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UCI asks: Why do people hate Al Gore?
February 26th, 2009, 6:38 pm · 69 Comments · posted by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
I’ve been asked to moderate a private seminar at UC Irvine next month that has a very provocative title: The Climate Change Dilemma — and Why People Hate Al Gore.” The seminar is being sponsored by Prosperitas, a small new group of “wealthy peers” which is partnering with with UCI’s Merage School of Business to explore hot topics.
Hot, indeed.
Virtually every time I write about the weather — and every time I write about climate change or global warming — I get lots of comments from readers, many which express a disgust or hatred of Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to publicize the potential impact of Earth’s changing climate.
Mary Patrick, Prosperitas’ associate director and organizer of the seminar, originally considered calling the discussion, simply, “Why does everyone hate Al Gore?” But the title was tweaked because Gore actually won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election and he is admired by many for his Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
But Patrick is right in saying politics has had a polarizing effect on climate change debate, distracting people from focusing on what scientists are actually saying. The lecture panel (read line-up) will take up that issue, and we’d like to hear your thoughts about this. I’m going to use reader comments to craft some of the questions.
Specifically, I want you to tell me what impact you think Gore has had on the climate change debate. (Use the Comment feature below). I encourage you to be candid, but don’t simply offer up insults like, “Gore is an idiot.” That just polarizes matters further. Also, take the poll below.
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The question is too cute by orders of magnitude. Is the topic of the seminar Al Gore, or the climate change debate?
If it’s about Gore the whole operation seems a waste of time. He is disliked by a segment of the right and liked by some on the left (just like Clinton and Bush and McCain and Obama) because his chosen profession was politics.
Why is climate change a polarizing issue? I expect it has to do with the fact that, since the 1970’s, most or all environmental issues have been identified with the political left. The political right has gradually abandoned the field (with a few exceptions).
As with many topics the popular media have tended to treat climate change as a 50:50 issue, where any degree of consensus among climate scientists was ignored so long as you could find one scientist who disagreed.
This leads to a view among the public that the “jury is still out” on climate change and allows politicians and policy makers to safely ignore a problem that (let’s face it) doesn’t lend itself to easy, cheap, quick solutions. Very little attention was paid to the climate change debate until Gore’s movie came out.
An Inconvenient Truth led to changes in the way climate change was portrayed in the media, though the old “we need to be even-handed” attitudes seem to be creeping back in of late (see Andrew Revkin’s piece in the New York Times from this morning).
Hi Jim. Thanks for writing.
The mainstream media hasn’t been treating climate change as a 50-50 issue, especially in recent years. The majority of the reporting has focused on the emerging scientific consensus coming out of the IPCC reports. The major news magazines have treated the issue the same way. Yes, there have been stories where some scientists have raised doubts about aspects of climate change. But most of the reporting has focused on the reality of a changing climate. And you’ll remember that both John McCain and George Bush talked about this last fall.
I read Andy Revkin’s piece in the times. It doesn’t represent the “we need an even handed” approach to the issue. Revkin said that both Gore and George Will — and President Obama — had misrepresented some of the scientific information on climate change.
Here’s a link to Revkin’s piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/science/earth/25hype.html?_r=2
People who hate Gore feel threatened because being “green” and pro-environment are often at odds with industrial profits and massive development. Gore’s message threatens their wallets and they need a target at which they can misplace blame.
Hate is strong word. I truly don’t know anyone who “hates” Al Gore. I didn’t even vote for him, but still think he has been an incredible force in raising awareness about Global Warming. Perhaps the lunatics who have a conspiracy theory about Global Warming actually hate Al.
Are you going to have a seminar on why so many people hate that parasite octuplet mom? Now that’s a topic that people could sink their teeth into!
Gary–
Thanks for your reply. I just felt that Revkin was trying to equate errors that were not equivalent. Gore went too far in ascribing particular events to climate change (and corrected the errors when scientists pointed them out), while Will drew conclusions from ACRC data that were in opposition to the conclusions of the scientists (and has thus far not even acknowledged the criticisms).
I did not mean to rant — I admit that I’m a bit aghast that a discussion about a topic that is seemingly so important to society is being presented in terms of how people “feel” about a politician.
Al Gore is the poster boy for half truths and and cherry picking. The media has not been even handed and has gone so far to celebrate
Gore’s awards as to legitimize his status as the last word in Global Warning. Al Gore represents what people dislike about the left in so much as closing an debate with that we the unwashed are not smart enough to see things their way. There is not agreement as to the current conditions of our climate and there is no crystal ball to project what’s ahead. Back to Gore, it’s his way or the highway and the media fails in it’s job to give the public two side to an important debate.
