever. That means that it’s been this warm before. Huh, go figure. Then the argument changes to the rate of temperature change. Well, NASA recently had to revise it’s temperature data because they discovered calculation problems, and it showed that 5 of the top 7 warmest years in the US were prior to WWII. 1998 is the second warmest ever, and in all the years since then we’ve actually been getting cooler. Huh, go figure. And even much of that temperature data itself is bogus because of where NASA has placed their temperature stations. They’ve been located on the tops of buildings in the California desert, they’ve been placed in urban areas, which are by default warmer because of all the concrete, they’ve been placed next to huge air conditioning units. There’s a bunch of evidence like this.
Then we can get into the proposals to deal with global warming. Show me a proposal that actually will reduce emissions and isn’t just a tax to enact redistribution of wealth.
Shorter Rick: There are no peer reviewed studies that reveal global warming to be a fraud, so let me libel science.
Peer reviews are meaningless because the review is easily manipulated. Provide me a peer reviewed study that you find credible, and I’ll explain why it’s not.
You’ve just proved to me that you have no inkling of how the scientific community processes new information and that you don’t understand peer review. You aren’t worth debating.
Really. Then please enlighten me on how the review process works. Because I get my information from the scientific community.
Also please enlighten me on how I’m wrong on all the facts I provided. Funny how you skipped over all that.
Also funny how after you admitted that the basic claim from the original post was wrong, you’ve completely ignored that issue as well.
But I’m not worth debating, right? Maybe because you might actually learn something?
You use intellectually dishonest arguments. For example, I never said that Al Gore didn’t make millions in renewable technologies. Neither did Oliver. We only said that Al Gore isn’t hyping global warming to make a profit for himself.
If Al Gore wasn’t invested in new energy technologies, cons like yourself would claim he was a hypocrite (like when your kind started the fake outrage about energy usage at Gore’s house). Now that he is helping to prove that entrepreneurs can make money promoting green technologies, which will draw more enlightened investors into making this world better.
As far as your global warming denialist claims, they all have been dismissed thousands of times by real climatologists. If you aren’t swayed from your views by now, I’m not going to waste my time trying. You aren’t worth it.
No, I’m not making an intellectually honest argument. I know you never said Gore didn’t make millions. Oliver, however, did. Like this comment:
“Sheppard is in the midst of concocting a conspiracy in which former Vice President, Nobel Prize Laureate, and Oscar and Emmy winner Al Gore is hyping global warming in order to enrich himself.”
or this:
“Clearly the path to financial nirvana is making documentaries about global warming. That is, if you’re a stupid conservative. Like Noel Sheppard, and the Media Research Center.”
He never refers to any of the investments that Gore has made into those green technologies. Oliver ridicules the claim, in fact.
Gore’s a hypocrite either way, since he doesn’t practice what he preaches. Carbon credits, for example, do absolutely nothing to reduce the emissions he says are the problem, and he pays those credits to a company which he owns. He flies a private jet, lives in a huge house, and so on. That’s not “fake outrage”, it is clear proof he’s a hypocrite.
Making money as an entrepreneur isn’t a bad thing, but basing it on false claims and hysteria is a bad ting.
I have real climatologists on my side. Deal with the facts, not the ideology.
Like who?
By the way, you claim that peer reviewed work is fraudulent because a scientist can pick who reviews their own work. Why then, have no peer reviewed papers come from denialists? Couldn’t they pick another denialist to review their work? Why hasn’t any denialist done so?
RickL said:
No, I’m not making an intellectually honest argument.
Freudian slip?
Al Gore didn’t create global warming. Global warming is real - and hastened by man, the people who say it isn’t are idiots. If Al Gore wants to make millions of dollars, working on green tech is probably the worst way to do it as an ex-pol (ask Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, Dick Cheney, etc. for the real path to post-White House money).
Because the skeptics know the peer review process is flawed, so they don’t bother.
Here’s just a few climatologists:
http://www.cdispatch.com/articles/2007/05/16/local_news/area_news/area01.txt
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_020607_news_taylor_title.59f5d04a.html
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19409
(and yes, I know all the claims about this guy, but try to prove anything he actually says to be wrong)
http://www.longrangeweather.com/
related article:
http://www.longrangeweather.com/ArticleArchives/GlobalWarming.htm
http://www.adn.com/life/v-printer/story/8756517p-8658008c.html
There is also Patrick Michaels, the U of Virginia’s state climatologist.
