Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Al Gore gets called, retracts bullshit
Andrew Revkin of The New York Times is polite about it, but there is no getting around the meaning of this story: Al Gore made up a bunch of global warming alarmist nonsense, pushed it into a PowerPoint slide, and used it in his presentation until an actual scientist called bullshit.
Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.
The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said. (The preceding link is to a video clip of that portion of the talk; go to 7th minute.)
Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here’s why.
Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado. Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters....
I don't care who you are, that's embarrassing right there. It is also insulting to Gore's audience, which he must believe is easily fooled. Admittedly, there is evidence Gore's audience is easily fooled, but it is impolite and politically unwise for Gore to presume that it is.
CWCID: Tim Blair.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Feb 25, 09:36:00 AM:
My guess is that Gore is a "True Believer" (in the sense of Eric Hoffer's term), who never had or who has lost any ability to understand and evaluate the science he talks about. I think he has always believed or has come to believe all he says and is even unable to see the contradictions between his ideology and how own lifestyle. Thus, if I am right about him, he is not even trying to fool anyone; he believes it himself.
Best wishes,
Jim
By , at
Wed Feb 25, 10:58:00 AM:
Al Gore is by far the biggist hypotcrit ever a liar and a fruad as well as being a all around pian in the neck to us all why dont this arrogant little snot go home and soak his head in cement
By , at
Thu Feb 26, 10:53:00 PM:
As one who thinks human-caused warming is blindingly obvious (and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is if anyone feels otherwise), I think Gore has slightly, on occasion, pushed some small amount of evidence further than he should.
I'm glad he's corrected it when pressed. George Will and the Washington Post should take a lesson.