Gore is a propagandist who is using his “global warming” hysteria to become extremely wealthy through his firm trading carbon credits. He distributes misinformation so that Wall Street and their pals can once again become extremely wealthy trading pieces of paper at the expense of everyone else under the guise of giving money to poor countries. It is a scam, just another trading opportunity for the elite to get rich quick and control everyone else to the nth degree.
C Brown, you hit the nail square on the head!
Gore does not have an environmental science background, so why would we believe him? He’s a politician who the media supports.
Al Gore is “disliked” because of his elitist “do as I say, not as I do” attitude. He lives in a huge house and flies private jets while telling everyone else that we need to control our “carbon footprint”. Whether you believe his theories or not is irrelevant - if *HE* believed them he should be setting an example rather than lecturing us.
The South Park episode didn’t help … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManBearPig
People like myself dislike Al Gore because:
1) He is a proven opportunistic liar:
remember during the 2000 debates when he told Bush he visited the flooded areas of Texas?
remember how he said he “took the lead” in developing the internet?
remember how he told the story about his Mom singing “look for the union label” years before the ad campaign even ran?
2) He comes across as smug and condascending.
3) he refuses to acknowledge his hypocrasy concerning how “we” should live versus how “he” should live.
3) he began the current Democrat party trend of the looser in an election suing and coniving to get the results changed.
4) he refuses to debate or discuss his beliefs with intellegent people yet has no qualms about stressing his version of scientific truth to heads of state and intellectually maleable audiences.
plus plenty more not to like about the guy.
But …. hate?… to strong a word, I can’t vote in your survey.
C Brown - Very well said.
In his support of “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore sought investors so that he can make money via a ponzi scheme (Carbon Offsets).
As such, educators and state officials in California have pushed his agenda to the point that my kids in Elementary and High School are being subjected to harassment by others since they question some of the facts presented in “An Inconvenient Truth”. Just because something is being taught in school doesn’t substantiate that it is correct or applicable for learning. (ie: New Math in the 70s)
It should be debated in College; whereas, responsible adults can research and draw their own conclusions based on information obained from both sides of the discussion.
Yes there is debate in colleges and universities (believe me!).
Yes there are genuine scientists who are honest-to-god skeptics of anthropogenic climate change.
There are also biology teachers who claim to not believe in evolution and geologists who claim that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.
But there is scientific consensus that the universe is 13 billion years old, that Earth is 4.53 billion years old, that it is round and orbits the sun, that evolution by natural selection is fact, and that dinosaurs and early humans were not contemporaries.
And there is scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is a fact. There are joint statements issued and signed by the national science academies of the US, Britain, China, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Brazil, Canada, India, Ireland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sweden, Belgium and the nations of the Caribbean.
There are statements of consensus that have been issued by various professional organizations including (among others) the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, NOAA, the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, the National Research Council, the American Chemical Society, the American Astronomical Society, the World Meteorological Organization, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the US Geological Survey, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Association of State Climatologists.
However you feel about Al Gore, he did not invent this issue and it doesn’t exist or not exist based on his personal credibility…
And there was “scientific consensus” that the earth was flat. Doesn’t mean it’s true.
Folks:
-J
This is a tough call on Big Al but I got to lay it straight on the line. The V-chip back in the day was a topic that I thought was out of line but it pails comparison to that the man preaches to how he lives. Check out the data on what his life-style is in his hood to what he talks about. His house is huge and the energy usage — “The Gore household averaged 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, and 18,400 kWh per month in 2006…”
Check it out my friends, the lights on on 24/7 for 2 people………..
IF YOU ARE GOING TO TALK THE TALK, YOU GOTTA WALK THE WALK.
Gore and his cohorts have turned the notion of “climate change” into religious dogma, where “nonbelievers” are shunned, and into a political issue, where science takes a back seat to the need for all of us to rally around a nebulous Cause . It also didn’t help that almost every time he showed up to give a global warming talk, the location was buried in snow or suffering 40-degree weather.
I don’t know if anyone “hates” Gore. We’re just fed up with his pontificating about an issue he’s wrapped himself in to stave off his inevitable march into obscurity.
Some of the other commenters notice that Mr Gore just might have a financial incentive in promoting AGW. Do a web search for
“blood and gore” carbon
or
Generation Investment Management
To begin with, there’s the seriously flawed - and deliberately flawed - slide show, “An Inconvenient Truth”. His reputation (other than being “almost President”) has been built on a house of cards.