And then there’s the statement from the founder of the Weather Channel:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/
There’s also Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Dont_make_me_throw_up.htm
There are also IPCC scientists that are trying to get their names pulled from the report because they fundamentally disagree with the political conclusions, since the political conclusions don’t match the science.
There’s a whole bunch more I could inform you about. Don’t believe the lies when they say the debate is over.
“Freudian slip?”
Ha, just a typo. Trying to do too many things at once.
Yes, global warming is real. So is global cooling. Both are natural occurrences.
Man has had extremely little, and likely nothing, to do with it. Almost assuredly, it’s cycles in the sun that cause the temperature change, and CO2 levels trail temperature change because of how the oceans react to the change in temperatures.
Anyone who believes Gore and “his kind” without looking into the facts are the idiots.
The debate is over, conspiracy spinning denialist nonsense from the right is bunk.
“Because the skeptics know the peer review process is flawed, so they don’t bother.”
This is fucking pathetic. There was plenty of debate in the peer review process earlier, the only difference now is that the evidence is so overwhelming, no one can argue against it without resorting to unscientific nonsense.
“Anyone who believes Gore and “his kind” without looking into the facts are the idiots.”
And anyone who ignores the facts accepting only the fringe that agree with them is ideologically blind.
“The debate is over, conspiracy spinning denialist nonsense from the right is bunk.”
The debate is over only to people who don’t want to look for the truth. If what I’m saying is such “bunk”, then you’d be easily able to debunk it. Please feel free to try, instead of just trying to dismiss me. If what I’m saying is that bogus, you should have no problem, right?
“There was plenty of debate in the peer review process earlier,…”
What peer review process? What debate?
“…the only difference now is that the evidence is so overwhelming, no one can argue against it without resorting to unscientific nonsense.”
That’s where you’re wrong. The evidence has been manipulated and you’ve been misinformed about the science. I listed a bunch of climatologists who use plenty of science to show that the alarmism claims are what are really bunk. The evidence is overwhleming that, as worst, the debate isn’t over and we don’t really understand the climate.
In 1924, the NY Times was writing about global cooling. In 1935 they were writing about global warming. In 1975 they were back to cooling. Today they are back to warming. This was all based upon the science they they claimed was overwhelming at the time. In the 70’s, the same scientists who today are talking about warming were coming up with crazy solutions to deal with the cooling, like spreading soot over the north and south poles to help melt them and warm the planet. At worst we need to make sure we know everything we can before we act. Because if we choose to act the wrong way, we can do more harm than good.
“The debate is over only to people who don’t want to look for the truth.”
Which is you. You ignore the vast majority of scientists and accept only the fringe that agree with you.
“I listed a bunch of climatologists… The evidence is overwhleming”
You posted 8 links, you fucking retard. That’s not overwhelming, that’s a mere blip.
“In the 70’s, the same scientists who today are talking about warming were coming up with crazy solutions to deal with the cooling,”
This is a fucking lie spread by a political ideology that has nothing but lies to tell.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
“Because if we choose to act the wrong way, we can do more harm than good.”
Be more energy efficient. How can that be harmful?
“Which is you. You ignore the vast majority of scientists and accept only the fringe that agree with you.”
No, I’m not ignoring them, I’m pointing out they are wrong. Those who claim the debate is over when that’s clearly not the case are the ones ignoring facts.
“You posted 8 links, you fucking retard.”
I was specifically asked for climatalogists who disagreed with the alarmism, and I complied. I also stated that there was plenty more references and information to be provided. What did you not understand?
“That’s not overwhelming, that’s a mere blip.”
Ya, which is why I noted there was a bunch more information available.
“This is a fucking lie spread by a political ideology that has nothing but lies to tell.”
Sorry, but even that article admits there was some truth to it. It talks about the state of the understanding at the time, and how claims of cooling were based upon that limited knowledge. it talks about how there was cooling during those times, but it was just a change in the overall trend line.
