WUWT:
From the “say your prayers, we’re gonna roast” department.
On January 25th, 2006, while at the Sundance film festival, screening “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore said this as chronicled in an article by CBS News:
The former vice president came to town for the premiere of “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary chronicling what has become his crusade since losing the 2000 presidential election: Educating the masses that global warming is about to toast our ecology and our way of life.
Gore has been saying it for decades, since a college class in the 1960s convinced him that greenhouse gases from oil, coal and other carbon emissions were trapping the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, resulting in a glacial meltdown that could flood much of the planet.
Americans have been hearing it for decades, wavering between belief and skepticism that it all may just be a natural part of Earth’s cyclical warming and cooling phases.
And politicians and corporations have been ignoring the issue for decades, to the point that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return, Gore said.
He sees the situation as “a true planetary emergency.”
“If you accept the truth of that, then nothing else really matters that much,” Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have to organize quickly to come up with a coherent and really strong response, and that’s what I’m devoting myself to.”
Well, the 10 years are about up, by now, warming should have reached “planetary emergency levels” Let’s look at the data:
Satellite data since 1979:
As you can see, little has changed since 2006. Note the spike in 1998, in the 18 years since the great El Niño of 97/98, that hasn’t been matched, and the current one we are in isn’t stronger, and looks to be on the way to decaying. So much for the “monster” El Niño.
Dr. John Christy recently wrote of the satellite record since 1979:
While a 0.12 C trend isn’t exactly a sprint to climate catastrophe (the 1.2 C or 2.2 degrees F rise over 100 years would be roughly equal to the warming seen most spring days between 10 a.m. and noon), it nonetheless has been a steady trend for the past several years. Take away the random variations caused by warm and cold weather systems, and any long-term trend, no matter how small, will produce climate records on a regular basis. Add to that long-term warming the additional heat of a large El Niño, and record-setting monthly average temperatures should be both routine and expected.
Despite that, early indications are that 2015 will end as the third warmest year in the satellite temperature record, behind 1998 and 2010. That is the early indication. Typically, the warmest temperatures are seen in the second year of an El Niño warming event, although there have been exceptions. If the typical pattern holds true, the second year of the current El Niño would be expected to bring more record high temperatures in 2016, perhaps including a new record high temperature for the year.
The fastest warming place on Earth over the past 37 years has been in the Arctic Ocean north of the Svalbard archipelago, where temperatures have been rising 0.5 C (about 0.9 degrees F) per decade. The fastest cooling spot was over the eastern Antarctic near Dome C. Temperatures there have been falling at the rate of 0.41 C (about 0.74 degrees F) per decade.
The surface record for the last 10 years:
Source: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2006/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2006/trend
Of course, proponents of climatic catastrophe will look at that and say “Gore was right!” …except there is this small niggling problem, a fairly large El Niño in 2015, which has nothing to do with CO2 induced warming as Gore claimed ten years ago. Note the spike in 2007, in the nine years since, that hasn’t been matched.
The real point here is to note that, no matter whether you are looking at the satellite record or the surface temperature record, is that the temperature hasn’t risen dramatically in the last 10 years, and the dramatic spikes we see in the surface and satellite temperature records correspond to a natural event that’s been going on for millennia; El Niño.
According to Gore, this map should have been all reds now.
In a recent post about why El Nino drive global temperatures, Dr. Roy Spencer wrote this: What Causes El Nino Warmth?
Well, you know what caused the deadline to be missed, don’t you? Global warming.
The issue is the long term upward trend. The chart covers 1979 through 2015, or 36 years. The midpoint would be at 18 years, 1997. Note that prior to 1997 the red line, which plots the running, centered 13-month average, is mostly below the zero baseline. After 1997, it mostly above the baseline and still trending upward. That is the warming trend.
Consider the current national news coverage of the weather. It’s winter. There’s rain instead of snow, which has resulted in extensive winter flooding. This would normally occur during the spring season with the snow melt. The same is happening in Europe. While anomalous weather proves nothing, of course, anomalous weather seems to be increasingly common.
There’s an enormous risk that goes with ignoring what we don’t want to see, whether it’s planetary climate change, the accelerating rate of species extinctions, or the depletion of aquifers and other vital, limited resources. Either you deal with the causes early on when you can, or you face the potentially disastrous consequences later. Al Gore wasn’t the boy crying wolf. He was somebody trying to get our attention. These days, you can’t do that without some waving of the arms and shouting.
