Hi there, Global Warming! How are you today? Not so (pardon the term) hot? Yeah, that’s understandable. I’d be bummed too if my friends were starting to turn on me. Such as, for example, the usually dependable British Broadcasting Corporation:
For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
That’s a good question! Which is not allowed. Just ask Irish documentarian Phelim McAleer, who was last seen asking celebrities how they got to the NYC premiere of The Age of Stupid from LA, England, and other places too far to walk. Now he’s pestering none other than Al Gore with — gasp — questions:
If you simply can’t stand the sound of Al Gore’s voice, I took the hit for you and transcribed the exchange:
McAleer: Hello. My name’s Phelim McAleer of Greener Horizon Films, documentaries. The British High Court in London found “An Inconvenient Truth” had nine significant errors in it. Given this film has been shown in schools to children, do you accept those nine significant errors? I know you say it was funded by deniers, that court case, but… do you accept those findings, and have you done anything to correct those errors?
Gore: Well, I’m not gonna go through all those… the ruling was in favor of the movie, by the way. And the ruling was in favor of showing the movie in schools. And that’s really the bottom line on that. There’s been such a long discussion of each one of those specific things. One of them, for example, was that polar bears — if I remember it correctly, it’s been a long time ago — that polar bears really aren’t endangered. Well, the polar bears didn’t get that word. Heh. So, uh… [crowd laughs]
McAleer: Well, the number of polar bears have increased, actually.
Gore: You don’t think they’re endangered, do ya?
McAleer: The number of polar bears have increased.
Gore: Do you think they’re endangered?
McAleer: [pause, exasperated shrug] The number of polar bears have increased. [crowd laughs] If the number of polar bears increase, surely they’re not endangered…
Then Gore and McAleer talk over each other for a bit, and McAleer’s microphone is cut off before he can continue his heresy. Notice that at no point does Gore actually answer the question. You might as well ask the Pope if Adam and Eve had belly buttons. It’s simply not done.
By the way, that was at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, which is a more succinct name than “Society of Environmentalists Who Call Themselves Journalists Even Though They Discourage Journalism That Questions Environmentalism.”
Incidentally, the ruling in question didn’t address whether or not polar bears are endangered, but whether they’re drowning because they have to swim farther to find ice. Other than four bears that drowned during a storm, there’s no evidence of that. And in fact, there are at least twice as many polar bears now as there were 40-50 years ago. They’re about as endangered as Al Gore’s appetite for between-meal snacks.
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And the mic was cut off by the other “journalists.
Well, it would have been unseemly if they all stuck their fingers in their ears and said “la la la we can’t hear you la la la”.
So, when people finally figure out that man made global warming doesn’t exist, will Gore have to give back his Nobel Peace Prize? What about Obama?
On a similar note, I have many great ideas on how to accomplish world peace, can I have a prize?
LA LA LA LA LA LA MISS SAIGON LA LA LA LA
I agree CA Dave – it is really sad that a journalist would have his mic cut off in a room full of journalists. McAleer was treated like a heretic in a room full of church police defending the faith. How long before he disappears?
English/Irish guys always look rumpled. Like they just rolled off the couch or something.
Actually Pasta, Irish guys likely just pulled themselves up off the bathroom floor and got their heads out of the toilet.
I’m Irish, so I can say that.
Maybe if Al Gore quit passing gas, then global warming would stop. And for the record, it is in the mid 50’s here in Ohio. A good 10 degrees cooler than it is suppose to be. Already have to get the flannel sheets out here for the evenings.
I’m surprised that Gore hasn’t had that video removed from YouTube yet.
I just read today that several area’s in the northern US are having record lows and ski slopes are opening early then they ever have in Nevada. I know where I live (north east Texas) the summer was so mild and wet that they flowers never stopped blooming. The ground barely cracked this year and it has been raining so much over the past 2 weeks that my car got stuck in the mud in my front yard this morning. Had to use the tractor to pull it out and the tractor almost got stuck.