The IPCC report itself is seriously flawed.
I think Mr Repka does us all a disservice when he tries to equate AGW skeptics with geological skeptics. We know about the age of the Universe, based on a few hundred years of observations looking back many eons. The AGW crowd would have us look ahead to their forecasts of disaster scenarios - which are built on flawed computer models and carefully-selected data.
For one thing, ” so long as you could find one scientist who disagreed” does not exactly cover the situation. In fact, large numbers of scientists - actual scientists, unlike the signers of the UCC pages - are finding problems with the methods and with the data..
More than that, I would argue that science is not built on “consensus” - which in this case is more a matter of politics and grant-writing. Science is built on fact-finding, serious inquiry, and reproducible results (among others). Since the AGW proponents have little more than ridicule and character assassination for those scientists who question the dogma, I find it hard to accept any kind of reasonable “consensus”.
The reason there’s “a view among the public that the ‘jury is still out’ on climate change” is simply because it is. Despite what Hansen says, the debate is not over.
There’s far too much weight on the side against - Lomborg alone has already turned out two books on the subject. There’s a recent report out of Japan:
“… the Japan Society of Energy and Resources is critical of the IPCC “consensus” on anthropogenic global warming…
4. Conclusion: Anthropogenic global warming theory still hypothetical.”
(It’s on the British paper “theregister.co.uk” website.)
There are severe breaks in the “consensus”.
Finally, they’re asking us to spend a significant fraction of our GNP in order to try to prevent something that might happen - or might not. That money should be better spent on things we know we can deal with, things like fighting disease and famine, hunger and poverty. The return per dollar spent will be many times greater than spending it on uncertainties and on wishful thinkiing.
I do hope, Gary, that you’ll be able to write a report on that “private seminar”.
A problem that people have danced around is that AGW is a scientific question that has become a political issue. One cannot answer a scientific question through political debates. Throughout history, people have come to a “consensus” regarding scientific questions that were wrong. Just look at geocentric vs. heliocentric debate. Also remember that people were imprisoned for not adhering to the accepted dogma - even though the dogma was eventually proven wrong.
I am also reminded of Einstein who called his cosmological constant the biggest blunder of his life once it was proven that the universe is expanding. Even geniuses can get it wrong.
The ‘hate Al Gore’ is the front for all the GOP talking points directed to and excuslively for America’s Taliban-gelical red state voters.
The red stater’s bible thumpers require the GOP’s manufactured opposition to do what’s right for the planet and nation simply because our nation’s bible thumping population demands that it’s God’s will if the planet dies.
The fact that our GOP opposes any decent act to preserve and/or protect the nation’s environment is openly admitted by them that their opposition is based on the few dollars it might cost their biggest donors to make their nation a better place.
Apparently their values for family don’t include the heirs they themselves created to suffer under the future they choreographed to be ugly and destructive.
Even the water issue is ‘long term planning’ . . . no secret that Cheney, etal have their own business consortium buying up fresh water sources and have in several nations, blackmailed local governments into turning over those nation’s public water supplies to their private consortium . . . hence making nation’s pay for water that for thousands of years was free.
Who was suprised with GW’s last hours of deregulating our Federal protections for the nation’s water, public held lands and deregulatilng the laws that protected us from the most heinous of heavy chemical pollution?
HE IS A PHONEY, ILL INFORMED, NON SCIENTIFIC POLITICAL HACK. HE HAS HIS IDEAS, THAT ARE NOT ALLIGNED WITH THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. THE FACTS ARE, THE EARTHS TEMPERATURE HAS BEEN DROPPING FOR MORE THAN 10 YEARS OVERALL, THE ICE IN FACT MAY BE MELTING IN THE ARCTIC, BUT THE ICE IS THICKENING IN ANTARCTICA. HE SHOULD GET OFF THE STAGE AND GO AWAY.
Please don’t write comments in all caps, it looks like a teenagers angry blog on myspace.
Al Gore’s example of data presentation in the movie seems to have enabled the deniers their own form of data mining. There is no way he could have included every possible scenario studied; so if he gets to pick a future, so will deniers. Frequently heard in climate change discussions, are people (typically the type who know bible verses better than any sort of physics) who will look at “skeptic” websites and pick the data that keeps them happy with gas powered and cheap electricity. Al Gore really did a most impossible feat well, though: bringing science to a population that does not like to question beyond what form of pyrolized cattle tissue is for dinner.