I had a little discussion with a young lady recently concerning the plight of the polar bears. She was equating the amount of polar ice with the health of the polar bears. I explained to her that more ice per polar bear means the polar bear must travel much further between kill sites. She thought they ate fish. When I told her that polar bears subsist on seals, she said, “let them die”. The point here is there is so much ignorance in the population concerning real science, statistics, heat islands, reoccurring weather patterns and the scientific method that dim wits believe a man who flunked out of divinity school to be a climate expert!
Al Gore doesn’t claim to be a climate expert. He’s just a guy with a high public profile who has listened to what climate experts are saying, and who understands the implications.
You might not be someone who wants to hear that the banning of neonicotinoid pesticides is the only way to prevent the extinction of honeybees, which are responsible for the pollination of a very significant segment of human plant foods. That makes it no less true, and makes the consequences of failure to rein in the corporations that produce such pesticides no less serious.
The pseudo scientists continue to find the solutions for everything. Coffee is bad, now it is good for you. Remember when coconut and other tropical oils were bad for you? Now they are just great! DDT was supposed to be killing off raptors. It was banned due to pseudo science and millions of people died because DDT was the most effective control for mosquito borne diseases. Now, there have been at least 7 causes for the loss of honey bees. All are different and would react by different mechanisms if they were the cause. Lefties are so quick to jump on something they read in the news paper. They never make sure the science behind the article can be replicated. My 9th grade teacher taught us about scientific studies and how to differentiate between garbage studies and fact. Too many people just parrot what they hear because they lack the mental processes to determine fact from fiction.
@Greg: The issue is grave catastrophic predictions, to cause fear and support, that never come to pass.
We know Gore is no expert. He’s a liar… a carnival barker and should be ignored.
The cognitive dissonance of the poorly camouflaged totalitarianism that is the essence of global warming “science” is laughably self-parodied by the following:
1. They had to change the name of their pseudoscientific movement from “anthropogenic global warming” to “climate change” when they had to acknowledge that there has been no global warming since 1998.
2. The primary cause of their unproven theory is that increased atmospheric CO2 levels – allegedly caused by human burning of fossil fuels – was THE cause of the non-existent warming. The fact that CO2 levels continue to rise while temperatures are flat or dropping cannot be explained by their GIGO computer models, yet we are continually berated that it is a denial of science to doubt the climate armageddon pridected by their faulty models.
3. In the 1970s, these same chicken littles were shrieking about “global cooling”. Yet curiously, their proposed solutions for combatting their delusional fears was exactly the same – ever increasing government control of the energy sector, and higher taxes- as their proposed solutions for fighting global warming.
4. The AGW cabal, exemplified by Mann, et al and the disproven “hockey stick, have a recurrent pattern of falsifying (they call it ‘adjusting’) data when the raw data temperature measurements do not fit the predetermined storyline coming out of the bogus computer models.
5. The hypocrisy of the global warming prophets like Gore in burning gobs of fossil fuels to galivant around the globe to wring their hands together over made up dire climate proclamations, thus adding to atmospheric CO2 despite their public concerns over we plebians driving private cars around, is amazing considering the capacity of the internet to allow online meetings for such events.
This is a scam, and nothing more. Real science doesn’t demand that skeptics be branded as heretics. True scientific inquiry does not hide, adjust, or falsify data in order to support preconceived ideas.
@Randy, #5:
Science Stuff, with your host, The Right Wing Science Dude
@Greg: just curious Greg, you ever hear of el Nino? want to guess how that affects the temperature? Want to guess when the world started having el nino’s?
The Spanish names for the two phases of the Pacific cycle date from the 1600s, so the phenomenon has been around for over 400 years. I doubt if it explains the recently observed warming trend. What has changed since then is the loss of forests, and rate at which fossil carbon is being introduced into the planetary atmosphere. To me, it seems entirely reasonable to think that steadily increasing levels of greenhouse gases could be having an effect on the climate. Human activity is changing a relevant variable.
Here’s a novel idea to influence decisions by private individuals and industries:
Rather than hurting Americans financially by raising taxes on things that the Petaybees don’t think that others should have or do, how about helping Americans financially by lowering taxes on what the Petaybees think that we peons should have or do?
I know that it is a revolutionary concept, but why not try it?
Why is the answer always to hurt the serfs, and not to help them?
Rhetorical question. It’s not about more good for us, it’s about more money for them.
Definitions:
Petaybee: Powers That Be.
Peons and Serfs: Everyone else.