Colorado ski resorts are also already open. I lived out in Vail for 4 years and while we had colder temps, we never opened this early for skiers. There was a protest today in Minnesota, I think, in regards to Al Gore.
DID Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?
I’m a lefty, but a GW skeptic. Anyway, it’s a false dichotomy to say that polar bears are not endangered if their numbers are increasing. If their population is still dangerously low, then it makes sense that the population would have to increase before it stops being dangerously low. So they can still be endangered while their population is growing.
If there are up to 5 times as many of them as there were in the ’50s, how is global warming killing them?
@ Angry Army Wife
I’m in Montana, it’s been in the 20’s for several days, averages are in the 60’s this time of year. It never broke 100 over the summer, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that. I understand local variations, but I just don’t see how anyone can interpret any of the data to be in favor of global warming.
PS Michael Crichton’s State of Fear is a good read on the subject.
Notice how a lot of the global warming cultists now refer to it as climate change? It’s vague and harder to refute because of course the climate is changing. This is a political movement and is more about wealth re-distribution than the environment. They will say (or not say in ManBearPig’s case) whatever it takes.
Everyone thought we were heading for another Ice Age twenty years ago. What’s (not) happening?
I work with environmentalists for the Navy. While military cleaning up after themselves is a good thing, they (the few I work with) have bought algore’s shite completely and most are avid disciples
.
You’re right, Jenn. It’s more about wealth redistribution than the environnment. From where I sit, this snowball is gaining speed and these civil service slave laborers don’t see the deceit. Hell, most of em think Obama is king. I can only hope that the recent negative press (like the loss of the computer data) is the beginning of the end for this movement.
I sent the following link to a fellow worker as a joke the other day and he thought it was a GREAT idea!LOL! Most of the comments sound like they came from you guys.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/wearable-carbon-meter-tracks-your-monthly-carbon-footprint.php
This fellow has been on many radio and TV talk shows today, it’s great that this event was filmed and is getting aired. Thanks for posting the details Simon.
@Bill: I TOTALLY second that “State of Fear” recommendation. It skewers Hollywood greenfreaks, ecoterrorists, you name it. Probably one of the big reasons I’m not holding my breath for a movie based on that book.
@Jenn: Yeah, you’ll notice that when any movement runs into trouble, its followers start rebranding. “Liberal” becomes “progressive”, “Health-care reform” becomes “health insurance reform”, and “global warming” becomes “climate change”. You’re totally right about wealth redistribution being the primary motivation for all this, too. The green fanaticism is really just a pseudoreligious means of cramming socialism down our throats.
I would just like to point out that our boy McAleer has some serious cajones to do something like that.
Seriously, while I’ve been accused of being a lot of things, a coward isn’t one of them – and I’m not sure I have the testicular fortitude to stand in front of the former VP of the USA, surrounded by a semi-rabid fan club who buys his every utterance like it’s gospel and call the guy out over his bullshit.
My hat’s off to ya laddy.
What I find so hilarious about it is the planet has been doing this for millions of years.
Climate change. Heh.
If the polar bear populations are increasing, that means that the current conditions are favorable to their survival and the survival of their offspring. That means that the current climate is having a positive effect or no effect on the polar bears. Most animals that are endangered are that way due to hunting or habitat loss to man, not because it got a little warm. I’m not saying that habitat change due to temperature change isn’t possible, but most (if not all) endangered species are that way because of man’s direct actions over the last several decades/centuries. Overhunting, habitat loss, introduced diseases and introduced predators have done and do more harm to animals than a miniscule change in temperature.
I’d pick on solid and liquid pollution before I’d pick on gaseous pollution. Easier to make a change, and more likely to make a difference.
A couple years ago, I read that of the major populations of polar bears, all were increasing with the exception of two. Those two populations lived in areas that had had an overall decrease in temperature over the last several years. Go figure.
Yo Al Gore! I’mma let you finish but I gotta say Phelim McAleer has the best point evar!
I worked in Alaska for a company at some point prior to 2001.