Simple. Gore has corrupted the scientific debate with politics–and money. The debate is far from over, and in fact the science is trending strongly toward the skeptical side on the “Manmade” aspect of GW. Yet, Gore treats us like fools and children when he tells us the “world has a fever,” polar bears are drowning, and the debate is closed. And he impugns the motives of highly ethical and qualified scoiemntists who disagree with his second hand opinions. Simple– Americans don’t like being treated like suckers, even if there are many out there who are.
He is condescending.
Al Gorebalwarming refuses to debate experts who believe that either there is no gorebal warming or that if there is it is not caused by man but by natural events like volcoes and solar events.
Al is a politician - not a scientist. He’s appealing to those on the Left and global warming believers/environmental activists and not so much to moderates and conservatives. He is not the guy to try and sell man made global warming to the public. The Left has been trying for decades to get centralized control over development and energy use. It was man made global cooling hysteria in the 70’s. It has been presented as hokey.
Unfortunately environmental and media activists are political animals as well. They do a lousey job promoting the science. These global warming political activists posing as authoritive voices on global warming have used name calling of scientists who disagree with global warmists and calls for these “deniers” to be punished really polarized the public. This is not how science acts. This is how radicals act.
In addition the political activists have highlighted silly threats that may be caused by global warming plus “spokespeople” like Gore and Hansen have gotten a lot of the data wrong. For example, Al Gore recently had to pull a hysterical claim from his slide show after it was panned as false by the public. Is controlling animal farts really a great way to promote a solution to this problem? How much better to stick with alternative energy?
Hansen, a government politician/scientist has been caught falsifing data over and over again. Most recently NASA was caught falsifying data with faulty censors, missing a huge section of the artic in it’s ice measurements.
This political activism of globalists and leftists has pretty much killed trust in the whole operation. It is now political not scientific to the public. And the public has no respect nor trust in activists.
Finally, science is never ’settled” in truth. There are alot of scientists who do not agree with the computer models used by global warmists.
Editor’s note: Sara makes some interesting points. But she’s simply wrong in saying that James Hansen has been “caught falsifying data over and over again.” I want to thank people for the thoughtful and mostly civil remarks they’ve been making. Some of their insights will be raised during the upcoming panel discussion.
Gary Robbins, The Register
Mr. Robbins:
You ask: “… what impact … Gore has had on the climate change debate?” and my answer is that Gore has had enormous impact because Gore’s political friends control most of Earth’s major media outlets.
Since the day that refrigerant R-12 was blamed for destroying Earth’s ozone layer, I’ve suspected that a political, anti-human agenda exists. My reason for suspicion comes form the fact that refrigerant R-12 — at standard atmospheric pressure and temperature – weighs almost 6 times more than air, meaning that every released-into-air R-12 molecule will drop and find it’s way to some cavity, river, or ocean — just like water does. To verify that fact, all one needs to do is ask a shipyard worker about dangers involved in releasing a refrigerant into a ship’s hull. The answer is that released R-12 (and most other refrigerants) will replace air inside a ship’s hull and consequently suffocate and kill unprotected workers inside the hull.
There are other areas (ref: “Darwin’s Ghost” by Steve Jones) pointing to Global Warming theory being false. One lies in the fact that .Scientists know that (page 231)… “Five hundred million years ago the air had twenty times as much carbon dioxide as it contains now.” Another in the fact that (page 231) “Corals have daily and annual surges of activity, and growth rings from four hundred million years ago show that there were then four hundred days a year.”
In addition, there is evidence that Earth’s distance from the sun probably increases every day, meaning that global cooling is probably happening every day. I deduced that from Jones’ book (page 218) where we have that: “A trillion comets orbit the sun. The gravel that surrounds them appears, should it hit our atmosphere, as a shower of meteors. The Earth gains a ton in weight every hour from their dust.” In other words, adding mass to Earth means increasing the distance between sun and Earth..
What I’d say to Global Warming advocates is … Facts belong in decisions, and beliefs belong in church.
Richard Cassidy
Reason he is “hated” #1: his hypocrisy. He has put more carbon into this atmosphere than our family of 7 ever will. If he really believed what he was saying, he would no way be flying around in a jet and using all the energy at his house, etc. Even when called on it, he won’t quit. He is just the worst kind of hypocrite.
Reason #2: He continues to pound out the same old rhetoric in spite of the snowballing, documented, and expansive evidence that his theory is just plain false.
Reason #3: His incorrect agenda actively hurts people, particularly the economy. I would have more money in my checking account today if Gore had not gone hysterical with this idiocy.