The greenies and the left continue to blame CO2 and deforestation for their fantasy of human caused global warming. This is another case of ignorance. Trees take up CO2 (an essential compound for plant growth) and sequester the carbon in wood, needles/leaves and oxygen is released into the atmosphere.. When forests are not harvested trees die, decompose and all of the carbon is combined with oxygen and turned into carbon dioxide and released into the atmosphere for reuse by other plants.
When forests are harvested and new trees are planted or grow from natural processes, the wood is prevented from decay and the carbon is sequestered for very long periods of time in buildings and other structures. Eventually even that carbon is returned to the cycle. So, forests are neutral as far as a carbon sink.
Poorly managed vegetation can cause local climate changes. Wind machines in the mid-west are cause local climate changes. Asphalt and concrete surfaces in cities are creating “urban heat islands” that absorbs high levels of solar heat. Unfortunately, many of the official weather recording stations that provide us with the “official” global warming temperatures are located in or are affected by urban heat islands providing skewed temperature data.
The real objectives of the “climate Change/AGW” warmist agenda is not to prevent global warming (hey lack the power to accomplish that anyway.), but to spread the wealth around. That is already happening. The cost of energy is rising in the western countries at such a high rate that manufacturing is moving into less developed counties. The EPA war on coal is doing nothing to prevent global warming. The coal is being shipped to other countries with less environmental restrictions on environmental emissions.
The lefties are succeeding in their agenda by crying “wolf”. The sky is not falling in the area of unnatural temperature increases. The sky is falling when real unemployment hovers around 10% and the increased number of our citizens have dropped out of the working/middle class into poverty. It is politically motivated charlatans like Al Gore and Obama who are not only reducing our standard of living, but they are profiting by spreading their lies. What is worse is that so many ignorant people believe them.
@Pete: Usually when a religion or political movement has its tenets proven to be false, as the global warming political/religious movement has had, support falls. Instead, the religious followers redouble their blind support AND attack anyone that notices the subterfuge and calls them heretics.
I BELIEVED in global warming… until the scandal at the University of East Anglia revealed the weak case for global warming and how data contrary to the belief in that religion is suppressed or altered. THEN I realized that it was just another left wing movement (lies, suppression of facts and shouting down contrary voices are the common characteristics) designed to confiscate wealth.
and all this time i thought it was the depletion of the ozone layer caused by leaking air conditioners
One way to call out these self proclaimed “climate experts” would be to ask them why they haven’t begun the mass relocation of people living in the world’s coastal areas. Surely if LAX is going to be under water within the next couple of decades as the Moonbeam states or that NYC is going to be under water in a like period of time according Gore, then we will reach a point in time well before then when those areas will become uninhabitable. If they really believed their “science” they would act now to prevent millions of people from drowning. Not doing so proves they are frauds.
We should be focusing on keeping our food and water supplies clean not trying to regulate the earth’s thermostat which is really an excuse to expand the left’s goal of global control through Marxism.
The 97% consensus quoted by ignorant people has been debunked by Cook and etal for some time. There have been several attempts to replicate the poll liberals use to state “97% of scientists say science settled”. First of all, science is never settled because the components are so numerous and most are not even understood. Here is a study that shows the scientists polled that agree with the IPCC actually ranges from 3% to 35% depending on how the questions are worded.
Just for definition, ignorant people are those who have not been presented with the facts. If they still continue to espouse the same rubbish after hearing the facts, then they must be considered stupid or have a vested interest in the stance they take.
@Randy: There are ignorant people and there are willfully ignorant people. The willfully ignorant are those who, even if they believe in global warming, cannot reexamine their beliefs in light of the evidence or even see how anyone could logically doubt the “settled science” that has so many holes in it.
An interesting article well worth the read:
http://www.dailywire.com/news/2071/most-comprehensive-assault-global-warming-ever-mike-van-biezen
Global warming, now referred to “climate change” has long been a scam for the redistribution of wealth and the governmental control of individuals. Yet, ironically, “climate change” has made Al Gore quite wealthy, a wealth he seems reluctant to redistribute to those of lesser wealth (well, except for the portion Tipper got in their divorce). Articles were written on just how much pollution was contributed to by those attending these “climate change” conferences as they fly in to the conference on their private, gas guzzling, jets.
Remember, Socialism only benefits the politburo, not the proletariat.
I suppose we should automatically believe the right’s claims that climate change is a hoax, because they’ve always been right in the past. Correct?
21 Truths That Prove Republicans Have Been Wrong About Everything
And we should all vote for whichever clown they roll out as a 2016 presidential candidate, based on their record of recent accomplishments. I’m sure there’s a list somewhere.
