The Trib Brain Trust Tells Half The Story. Again.

From today's Pittsburgh Tribune Review (the Thursday Wrap):

Climate-change cleric Al Gore once again finds himself on the wrong end of an inconvenient truth. At the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen he told attendees that "fresh" estimates show a 75 percent likelihood that the north polar ice cap will disappear in five to seven years, The Times of London reported. Except the scientist whose research Mr. Gore referenced said he had no clue where Ozone Al came up with that finding. The former veep later said it was a "ballpark" figure. Brrrrrrrr!

I'll say it right off. Gore did get the figure wrong. But when you won't be surprised by what Richard Mellon Scaife's brain-trust left out. Turns out that the (of course unnamed) scientist the brain-trust references agrees (in a "ballpark" sort of way) with what Gore said.

This is from the original Times Online article:

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Further down the same article we find:

Dr Maslowki, who works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.

He added: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this,” he said. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office.” [emphasis added.]

But Gore's point is that the Arctic ice is melting very very quickly and Maslowski's point is that the Arctic ice is melting very very quickly. Any idea why Scaife's gang would omit that part?

And for those chewing the fat on thinning arctic ice, take a look at this BBC report from almost exactly 2 years ago:

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.

Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. [emphasis added]

And a few paragraphs later:

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.

"So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."

One wouldn't expect Scaife's brain-trust to waste their time with such in depth research (which took me all of 30 minutes) when there's spin to be spun - especially Al Gore spin!

Teh Crazie - Al Gore style.

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.

Democratic Women

Michelle Obama gave a warm, engaging, pitch-perfect speech last night. It built layer by layer to a beautiful close which asked the American people to listen to their hopes instead of their fears and to commit to "building the world as it should be."

Of course as a Democratic woman -- especially as the wife of a Democrat seeking the presidency -- she started out at a deficit.

First, she had to prove that she wasn't a crazy, ball-busting bitch.

We all know that the wives of Republican candidates are God-fearin' women who love their husbands and love their country and have all perfected the Nancy Reagan staring-on-adorably-at-hubby pose along side their spouses (especially if hubby has been caught sharing a bed or bathroom stall with someone other than the little Mrs.).

Whereas, we all know (via Republicans and the MSM) that Democratic wives are CRAZY ASS BITCHES who would soon as castrate you as look at you.

Teresa Heinz Kerry was a CRAZY BITCH who'd say any crazy ol' thing and was a Sugar Mama to her weak husband. Michelle Obama is a CRAZY BITCH and oh-my-god-scary-angry-black-woman who hates her country. And then, there's the ultimate CRAZY BITCH, Hillary Clinton, who killed her lover Vince Foster when she wasn't busy being a crazy lesbian and who just wouldn't go away and die like she was supposed to during the primary (thanks to those on the left who helped promote that wingnut meme).

The corollary to the Democratic Wife CRAZY BITCH Rule is the Democratic Male Presidential Candidate as a WEAK FOREIGN WEIRDO Rule.

Al Gore was so "feminized" according to that leftist rag writer Maureen Dowd, that "he's practically lactating." John Kerry was weak and French for godsakes! Barack is a "anorexic starlet" Paris Hilton celebrity who is even more foreign than Kerry!

They are all too weak and femme to be trusted with this nation's security.

After all, if they were REAL MEN, they wouldn't have such CRAZY BITCH wives. REAL MEN -- like Republican politicians -- know how to treat a woman (you divorce her when she becomes sick/old, call her a cunt and offer her up to a crowd of bikers for their inspection).

Anyhoo, eighty-eight years ago today the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was officially ratified and women achieved the right to vote. On the eve of this anniversary, Michelle Obama made reference to that:

"It is because of their will and determination that this week, we celebrate two anniversaries: the 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote, and the 45th anniversary of that hot summer day when Dr. King lifted our sights and our hearts with his dream for our nation.

I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history — knowing that my piece of the American dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me. All of them driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work. The same conviction that drives the men and women I've met all across this country..."

Moreover, she graciously remarked on the significance of Hillary Clinton's candidacy:

"People like Hillary Clinton, who put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, so that our daughters — and sons — can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher."

Here's her speech in case you missed it:


Michelle Obama at The Democratic National Convention
by petulant

Text here.

(And, here's the Obama kids with their Dad if you missed that moment.)
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Jack Kelly Sunday

Must've been a slow news week for our friend Jack. He's writing about Al Gore and climate change. Again.