Wll, Gary, let’s just say that Hansen has been caught publishing faulty data suggesting a negligent and sloppy approach to his work and an inclination not to challenge questionable data that reinforces his position.
The fact is that, in as much as there is a consensus among the majority of climate scientists, it is that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have not been the prime forcing agent for global climate change up until the present day, and that there is no demonstrated factor that convincingly indicates that this situation will change in the forseeable future. Rather, solar luminance variations and normal climate cycles readily account for virtually all of the climate changes that have been observed over the last century and a half.
The (now discredited) revisionist climatic record exemplified by the Mann Hockey Stick, the consistent cherry picking and skewing of such data that was presented and over dependence on unreliable computer climate modeling algorithms that he promoted in his movie, along with his large financial stake in cap and trade regulations makes Al Gore’s role more similar to that of P.T. Barnum than somebody who should be given serious consideration when deciding what the best climate policies should be.
James Hansen and NASA’s GISS has indeed falsified and disseminated the falsified climate data repeatedly. Among these instances are that in November 2008, he claimed October 2008 was the warmest October on record by the simple ‘expedient’ of using September’s temperature data. In fact, temperatures that month were at the long-term average. In late 2007, GISS was found to have added 0.15 degrees Celsius to each year’s U.S. temperature readings, inflating the actual temperature record since 2000. These are ‘mistakes’ that would have resulted in a failing grade for a high school science class project. For GISS to have published this doctored data is nothing short of unconscionable.
There is a lot to dislike about Al Gore. The very way he speaks is a good start. I am an adult, I do not need to be lectured like an unruly child. I don’t want to to be told about my carbon footprint by a man with a boat the size of my house. I don’t need to be told about science by a man who flunked out of divinity school.
Al Gore keeps saying that man is causing climate change and that we need to do something major about it. So, why won’t he? Glen Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, is fond of saying “I’ll believe global warming is an emergency when the people saying it’s an emergency start acting like it’s an emergency”. Instead he had his limo idleing outside for the air conditioner while he gave a speech telling us to adjust our lives.
Look - Al Gore is not that bright - he was born right and basically had nearly everything given to him. Yes, unlike John Fogerty, he is a Senator’s son.
He’s pushing an issue he simply isn’t qualified to evaluate. Further, the funding for global warming is strong and the funding for non-preconcluded studies does not exist in any significant amount. The issue is about who gets to make what decisions, and if it is global warming and CO2, and the decisions become the domain of the EPA, they can regulate us down to our breathing. Check out lawnmowers and weedeaters as a start.
We’ve had too many Earth Days and too little basic education regarding the role of government. Mr. Gore is just coming on later with an issue that rivals Tipper’s assault on rock lyrics.
They’re beyond worthless, they’re detrimental to human progress.
Man-Bear-Pig
even a child understands Algore is all BS!
Hansen HAS falsified data again and a again. If you are unaware of this then you have blinders on. Even Hansen’s old boss at NASA says he cooks the data and is a liar.
But how about the tonnes of evidence of Hansens perfidy at http://wattsupwiththat.com/ . Or go to surfacestations.com to see how the monitoring sites have been placed with the thermometers in air conditioner exhaust and in the middle of asphalt paving.
Gary Robbins is clearly an unthinking, unscientific person who gets on the bandwagon because everyone else is on it.
There is, for instance, no scientific evidence that CO2 is a forcing agent. Computer models are not scientific evidence. If you think they are then you are clearly lacking in any scientific training. CO2 forcing is not even a good theory as it cannot be used to predict anything.
Some people like Gary Robbins religiously ‘beleive’ in global warming without any evidence. And they beleive in their prophets like Hansen and Gore who are little more than fabulists with a wild story: “Here there be dragons”
Hate Al Gore,no. Dislike him,yes. Trust him, no.
I believe that Al deliberatly speaks in half truths
and pushes an agenda that is at best Sociaist
and anti-rational. If he actually attempted to walk
the walk that he talks of, he would have more integrety.
Hating anyone is not part of my agenda; examining motives is. Gore has made his abundantly clear–money, power and unearned influence. The cost of the offered solutions to an un-established problem would bankrupt our nation and many others. Science has taken a back seat to personal agenda and advancement.
Many of the deniers are those who have had a belly full of the lack of science in their government funded agencies. AGW proponents see the loss of their cozy positions threatened by the growing questioners demanding actual facts and good science. In response, the “warmers” have elevated their offerings of lies, distortions, and faulty data to counteract the opposition.