Polar bears were all over the place, eating the garbage, breaking into cars gnawing on leather seats (they’d just put their paws on the window and cave it in), etc.
It was fairly routine for residents to shoot these animals as pests. Zero relocation attempts were made, there were literally hundreds of them all over, and they are absolutely huge and scary.
I never injured a bear in my life, but I would be willing to bet some of the low numbers were a result of Polar Bears being considered vermin until very recently.
No matter what you did, the bears would get into the trash, and I remember five different occasions where local law enforcement came and killed huge bears in eating our trash for the crimes of… eating our trash.
Climate change, global warming…Does anyone here remember the hole in the ozone and acid rain? Scared me to death as a kid. I thought if I went out in a rain storm, my flesh would be eaten away by that rain. It was going to destroy us! How long has it been, now, since I’ve heard of that as a crisis?
Polar Bears have become a lightening rod for the movement. I posted this link a few weeks ago. This man who has spent his life studying polar bears and their environment was told not to come to a global warming conference because his research does not support global warming (the bears are not in danger).
For those of you who did not see it the first time…
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/exile-for-non-believers-polar-bear-expert-told-to-stay-home/
Well, I heard these two words again this morning here in lovely Ohio – RECORD LOW’s. We are a good 10-15 degrees cooler than we should be at this time of the year and we are going to be down in the low 30’s at night this week. Global warming? Not in the midwest. Must be warming the earth someplace else.
When I was working on a PhD in environmental engineering (I quit after a year and a half, tho), everyone in the department and in that particular program (as you would guess) were raving liberal environuts, with the exception of myself and one other girl. Still, it became obvious that, when they felt “safe” amongst other environmentalists, they were able to admit the weaknesses in their theories and how all of their models contained huge guesses based on their desire to “save the world”. If only they could have taken the next two steps – recognizing that their emotional commitment to the cause had clouded their judgment of the bs they were working on, and then admitting it all to the public…
Thanks for writing about this. Love your style.
Thanks for reposting that link Jenn. Is that your website? I really like it and am passing it on to friends.
It is absolutly outrageous that a jounalist’s mic would be cut off in a room full of journalists!
That’s why this statment is absolutly true ; “that was at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, which is a more succinct name than “Society of Environmentalists Who Call Themselves Journalists Even Though They Discourage Journalism That Questions Environmentalism.” That meeting was a sham.
Thanks Jannah. I am flattered but that is not me. Jennifer Marohasy is an Australian biologist. She has this wonderful common sense view of science,the government and the environment. Glad you liked what she has to say. I do too.
Uhm, Mr. Gore?
Polar Bears are NOT endangered.
As of the Federal Ruling in May of 2008, Polar Bears were classified as a THREATENED species not an Endangered species.
There’s a difference.
Endangered = populations low enough to require human intervention in order to prevent total extinction
Threatened = a species under observation, population to be monitored to further study reasons for a possible population decline. Population not in danger but depressed.
http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/polarbear/issues.htm
Furthermore… hello? Hello? (tap, tap) Uh, Mr. Gore? My microphone doesn’t seem to be working… Mr. Gore? HEY MR. GORE! I JUST WANTED TO ASK YOU WHY YOU THINK POLAR BEARS ARE ENDANGERED WHEN THEY’RE NOT! GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME! NO I WILL NOT STEP OUTSIDE! I WANNA KNOW WHY MR. GORE THINKS POLAR BEARS ARE ENDANGERED!!!!!!!
Ah, now we see the voilence inherent in the system.
I have some questions, all snark aside.
Historically speaking, hasn’t science been all about a quest for the truth, agendas be damned? Isn’t that what science, REAL science (as opposed to pseudoscience) is about? How is the current politicized climate in the scientific community any better than the Church’s persecution of Copernicus? Supposedly that was proof positive of religion’s incompatibility with science, but now we’re apparently seeing science’s incompatibility with truth itself. When did science become so political?