Thing is, Jack doesn't have a very good track record when discussing Climate Change. Remember this column when he got the date of an important document he quoted wrong by 5 years and was forced to issue a correction? THIS correction:

Jack Kelly's July 2 column conflated references to two different Wall Street Journal op-ed articles by MIT professor Richard Lindzen. The first quote from Dr. Lindzen was from a June 11, 2001, piece, but it was incorrectly identified as being published last week. The second Lindzen quote was correctly attributed to his commentary last week (June 26). In addition, the Kelly column referred to a National Academy of Sciences report on climate change and a quote from CNN reporter Michelle Mitchell; they were both from June 2001, not this year. The column should have addressed the NAS report on climate change released June 22, 2006.

Jack should be careful when discussing Climate Change - that might include judging the sources he uses, just to see if they might be, you know, biased in some way.

That might be a good idea to do with this week's column. Paragraph ONE:

Former Vice President Al Gore and his entourage arrived at Constitutional Hall in Washington, D.C., July 17 for his speech on global warming in a caravan consisting of two Lincoln Town Cars and a Chevrolet Suburban -- not the most fuel efficient vehicles Detroit ever made. "The driver of the Town Car that eventually whisked away Gore's wife and daughter left the engine idling and the AC cranking for 20 minutes before they finally left," noted Mark Block of Americans for Prosperity.

Hmm. Who's this "Americans for Prosperity" then? According to their website:

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP Foundation) are committed to educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process. AFP is an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels. The grassroots members of AFP advocate for public policies that champion the principles of entrepreneurship and fiscal and regulatory restraint.

Ok. Seems to be a straight forward libertarian think tank. But who funds them? According to the website Media Transparency, they've been the recipients of a little under $1.2 million dollars in grants over the years 2004-2006. The source of a million of that $1.2 is the Claude Lambe Foundation, which is one of the Koch Family Foundations.

And who are the Kochs?

David and Charles Koch, sons of the ultraconservative founder of Koch Industries, Fred Koch, direct the three Koch family foundations: the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. David and Charles control Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company and the largest privately owned energy company in the nation

So you know they're going to be giving millions away to think tanks that will be completely fair and balanced when it comes to energy issues.

Something Jack didn't tell you.

Paragraph TWO:

Al Gore wants you to do as he says, not as he does. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research reported last month that Mr. Gore used as much electricity last year at his mansion in Nashville -- one of four homes he owns -- as 19 average American homes do. Mr. Gore frequently travels between his homes and to speaking engagements by private jet -- which, on a per passenger basis, emits four times the greenhouse gases of a commercial jet.

This part is true. However, it's also misleading. I am sure, for instance, my efficiency apartment uses less energy than the average sized house, but it's NOT an average sized house. And the Gore's house isn't an average sized house either. From Snopes.com:

A spokesperson for the Gore family responded by noting some mitigating factors, such as the fact that the Gores' Nashville residence isn't an "average" house - it's about four times larger than the average new American home built in 2006, and it essentially functions as both a residence and a business office since both Al and Tipper work out of their home. The Tennessean also noted that the Gores had been paying a $432 per month premium on their monthly electricity bills in order to obtain some of their electricity from "green" sources (i.e., solar or other renewable energy sources). Other factors (such as the climate in the area where the home is located and its size) make the Gore home's energy usage comparable to that of other homes in the same area.

The former vice-president maintained that comparing raw energy-usage figures is misleading and that he leads what he advocates, a "carbon-neutral lifestyle," by purchasing energy from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and methane gas to balance out the carbon emissions produced in generating the electricity his home uses:

They use a lot of energy, reality shows, and they purchase it from green sources. So the amount is, and you should know this Jack, irrelevant.

Paragraph THREE:

In his speech at Constitution Hall, Mr. Gore called for a crash program to convert the entire U.S. electric grid to carbon-free sources of energy within 10 years. That's "ridiculous," said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

No surprise that Senator Voinovich would be skeptical. He's the current Republican on the Committee on Environment and Public Works. Given the lockstep attitudes of Republicans in Congress, his use of the word "ridiculous" is hardly surprising.

Now let's do some fact checking. Jack's next paragraph (plus a little):

To get an idea of how ridiculous, consider this data from the Energy Information Administration. In 2006 (the last year for which complete data is available), 49 percent of our electricity was generated by coal-fired plants; 20 percent from natural gas, and 1.5 percent from oil. That is, more than 70 percent of all the electricity we have now is generated by the fossil fuels Mr. Gore wants to get rid of.

Of the remainder, two thirds is generated by nuclear plants (19 percent).

Now I'm confused. I checked the EIA and found this chart. It carries the title "Renewable Energy Plays a Role in the Nation’s Energy Supply (2006)" so presumably it contains data from 2006.

For the life of me I can't make heads or tails out of Jack's numbers. They have little if anything to do with what I was able to find at EIA.gov.

Can someone explain it to me? Or is this another one of Jack's Climate Change columns that he has to correct later?