Follow the money.
This is a subject which demands actual research and hard science. The disipline should not be colored by attentions seekers, political losers, and feather-bedding, book sellers, and hypocrits
A gore is full of crap about global warming. Global warming, when it occurs, happens on account of the way the earth wobbles on its axis, and occurs in cycles. It always has and always will. How does one explain the Grat Lakes which were formed by melting glaciers? Gores theories about waming are basdwed on bad science.
I hate that Al Gore is using pseudo-science and scare-mongering to shovel hundreds of millions of dollars into his pockets while insisting that our children lower their expectations and lifestyles in the future (just our children; the children of the Lords will not be under the rules that we Serfs are bound to, of course… otherwise Al would not have a 100ft. houseboat and his private jets.)
Rather, why does Al Gore hate so many people that he wants to take so much away from them?
Yikes, I am embarrassed for Orange County.
The science is settled, the time for debate is over, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions is the law of the land.
Why do these deniers hate their children so much?
When all else fails, drag out the “it’s for the children” argument.
a. Because we’re tired of being lectured on our wasteful ways who fly around in private jets between stops at their mansions and hundred-foot houseboats.
b. Because he lies to the ignorant and frightened.
c. Because he has hijacked the environmental debate for his carbon-credit scam.
It is very easy to hate Al Gore. Mr. Gore served in the administration of the most corrupt president ever. Worse, he promotes the fallacy of man-made global warming in order to provide a pretext to increase government interference in their lives.
What’s not to hate?
Al Gore hurts science and the scientific method.
First because his is a totally hypocritical person. Says one thing and does another. Second because he is a politician and as such cannot tell the truth without bending it to his advantage. Third because he is a Pulitzer prize winner and as such it makes him think he is all that. He is NOT ALL THAT! There is abxolutely no reason to believe him. He could have SOME truth within what he says but the bendings and out right falsehoods make him useless. Way too much work to dig out the truth from within anything he ever says. After all, he was the VICE president and nobody even knows what a vice president does except hide in undisclosed locations.
See the classic book “We’re not scared anymore Mr Gore” for reasons why this might be the case. He is such a sad laughable figure…how can anyone hate him?
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/documents/not_scared_anymore_mr_gore.pdf
Because NOT disclosing you own a carbon trading company while you’re leveraging your privileged position granted to you by the public to make them mandatory for everyone based on bullshit, fear and lies makes you a douche.
I dislike Gore because he’s a sanctimonious hypocrite who gets rich pushing the government enforcement of an expensive and inconvenient lifestyle he is unwilling to live himself. What really winds me up, in addition to this, is the complete pass that he’s given by the media who, at the same time, won’t hesitate to give the full rectal-probe treatment to any right-of center politician.
Tom has it spot on. Al may have failed divinity school, but he learned the fundamentals of tent revival preaching and he’s been using that, and his political heft, to scare a generation of children and childish adults. Those of you who have attended a tent revival should recognize the techniques. Those of you who haven’t, replace AGW with hell fire and you’ll have a fair idea of what a tent revival is like. Don’t hate him - more like despise.
I don’t *hate* Al Gore. I’m tired of seeing science derailed and abused for politics and personal profit in a hugely hypocritical fashion…..and Al Gore is the epitome for this trend in the global warming arena.
Oh, and doom mongering. I’ve heard that humanity is on the brink of destruction since I was a teenager….and Al Gore cranked up the hysteria on global warming more than a few notches. Using more than a few errors and mistakes in his presentations, I should note.
Did I mention his hypocrisy? Yes, I see that I did, but I’ll mention it again — from his “green
house boat to his very snazzy mansion to the carbon credits that he buys from himself, Al Gore is a hypocrite. Even when he isn’t jetting around the world, his carbon footprint is huge.
So I don’t *hate* Al Gore. I hate his lies, his hypocrisy, his narcissism, and I hate the results of his campaign (i.e., hysteria and degrading of science). If he went quietly into the night, and never spoke of “global warming” or “climate change” again, I’d just forget him. In spite of the damage that he’s done, I would just get him out of my mind.
FINALLY.
I really don’t hate him, but I have zero respect for him. Why does the man who said he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” seem incapable of doing something as obvious as using it to teleconference instead of traveling all over the world in his private jet?
Hypocrisy indeed. I’ll believe in global warming when Gore and all other proponents of it start behaving like they believe it.
Why do I hate Al Gore? Well…I don’t hate him, that’s too strong of a word. I sure do not appreciate him, though. At all.
