Facts and Fictions of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"
And a follow-up:
Take note that this is only considering the notion of anthropogenic (manmade) global warming. This is a very well-researched paper (graphs and stats are all linked); take the time to read it, it's not that long.
An Inconvenient Truth isn't totally accurate?
It has LIES?
THIS IS NEWS?! O_O
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THIS IS NEWS?! O_O
Oh, it would be to some people.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that if you still disagree Global Warming exists you're pretty highly retarded.
I like Wonder because he says what I think so I don't have to and then get reprimanded like he will. 
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15-year-old girl vs. Al Gore...FIGHT!
Well the anti-global warming lobby finally got its most accredited scientist.
(Heh, she does get props for SOME of that writing, and it's not like the number of letters somebody has around their name should be inserted in place of an argument, or that there isn't a single such person lobbying, but I couldn't resist the snarky line.)
(The analysis contains pointless arguments mixed in with some decent ones that aren't convincing enough, especially since only the movie is being discussed and whether that movie is factual or not is not that relevant. Your position in the debate has the burden of proof, which is the excuse I'll use because it's considerably faster than point-by-point refuting that would take a massive amount of research.
Take a random collection of bullets. People claim many of the bullets are real and not blanks. Some cast various challenges to some of their individual arguments. Fire at everybody you know. It won't make you more credible, but it wouldn't be so hypocritical because that's considerably less than you're asking.)
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I think it's pretty clear at this point that if you still disagree Global Warming exists you're pretty highly retarded.
I'm not.
Add in a manmade at the beginning, then there's disagreement.
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(Heh, she does get props for SOME of that writing, and it's not like the number of letters somebody has around their name should be inserted in place of an argument, or that there isn't a single such person lobbying, but I couldn't resist the snarky line.)
And there's no global warming lobbyists? Have you not heard of the whole "carbon credit" buzz going about?
FACT: The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1995.
FACT: Since 1970, the temperature of the Earth has risen by 1 degree Fahrenheit.
FACT: Last winter was the warmest winter on record.
FACT: The polar icecaps have been melting quicker than we originally thought.
Do those four facts necessarily mean that the warming is primarily the fault of man?
Or did the fact that the current solar cycle is at its most intense in millenia slip your mind?
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Do those four facts necessarily mean that the warming is primarily the fault of man?
Maybe. Maybe not. But it should be reason for concern. I like to avoid taking risks myself. There is strong evidence that global warming is man made. So I don't want to take any chances.
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Or did the fact that the current solar cycle is at its most intense in millenia slip your mind?
Very bright. That sounds like something a bigot would say. I'm talking about recorded history here. That would've been like the days of the dinosaurs there. Maybe you're just immune to the facts.
Reading a post incorrectly does not make anyone "a bigot". If you're going to sling names around here, do it properly or better yet, not at all.
Also, Ultra was pointing out the absence of a fifth fact from your post and that has nothing to do with the 2 that use the word "record".
Lastly, you might want to remove the "-Abraham Lincoln" from your signature. That quote's origin isn't really well defined and might actually make your posting it ironic. XP
As I recall that quote was Samuel Clemens, not Abe.
I'm not sure what bigotry has to do with cleaning up the air.
and finally
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Well the anti-global warming lobby finally got its most accredited scientist.
~Tobe
I disagree with the premise that global warming is primarily manmade. How in the world does that = "You don't believe in global warming?!"
Things go in cycles. Was it green house gas producing cave-man technology that ended the Ice Age? I think it was Wooly Mammoth methane. They caused their own down fall...
There is no such thing as the greenhouse effect because it's obviously cold in winter.
~Tobe
Global Colding is a whole other issue.
Whether or not global warming is man-made or not, there is reasonable evidence to suggest that our actions are exaggerating the problem at the very least. Leads me to consider "greener" living something worth encouraging where it is feasible to do so.
I see nothing wrong with developing cleaner, more efficient fuels and whatnot - Dumping that much into the atmosphere isn't going to HELP, is it?
But I don't agree that humans are solely to blame - And if they are, we've already cut emissions drastically.
But I'm not going to go to the extremes here, like, say, using only one shet of TP per use. I'm gonna use all the sheets I need. If that's one, that's great, and if that's a hundred, it sucks to be the plumber, now, doesn't it?