This is all my point, namely that we shouldn’t take action that may cause more problems than it solves if we don’t know everything we need to know. And we clearly don’t.
“Be more energy efficient. How can that be harmful?”
Global warming alarmism isn’t about energy efficiency. It is about redistribution of wealth.
“No, I’m not ignoring them…”
Yes you are. You are dismissing them claiming they are wrong, but you offer no reason to accept the fringe guys you support over the vast majority of other scientists.
“I also stated that there was plenty more references and information to be provided. What did you not understand?”
There’s a lot more that disagrees with you, yet you continue to claim you have overwhelming evidence. I don’t understand that part. I’d ask you to explain, but you are clearly too stupid to do so.
“Sorry, but even that article admits there was some truth to it.”
Fuck you, you illiterate asshole. You said scientists were claiming that there was global cooling going on. That never happened. They said that there wasn’t enough information to make a conclusion. The media said there was global cooling.
Me: “Be more energy efficient. How can that be harmful?”
Retard of the Day: “Global warming alarmism isn’t about energy efficiency. It is about redistribution of wealth.”
Fuck you, you piece of shit. It’s clear you have no interest in an intellectually honest debate and choose instead to lie.
You are no better than Young-Earth Creationists.
“Yes you are. You are dismissing them claiming they are wrong, but you offer no reason to accept the fringe guys you support over the vast majority of other scientists.”
What evidence would you like me to provide? I’ve already listed a bunch of evidence in one of my earlier comments, so it is not valid to claim I have offered no reasons.
“There’s a lot more that disagrees with you, yet you continue to claim you have overwhelming evidence. I don’t understand that part. I’d ask you to explain, but you are clearly too stupid to do so.”
I’ve already provided some information, and have asked for what questions you have for followups. You completely ignore all that, and instead choose to attack me personally. You don’t want to deal with the evidence, you just want to yell at me.
“Fuck you, you illiterate asshole.”
Gee, another personal attack. I just referred to what the actual article that you quoted said. If you can’t handle that, it’s not my fault.
“You said scientists were claiming that there was global cooling going on. That never happened.”
Actually, it did. Your article referred to them, it just tried to dismiss them because they weren’t in the right publications.
“Fuck you, you piece of shit. It’s clear you have no interest in an intellectually honest debate and choose instead to lie.”
Gee, another personal attack instead of actually dealing with the facts. Tell me, how do carbon credits work?
*sigh* Looks like it’s time to ask that Global Warming question that makes conservatives wet themselves in fear.
Let’s make the radical assumption (remember, this is an assumption “a-s-s-u-m-p-t-i-o-n”) that Global Warming isn’t real. That the whole thing is an elaborate hoax by Al Gore and teh liburals to steal money from hard working CEOs and all that BS. Many of the emission of carbon dioxide also emit other crap, which cause a host of other problems. Tell me, why are you opposed to any reforms that would also solve other problems, such as O-zone depletion, increased rates of skin cancer, and general poisoning of the air?
Again, I expect one of three things to happen.
1. Ricky will ignore the post and hope it goes away.
2. He will refuse to answer the question for cowardly/BS reasons.
3. He will just say what he thinks everyone wants to hear, and completely miss the point of my post.
Actually, global warming is real. The Earth does warm up. The earth also cools down. It’s a natural cycle. Anyway…
The things that Gore is creating the hoax about is the causes of that warming, as well as exaggerating the effects.
I’m not opposed to reforms at all. But we have to understand what the problem is before we can find the right solution to solve it. That’s the problem, we don’t know for sure what the cause is.
You forgot this one:
4. I will provide an answer that you aren’t expecting, showing you have misconceptions about my opinions, as well as showing that I believe we need to understand what the problem is before we try to solve it.
Actually, that answer fits more under 3. But making the (dubious) assumption that you’re a honest dealer, what happens when despite near universal agreement among people on the science of global warming, a small minority of denialists prevent any real progress. Because that’s what we have now.
I’m not saying what you want to hear, I’m saying what I believe. And I know it’s not what you want to hear because what I’m saying is we need to wait because we don’t have all the information we need.
There is no “universal agreement among people on the science of global warming”. That’s a myth. Even some scientists on the IPCC don’t agree with the political conclusions it made.