-His wife Tipper Gore led an all-out assault on music deemed “vulgar”, culminating in angry mobs of mothers and priests out on the streets and on the TV condemning and smashing up CD’s and cassettes in protest. In the end, music which has objectionable or suggestive lyrics must now be labeled as “EXPLICIT CONTENT”. Did it solve anything? Did it lessen the vulgarity of popular music? Did it meet any sort of actual need? No, no, and no? Nonetheless we have Al Gore’s wife to thank for those black and white stickers on CD’s…
-Al Gore has waged a ridiculous war on “global warming”, something that scientists can’t even agree on the existence of as of yet. His proposals to combat this menacing spectre amount of a lot of guilt, taxes, new regulations, and global governance. His “solution” to global warming will undoubtedly end up costing trillions of dollars, destroying millions of lives, and will undoubtedly end as a complete waste of resources. His environmentalist image is just a handy soapbox, and he will pummel us with his message until society has been sufficiently softened up and his programs are accepted as a bitter medicine that we must all swallow…NEVER MIND THE FACT THAT IS HAS NOT WARMED EVEN A TENTH OF A DEGREE IN A DECADE. That’s a fact, by the way, that even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agrees on - that there has been no warming since 1998.
Al Gore is the kind of person who thinks everyone else needs to be controlled, and he is just the smart kind of guy that knows how to control people for their own good. Same thing for his wife. They are so much better than us so we should just do what they suggest and stop getting in the way. Al Gore wants to make our trains run on time to stop the evil ManBearPig.
Europe’s cap-and-trade carbon scheme has failed: it has not decreased carbon emissions, and it has cost billions. Therefore, it didn’t accomplish anything positive, yet it cost people jobs and money.
Part of Obama’s massive new budget is the assumption that selling carbon emission coupons to industry will bring in hundreds of billions of new government revenue. If this fails, we are even further up the creek than we currently are. Even if it succeeds in pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars, that money will come indirectly from the US citizens that need the most help: all these corporations will do to offset their increased cost of creating products (costs will increase due to these new carbon emission taxes) is they will be obliged to raise prices on their products, so that the cost of the new environmental regulations will end up being paid for the by the end consumer. That is how it always ends up, and this will be no different.
The worst thing of all about Al Gore and this drive to regulate carbon due to it’s shadowy implication as the source of this supposed warming is that most scientists actually agree that a warmer planet would be a net positive for mankind in that it would lead to much larger crop yields and less hunger in places like Africa. In the history of humans, the warmer periods have tended to be the times of the most growth and development.
So in the end Al Gore wants us to wage a costly and pointless battle against progress rather than utilizing human ingenuity to create the kind of progress that will bring about technologies that negate the situation altogether. This is a very poor allocation of resources.
Lastly, and perhaps most bothersome about Al Gore, is his claim to be a man of science. That is a bold-faced lie. He refuses to debate many prominent scientists about his documentary. He continues to repeat some of his already-disproved claims he made in the movie as he gives million dollar talks to groups all around the world. I am extremely disturbed by the sheer amount of people who are willing to swallow “science” from a politician. He is a politician, people!! Do you get your nutritional advice from the mailman? Of course not!!! So, do not rely on scientific advice from a wacky politician. So many (dozens of very well known climatologists) have refuted Gore’s more fanciful claims, and yet they don’t get the same amount of attention because that are actually talking about real, boring science - whereas Al Gore is talking about spectacular doomsday scenarios and he is feeding into the culture of guilt.
Al Gore is truly a harbinger of bad things to come: increased government control, global governance, nanny-statism, and intrusions on free enterprise and freedom of choice. We will sacrifice our freedoms and our good sense on the altar of “for the greater good”…which is sad, since we all know better. We have all been warned that we will be told to sacrifice our rights for ‘the greater good”, and we are told to be wary of those who try to convince us - yet here we are entertaining just such ideas, and Al Gore is here whispering in everyone’s ears about just how important it is for them to accept his vision of environmental apocalypse.
That’s why I “hate” Al Gore. I can think of few better reasons to resent someone so thoroughly…
Jim Repka - science is not a battle for consensus. It is a battle of ideas.
Do not make the same mistake Al Gore is making and climb on a pedestal and lecture people about consensus. Scientists are capable of incredible degrees of short-sightedness and stupidity, just like the rest of us.
I don’t hate Al Gore.
I think he is wrong. I think - like most AGW supporters he is doing this for personal profit.