Please, I encourage you to use as much toilet paper as you need. 
Please do. We don't want the nast side effects, do we?
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FACT: The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1995.
FACT: Since 1970, the temperature of the Earth has risen by 1 degree Fahrenheit.
FACT: Last winter was the warmest winter on record.
FACT: The polar icecaps have been melting quicker than we originally thought.
First fact: WRONG. Ever hear of the "Medivel Warm Period"? How about "Green Alps Theory"?
Second fact: WRONG. The temperature increase began over 100 years ago, except for a 30 year cooling cycle between 1945 and 1975 most of the "global warming" happened prior to the thirty year chill (which caused alarmists to lobby for efforts to stop global cooling).
Third Fact: Source please.
Fourth Fact: Source please.
I direct your attention to "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which in itself is pretty good propaganda. Please become familiar with the science and the arguments before condemning CO2 as the evil culprit of "man made global warming".
Jimro
It's the cows.
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First fact: WRONG. Ever hear of the "Medivel Warm Period"? How about "Green Alps Theory"?
You didn't pay attention to what I said. ON RECORD!
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Second fact: WRONG. The temperature increase began over 100 years ago, except for a 30 year cooling cycle between 1945 and 1975 most of the "global warming" happened prior to the thirty year chill (which caused alarmists to lobby for efforts to stop global cooling).
Again, no attention paid. I said "Since 1970".
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Third Fact: Source please.
The people who still say global warming is a myth are in the same league as the Holcaust deniers, the Flat Earth Society, and people who think the moon landings were filmed on a lot in Arizona.
The enourmous warming gravity knocked out that CCN page.
Marauder.
Did you really just try to equate "Global Warming deniers" with "Holocaust deniers"?
Wow.
Can you invoke Godwin's Law on that?
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FACT: The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1995.
You might want to rethink that.
1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939.
Ten hottest years on record, according to reevaluated figures by GISS. Any original calculations (such as 98 being the hottest on recorD) were due to errors in methodology.
Here's the money quote.
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How can the global warming numbers used in critical policy decisions and scientific models be so wrong with so basic of an error? And how can this error have gone undetected for the better part of a decade?
Why indeed.
Hmm. This does seem to be from a neo-con. Got anything from a more neutral source?
How can you write off the fact that NASA/GISS used a screwy methodology to determine climate data that's used to determine public policy (thereby affecting you, me, and everyone else) as "it's just from a neo-con"? Everything on the page is linked. Did you even read the whole thing?
No credible scientist refutes the claim that global warming is man-made. The only "experts" who claim there's a debate are the pseudoscientists and the so-called "biostitutes" funded by the energy companies to say that up is down, black is white, and SUV fumes are your friend. We built an entire foreign policy doctrine of preemption based on responding to even the most remote threats. Shouldn't we apply the same thinking to a threat that's a virtual certainty?
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No credible scientist refutes the claim that global warming is man-made.
I can think of one off the top of my head. William Gray, world's foremost expert on hurricanes, who thouroughly denounced the idea that global warming intensified hurricanes back in 2005. I trust his word more than that of Al Gore (who, by the way, is a chairman on one of those little carbon credit companies, so he has a personal interest in seeing that global warming is in).
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The only "experts" who claim there's a debate are the pseudoscientists and the so-called "biostitutes" funded by the energy companies to say that up is down, black is white, and SUV fumes are your friend.
I will admit that there ARE people paid on the said to deny global warming exists. However, there ARE just as many (probably more) that are paid to push the idea of manmade global warming. It's a big business (see the carbon credits thingy I mentioned earlier).
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Shouldn't we apply the same thinking to a threat that's a virtual certainty?
It was virtually certain in the 70s that we'd be undergoing global cooling and head to a new ice age.
I have little faith in any movement that has Al Gore as its spokesperson.
Oh, and just to add on to the whole faulty global warming data thing: apparently, the faulty data was due to a Y2K bug.
As shown in the earlier link, the NASA data has already been corrected. Understand? You can't really spin this into a 'neo-con' thing. The data was fixed after NASA removed the bug. Got it?