@Greg: All we need you leftists to address is all the dire predictions made by warming alarmists that fail to ever come to pass. If YOU are always right, why is there still ice at the poles, warming has paused, the oceans have not risen as predicted AND the same climate changes have been occurring throughout history?
Oh, and Republicans were certainly correct about the mess Obama was going to make of things, weren’t they?
@Bill, #20:
Nobody ever said all of the dire consequences of global warming would be arriving by the middle of next week. The projections indicate they’ll be gradually piling up over the course of the current century.
No, they were not correct. When Obama took office an economic disaster was already in progress. The unemployment rate was already very high and rising like a skyrocket. The stock market was headed towards a meltdown. One of the largest components of the nation’s auto industry was careening toward collapse, which would have taken countless industry-related jobs along with it. Millions of American families were in danger of losing everything. States and communities lacked the financial means to maintain basic services, such as schools, fire departments, and police forces. The fact of the matter is that the situation has vastly improved on Obama’s watch, and most of that progress has been resisted at every step by elected republican, who openly announced that their top priority was to assure the Obama administration’s failure.
Republican’s are trying to sell a fantasy, yet again. The reality is that they’ve been worse than useless over the past 7 years, and continue to accomplish little or nothing useful in spite of having controlling majorities in both the House and Senate.
@Greg: No one had to assure Obama’s failure. His far left agenda made it inevitable.
You conveniently forget Obama’s promises. If he got to spend his $867 billion “stimulus”, unemployment would stay below 8%; it topped 10.2% and is still embarrassingly high (lowest labor participation in recent history). He promised the economy to be turned around in 3 years; it STILL struggles along. He made dozens of promises about Obamacare… all false or failed. Regardless of what he was dealt (generated by liberal policies) he pledged to correct it and quickly. Republicans, of course, predicted his failure and they can hardly be blamed for it since he implemented his agenda without Republican participation, got all the spending he asked for and does whatever he pleases outside of the restraints of the Constitution.
Excuses, Greg. Weak and silly excuses. And none of that explains why ALL the predictions and computer models prove consistently wrong.
@Bill, #22:
Except they don’t prove to be consistently wrong. That they are is a frequently repeated propaganda meme, not a factual statement.
@Greg:
As opposed to the witch the Dims are planning to roll out?
@Greg:
Oh, please. Al Gore, on his road to making millions, thought New York would be under water by now, or close to it.
Now, go ahead, Greggie Goebbels, stick your neck out and make the claim that the earth has never seen a warming period like this one before, ever.
You’re an idiot.
If you look at the lefty quoted references, they show that the models that ar predictive of past climate change are fitted to the curve. Models are not facts, they only provide a theory. C02 as the primary climate change agent has been refuted many times. Water vapor is the primary agent. That is generated by plants and people breathing in addition to other natural processes.
Just a few memories and observations of mine.
Hurricane Katrina, the media claimed it was global warming causing such a storm and we’d see more and more severe storms because of this. How many katrina’s have we seen since? Every storm appears to be an excuse by many in our media the associate it climate change.
2008 Al Gore predicts both Arctic and Antarctic will be ice free in 5 years. 2013 comes and goes and the ice remains. No one asks Al Gore why he was wrong.
ABC news claimed in 2008 that New York City will be flooding or under water by 2015. It isn’t. ABC news issues no statement.
Al Gore buys large ocean front property with money he makes from global warming proselytizing. With predictions of rising seas this appears to be contradictory move.
Robert Kennedy,Jr writes article in the Washington Post lamenting the days as a child playing in the snow in Washington DC and now there would be no more snow in DC due to climate change. The next year DC got hammered with snow and has seen snow more than once since then.
Leaked emails from University of East Anglia show worlds climate scientists faking data. The media gets upset not at the fraud associated with the data but at the leak itself. Media then goes silent on the story.
Climate models have a very very high failure rate. This coupled with the fact that the temperature data used in the alarmists’ global warming models are not original data as measured by thermometers. Rather, they are “adjusted” numbers, consistently changed to make the past look cooler and the present warmer, so that more billions of dollars will flow from the world’s governments to the climate alarmists who serve government’s cause. Approximately 92% (or even more, depending on how you calculate it) of US surface temperature data consists of estimated or altered values. Very little raw data finds its way into the warmists’ climate models–which, of course, is the way they want it. Second, the adjustments that are made to the U.S. data consistently skew the numbers as we have described many times before–they try to make the present look warmer, compared with the past.