@Beige – When huge amounts of government grant money to study AGW is being offered, there are strings attached – like having your results become what the govenment wants to see so they can enact Cap-and-Trade (i.e., another tax hike to get more of your money).
@Minnow – Help! Help! We’re being repressed!
I had to giggle at the men handling Mr. McAleer and having his mic turned off because he dare question the Nobel prize winner, fame whore Gore. Good lord. This is what our society has come down to. Cut the mic and shove him out the door because he dare be questioned? Reminds you of someone else who does not like what people who oppose him have to say? (psst, Obama).
@Beige – There are those that classify the whole climate change movement as a religion of sorts. I am fairly positive that some of its members worship Gaia, so it does make sense in that aspect. But if the climate change movement is a religion, then this is merely history repeating itself.
@Minnow – If (Al Gore) went around saying he was an emperor just because some carbonated bint lobbed a scimitar at him, they’d put him away. At least we can hope for that to happen sometime soon.
@Nimrod – Have you read “The Really Inconvient Truths”? Among other things, it gets into environmentalists and their belief in “Gaia”. The Deceiver crew should read it too, if they haven’t already. PLENTY of hypocrite fodder there.
I’d say science has ALWAYS been tainted. The ruling classes never get tired of dipping their fingers in the gravy.
Science in any period of time requires three things to flourish: an economy strong enough to maintain a scientific class, a society encouraging of innovation, and a government willing to let the process steer itself. Sometimes an era supports innovation, sometimes we sit in the dark for a while. It’s kinda like global climate and Al Gore’s jean size, everything is cyclical.
As an illustrator 200 years ago, you’d have found me digging up poor-house corpses in the middle of the night and selling my stuff from a dark alley. “Psssstttt, hey buddy… wanna buy an annotated drawing of the female reproductive system???” By contrast, in Republican Rome, folks would have happily dropped spare bodies off on my doorstep.
In the US today, we’ve moved past economic constraints, and have a relatively restrained government (note the dearth of innovation coming out of Islamabad today if you disagree with me on government interference).
What we’re wrestling with now is the societal aspects of science. How many babies before it’s a litter? When does fetal/natal medicine cross over into torture? Is suicide a medical treatment option? How many crops do we engineer? Is expensive space exploration ethical before solving starvation? Can or should we alter weather patterns?
Happily for us, the climate hasn’t yet rented An Inconveniant Truth from the Blockbuster bargain bin. We’re not going to decided this issue as a society because the climate’s gonna do what it’s gonna do, no matter how many squares of toilet paper you use today.
________
Oh, and a better example would have been Galilei, Beige. Ol’ Copie sorta sat on his info in fear of persecution and never much came to blows with the Church. He waited until he was six feet under to publish the solar-centric porn. Gal-Gal on the otherhand couldn’t keep his big mouth shut long enough to leave the living room.
You know, I’ve read about both Copernicus and Galileo, and watched numerous “History Channel”-caliber stuff about both, and STILL can’t keep them straight. Sorry about that.
Polar bears are endangered in Tennessee, that’s why Algore said that.
Since he never comes here, unless its to stump for another Dem in his “corner” or a bunch of crackpots who listen to him and eat it up with a spoon, he doesn’t realize they don’t live here, except for the ones in the zoo in Memphis. Since he doesn’t see any here whenever he bothers to come here he thinks they are endangered. Or maybe that one in the zoo got sick and somehow he heard about it and that is why he says they are endangered.
I’m still puzzling over why anyone who so closely resembles a walrus is even WORRIED about polar bears dying out.
We need to make some more soda to be sure the endangered polar bears have something to drink. Then somebody makes money, and polar bears become not endangered?
……what? THERE IS NO FLAW IN MY LOGIC. YOU SIR ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED TO SPEAK. I HAVE SPOKENNNNNN!
More global warming nonsense. Look what the Canadian communist party – green party (oops) are pushing on the youth of the Great White North.
http://youth.greenparty.ca/en/
if this link does not work go to http://smalldeadanimals.com/ and see the latest Green Party advert there.