So now the five of the ten warmest years on record all occur before World War II. I think that's pretty significant, don't you? It means that *gasp* our ideas about Earth's climate change aren't complete. You mean we can't predict rises in climate temperature? Of course not! Not with computer models. Those same computer models can't accurately predict the local weather ten days from now! Those same models that predicted (as Al Gore claimed so many times) that the hurricane season after Katrina would be more horrible than ever were flat-out wrong.
Yet despite all of these new holes in the theory of manmade global warming, we get Newsweek covers that say "Global Warming Deniers: A Well-funded Machine."
The climate may be changing, or it may not be changing. The variability is large, and our historic record is small. We don't reallly know what constitutes hot or cold in any significant sense. But everything we know of natural history teaches us that change - including great climate change - is the way of nature. For centuries we have been retreating from the last ice age. We are still retreating. That's a natural thing to which we will accommodate, just as humans have through every era we've lived in.
Why are people so against having cleaner air? Cuz, I mean, thats what all these plan to stop global warming will do. I know this was mentioned before but it seems to have been conveniently swept under the rug.
~Rico
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Why are people so against having cleaner air?
When it's at the point where the quest for cleaner air is preventing Third World countries from modernizing (because in order to do so, they have to start out with fossil fuels), then we have a little bit of a problem. If a little dirtier air meant that nations in Africa could actually live in conditions other than total squalor, then by all means, let's let the Earth finish its warming cycle before the next Ice Age decides to come around.
Besides, I'd like to be able to see a green Greenland.
Everyone uses fossil fuels. I doubt the town up the road is the only one in America with a Conoco plant. If we have refineries and such, I don't see why they can't. Not like it's going to help living situations any there though.
You know as well as I do, unless you already forgot high school. The health conditions of plant workers during a certain time in American history. I think the health of their workers and workers families should be a concern as well. Thats an other thing these global warming ideals protect. I know I wouldn't want my family choking on asbestos all day ust for the sake of "modernization". We dump aid to every third world country known to man, I'm sure we can throw in a few vent covers for their smokestacks. :p
~Rico
Much of the aid currently being dumped into Africa ends up in the hands of corrupt regimes like those of Mugabe of Zimbabwe. On the whole, considering many of the governments over in Africa, all the aid sent over there has resulted in little economic growth. Aid in the form of food in the name of compassion is stupid. Giving free food to a country eviscerates local farmers and merchants. Then we wonder why there is hunger year after year after year.
Isobel Patterson wrote a book in the 1940s (yes, that is not a typo, I wrote 1940s ... and the book is still in print) entitled "The God of the Machine" that discussed this issue clearly, so this is not a "new" observation. She likened money to energy, and the economic infrastructure of a country to wires in an electronic component. She noted that dumping a billion dollars into the economy of a Third World nation was equivalent to applying 120 volts to a piece of electronics built to accept 6 volts - you expect only bad things to result - the country would not have the economic infrastructure to handle it.
For example, even if someone siphoned off only 1% of the incoming billion dollars, he would have more disposable resources than any of his competition (i.e., to buy guns and soldiers to use them). Thus providing foreign aid will worsen the situation of such a country, not help it.
Removing the corrupt kleptocracy governments and replacing them with basically colonial governments administered by the First World countries with a good government mandate to ensure that the rule of law is fairly and equally applied would be the single most effective thing to lift these countries out of their misery. Maybe Britain could crank up their Colonial Office again. Zimbabwe should be first on the list.
And I'm well aware of the Industrial Revolution. It's happening right now in China (and their crappy products seem to be in the news a lot lately). I think some of the mistakes can be avoided, but at the moment, removing many of the options for Third World countries to develop due to global warming would be a bad idea.
I'm still sore over the "DDT scare". Millions of Africans died of malaria because the DDT they were using to kill mosquitos was banned. Thanks Rachel Carson!
Basically what you are saying as the answer is the same as the american school systems have. Let the most developed kids suffer to cater to the ones that are either lazy or slow learners.
I'm assuming that would be comparable analogy?
~Rico
Where'd you get that?
All of the government aid (from the taxpayers) from the First World countries (i.e., the most developed kids) has done little to help the Third World countries (the lazy/slow learners).
So that's not my answer, though the analogy is an apt description of the current situation.