And even if I got the wrong data, shouldn't Jack Kelly, in his zeal to educate the public about issues in the public interest replicate that zeal to make it easy to check his work?

And Now a Word From Al Gore

"Kerry to endorse Obama"

That's today's headline, but I'd like to remind everyone of another headline:

Al Gore endorses Howard Dean
Gore: 'One candidate clearly now stands out'

Anyone remember how that worked out?
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Gore Derangement Syndrome

We've seen it here in the comments but Paul Krugman has some thoughts on GDS:

On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journal's editors couldn't even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gore's name. Instead, they devoted their editorial to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.

And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with "that well-known peace campaigner Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore's stance." You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change - therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists.

But he gets to the heart of the matter here:

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the "ozone man," but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, "the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam." And so it has proved.

So Gore was right about the climate and Gore was right about Iraq. That's why the citizens of winguttia go berserk.

Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize :-)

From cnn.com:

(CNN) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work raising awareness about global warming.

The Nobel committee cited them "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

The IPCC and Gore will each receive a gold medal, a diploma and a share of $1.5 million. The award ceremony will be held December 10 in Oslo, Norway.

[snip]

The Nobel committee praised Gore as being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," said Mjoes.

Gore gets to add this new award to his two Oscars and an Emmy won earlier this year.

In unrelated news, pResident George W. Bush won the award for Worst President EVER and picked up a Worst Performance in a War. He adds that to his winning the scorn of 70% of the American public and 99.9% of the rest of the world.

CONGRATS, AL!
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Assault on Reason

Tony Norman's column today is another of his "reading list" pieces:

Enough readers have asked me to put together a list of books I've read or have been in the process of reading this year, so it doesn't feel like a completely delusional exercise on my part. Lately, I've developed a taste for classic science fiction, Jason Bourne thrillers and Stephen King novels that aren't reflected on this list. Like many readers, I'm usually reading several books at a time. What follows is merely the stuff that is allegedly good for you:

The first on his list?

"The Assault on Reason" by Al Gore. Even some of my liberal buddies think this book is dull. I couldn't disagree more. Mr. Gore's analytical critique of the Bush administration's fear-based politics and its notorious indifference to fact-based reasoning only feels obvious after he's explained it. If only the leading Democratic presidential candidates were this "dull."

That would be me. Here's what I wrote on August 9:

It's not that I disagreed with anything I read in Gore's book - far from it. It's an important work that everyone should read, no question. But while it may or may not be written by Gore alone, it certainly sounds like it's a work written by a committee all trying to sound like Al Gore.

It's an odd torture, of sorts. You know each page contains important ideas. But sitting through (and sifting through) the text...oh god. Not fun.

So Tony, if it means that much to you, I'll try to plow through it again. I'll have to set aside Warren Weaver's book on probability and of course Marvel Zombies, but I'll try.

If anything, I'll get more sleep.

Reading...

I've just finished reading Elizabeth Holtzman's book, "The Impeachment of George W. Bush." I picked it up after delicately letting Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason" gently slip from my fingers. I picked up Gore's book after devouring Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great."

The first book I loved, the second, eh not so much. The third was in a class by itself.

I'll start with the last two and then end with Holtzman.

It can be an amazing experience to actually hear an author's voice in your head as you read. Whenever I read Vonnegut, for example, I can hear his scratchy Pall-Mall enhanced vocal cords quiver and speak.

This experience, however, can be a double edged sword (is that the right metaphor? I dunno). It does wonders for Hitchens. For Gore, eh not so much.

It's not that I disagreed with anything I read in Gore's book - far from it. It's an important work that everyone should read, no question. But while it may or may not be written by Gore alone, it certainly sounds like it's a work written by a committee all trying to sound like Al Gore.

It's an odd torture, of sorts. You know each page contains important ideas. But sitting through (and sifting through) the text...oh god. Not fun.

It's exactly the opposite for Hitchens. My main problem with that book is that he's written it almost as if it's the only book on the subject. There's no mention, for instance, of Bertrand Russell's great essay/book "Why I am NOT a Christian."

It seems incomprehensible to me that Hitchens, the product of Oxford University where he studied philosophy, could not have stumbled upon Russell's book at least a few times. His deconstruction of the "moral argument" for the existence of God (and in the book he spells it "god" by the way) is straight out of Russell. That was disappointing.

Hotlzman's book, while not written with the same polish as Hitchens', is still a gem. It outlines, in a style pointing towards the ever-boring, though highly precise, English that attorneys use in writing Motions, Briefs, Interrogatories and so on, all the reasons why George W Bush must be impeached. From the deceptions leading the nation to war, to the illegal domestic surveillance, to permitting torture, to leaking classified information, to the reckless indifference to human suffering after Hurricane Katrina, it's all spelled out. Clearly and succintly.

A good book.