Current president of the United States so concerned about climate change he sets example by leading the world in living a high carbon footprint lifestyle while lecturing others on how they shouldn’t.
World leading politicians meet in Paris and strike a historic accord on climate change with no enforcement mechanism other than the honor system. Anyone ever know a politician to lie? So despite the media hailing the achievement in fact it will do little to nothing.
The first earth day predictions in 1970 were wildly off base. Are today’s climate alarmist predictions any better?
In closing enjoy the following example of our government officials on the case.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2526051/John-C-Beale-climate-change-expert-defrauded-EPA-900K-claiming-CIA-agent.html
@Mully: I know you were short on time or you would have listed the global cooling forecasts by the same people from the 1970s and a myriad of other failed predictions by the left. There is no accountability for these predictions. There should be a penalty placed on all those who are responsible for knowingly spending tax payer dollars on preventing climate change when they had now viable solutions. The RICO act would be an appropriate vehicle to use!
@retire05:
Al Gore said New York would be under water by now? No doubt you have a link to demonstrate that you aren’t just making things up.
That’s a big problem on the right, you know. They just make things up, which are then repeated so often that they come to be accepted as something everyone knows to be true. It’s how you came to be living in a delusional construct rather than reality.
@Greg:
I don’t know about Al Gore on this one but, enjoy the video. They couldn’t get 6 years right, we’d be fools to think anyone can predict 100.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100/story?id=7697237&page=1
@Mully, #30:
The article dates from 2009. The video they were promoting is speculation regarding the year 2100. They clearly state it’s speculative, and also clearly state it’s a worst-case scenario.
What was it that didn’t they get right about 2015? Growing global demand for oil and higher oil prices? We were there for most of the 2014. I wouldn’t count on $37 per barrel oil being a long-term situation. It isn’t possible for it to remain a long term situation. (As mentioned elsewhere, the removal of the 40-year ban on the export of U.S. oil, courtesy of the GOP, couldn’t have come at a worse time. We’re going to export a vital and finite natural resource at bargain-basement prices to make some quick bucks, without a thought for the future. How short-sighted is that?) Is it that alternative energy sources haven’t gained momentum? They didn’t get that wrong either, because they have done.
What prediction about 2015 was so far off the charts?
Maybe we should review the GOP’s predictions about a host of disasters that would come to pass because of the Obama administration, if we want to see some seriously faulty Magic 8 Ball material.
@Greg:
Greggie, obviously you are completely uninformed on the fossil fuels situation in the US and the world. The reason they have now okayed exporting oil is because we now have too much of it. With Fracking both natural gas and oil, there is much much more of it. There is now enough proven reserves in Louisiana alone of natural gas for 1000 years in the US. Reserves of oil in Louisiana for the entire US is many years. In short, we’re gonna be drowning in oil and gas if we don’t export it. Look for oil prices to go lower. Google LNP exports from the US. There are 7 multi billion dollar LNG plants under construction in Louisiana right now, to liquefy natural gas for export.
Exporting gas and oil will allow the US to have a viable foreign policy to combat OPEC and Russia. This can minimize the impact of Iran on the Persian Gulf. It was proposed to Obama years ago, but it took a conservative majority to pass a bill and force a signature by POTUS.
John Kerry was our representative in Paris during the recent “climate change talks” his area of expertise?
Here is what Secretary Kerry said about the greenhouse effect in Jakarta on 16th February:
“In fact, this is not really a complicated equation. I know sometimes I can remember from when I was in high school and college, some aspects of science or physics can be tough – chemistry. But this is not tough. This is simple. Kids at the earliest age can understand this.
Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature. Average temperature of the Earth has been about 57 degrees Fahrenheit, which keeps life going. Life itself on Earth exists because of the so-called greenhouse effect. But in modern times, as human beings have emitted gases into the air that come from all the things we do, that blanket has grown thicker and it traps more and more heat beneath it, raising the temperature of the planet. It’s called the greenhouse effect because it works exactly like a greenhouse in which you grow a lot of the fruit that you eat here.
This is what’s causing climate change. It’s a huge irony that the very same layer of gases that has made life possible on Earth from the beginning now makes possible the greatest threat that the planet has ever seen.”
You cannot make this up! He has no concept of any of the laws of physics concerning gases yet he and Obama are supporting
climate changespreading the wealth around!@Greg:
The entire argument you have is SPECULATIVE and WORST CASE SCENARIO.
I guess you didn’t really watch the video. Your ADHD is showing.
Not surprised.