I got it from you. You said we need to inhibit the technological growth of developed nations (as allowing them to suck off the teat of fossil fuel will do) so that undeveloped countries can suck off the same teat until they magically decide to goto alternative fuel sources, just like we... have.
Anyway, that was where I got it.
I don't claim to know the answer, hell I don't even claim to know the whole situation but it seems rather silly to me not to share what we've learned about other power sources with these underdeveloped countries and try to ween them off that oil bottle we're still sucking on 90% of the time.
Doesn't make sense does it? Ah well, I tried.
I have no problem with trying to make it to alternative fuel sources, but I see nothing but focus on America when it comes to global warming in the news. Even without being part of Kyoto, the US managed to lower its pollution more than the European countries that were (and this is the rate of pollution, not total).
China's not part of Kyoto either. I think it recently passed the US as the world's worst polluter. And I don't think that counts some of the gunk that ends up in their culinary exports.
And I haven't advocated inhibiting the technological growth of developed nations. One of the things I support heartily is a move to nuclear power to offset the domestic need for petroleum, allowing more of the oil to move towards automobiles instead of heating the homes. Another thing that would allow the large supply we DO have to be cheaper would be if we built more refineries. Problem is, we (the US) haven't built a new one in decades, due to stringent environmental laws that make the proposition of building one too risky to a private business (wonder why there wasn't as much complaining when the last refinery was built). And now the refineries we DO have are getting old, and they need updating. If one goes kaput, prices rise.
I want the private sector to research alternative fuels, not government-subsidized research groups or universities that are doing so with government grant money. It's like a political action committee created to solve a certain problem; if the problem vanishes, funding for the PAC dries up. More often than not, it perpetuates the problem instead of solving it. And if there's a safety net with more refined oil and nuclear power, there'd be less of a stress factor involved in solving the problem. Stress =/= problem solving. At least that's how I look at it.
Heck, Congress is now considering a new gas tax (which only HURTS THE CONSUMER) in the wake of the bridge collapse to help pay for repairing infrastructure. And people will buy anyway because it's a product that we - at the moment - need. And the higher prices = more profits for the oil companies (which will then be Congress's fault cause they passed the stupid tax). Penalizing the individual tends not to work when solving a problem.
It's a multi-faceted problem, and there are LOTS of solutions on a case-by-case basis. Any broad plan's bound
Last thing to note: I've said not a word about keeping our knowledge away from the people of Africa (the thing about government aid is a separate case and focuses more on their governments more than anything else). I've only said that the notion that hamstringing the Africans' use of fossil fuels is a bad idea.
So what are you suggesting then?
I don't think the private sector has ANY interest in alternative fuels. There's no money in it and I doubt anyone wants 'Big Oil's' goons after them.
A little bit of moseying, a look what I dug up. Take a gander at the thread's author.
So basically the data that was used to claim that 1998 was the hottest year on record turns out to have supported a different conclusion.
Wow.
My uninformed opinion here; there could be a hell of a lot of money in it for whoever comes up with the first truly viable, effective, cheap, clean, renewable, and safe alternative to petroleum.
I'm with Ultra on nuclear power; it's actually pretty safe and nonpolluting compared to coal or oil plants, and unlike wind plants or solar plants (en masse), it's actualyl efficient on a large scale. Granted, there's nuclear waste issues, but there's also a lack of greenhouse gasses, and the whole meltdown scare is really blown out of proportion, apparently. In the Three Mile Island incident, the average radiation dose per person was one sixth of what a typical chest X-ray exposes you to. The chance of it becoming a nuclear fireball is pretty much zero, and the chance of significant radiation leakage in a US plant (which are held to very strict safety procedures, unlike a few notable places in the former Soviet bloc) is also pretty low. Far less than the risks we take blasting so much pollution in our air from oil plants.
I don't think the private sector has ANY interest in alternative fuels. There's no money in it and I doubt anyone wants 'Big Oil's' goons after them.
On the contrary! Sustainable green technologies have the potential to make trillions. Whoever innovates in that field, and sells their innovations to developing countries which are now seeing the consequences of carbon fuels, will make themselves boatloads of money.
It's just that the people with the power right now stand to lose a lot of money from any policy that doesn't involve burning oil.
Cyc dammit stop agreeing with me.