I think he is a part of the socialist movement in this country, but to say that I hate him would say that I spend enough time thinking about him to give a crap.
Gary Robbins, science writer-editor Says:
March 1st, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Editor’s note: Sara makes some interesting points. But she’s simply wrong in saying that James Hansen has been “caught falsifying data over and over again.”
——————
Gary, can you please substatiate with proofs that Sara is wrong about James Hansen? If you cannot substantiate, I am not sure how you are any different from the Global Warming cult leader and businessman Gore. What we are talking here is science and it’s needs backing up.
“Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to POLITICIZE the potential impact of Earth’s changing climate.”
There, fixed.
I marked that I hated Al Gore simply because of the limited options. It was the closest to “I hold his actions in the greatest contempt”. There is a deep suspicion about him, but there is no proof that he is non-human, and I do not hate any human being.
Sara is technically incorrect about James Hansen. Hansen is a statistician, a science which offers endless ways of presenting falsehoods scientifically, and Hansen knows them all. Falsehoods presented scientifically, are not falsehoods. They are statistics.
Statistics requires the exercise of objective judgement, which is something that, as the adviser of a prevaricator like Gore, he has come to totally lack.
He used a faulty source code in his work on global warming, and obstructed all efforts to have it made available for checking. When his resourceful critics found a way to prove the flaw in his data, he corrected the data, rather ungracefully, and said that the minor error which he corrected was of no significance. No one suggested that he was a liar, or that the source code was other than a genuine error..
It did mean, however, that the hottest year in the US was 1934, and not 1998.
His statistical expertise has meant that he was able to find the globe hotter in each year since 1998, than the other sources of temperature, who agree with each other and not with Hansen.
So strictly speaking, he has not been caught out with falsehoods, just findings of data which vary from reputable sources. He is currently working backwards from 1998, scientifically making each year warmer.
If theres one thing I hate it’s a corpulent, condescending, holier than thou, chardonnay socialist from the limousine left, swanning around the world on private jets, first class all the way, creating a monsterous carbon footprint. Hob nobbing with similarly brain washed celebrity socialist hipocrites, then having the nerve to tell everybody to live as he says not as he does. But, the real clincher is how many of his “inconvenient truths” have been revealed to be “convenient lies”.
1. Fake crisis to let him make money selling carbon credits
2. Couldn’t pass divinity school but calls himself a science expert
3. Fake scenes in his “documentary”
4. BIG house, BIG boat but you little people need to cut back
I hate him because he has…or is going to….cause a lot of people to die if his ideas are implemented by politicians…..thats enough to damm him and his fellow travellers…
I do not like hypocrites. Look at his home and his method of travel He does not practice what he preaches. Most celebrities do not. We can do a lot of simple things in this country to avoid waste but we don’t. One major thing we can do is set a standard for all phone chargers and other chargers for input /output. It would decrease hazardous waste. We need to start thinking globally and stop thinking how we can increase cost to the consumer. We need to streamline and simplify. Stop talking offsets and reduce. He also needs to stop creating panic but be more practical.
Zac: “Gary, can you please substatiate with proofs that Sara is wrong about James Hansen? If you cannot substantiate, I …”
I think it’s up to Sara to back up her claim, since she made it. It shouldn’t be that hard.
In yesterday’s news:
“Pelosi Snowed-Out of Global Warming Rally
Monday, March 02, 2009
By Josiah Ryan and Ryan Byrnes
….
(CNSNews.com) – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had to cancel an appearance Monday at a global warming rally in Washington, D.C., that was hit by a snowstorm because her flight was delayed, her office told CNSNews.com. ”
The Gore Effect - poetic justice.
How do you think global warming activists such as you’re self has changed Americas manufacturing?
Do you think this activist is an industrial Terrorist?
Why should we (Americans) lose our jobs to overseas companies that don’t just don’t care about this issue?
Do you think global activists have created the shift in global manufacturing?
So in order to not distract from the climate change debate you actually do what you believe is distracting from it by making Mr. Gore the focal point and whipping boy? If you care about the climate change debate then focus your seminar on climate change and the thousands of scientists who have peer reviewed articles to corroborate what is now happening on this planet , which is a heck of alot more urgent than continuing to make Mr. Gore the focus of this just so politically partisan hatemongers have another venue from which to spew forth their venom.
Personally, I believe Mr. Gore has done much to bring awareness of this to the masses and relay the scientists’ findings in a way that anyone can understand the science behind global warming/climate change. And that is why he is “hated” by many on the right and those in certain industries for which awareness is a threat to their profit sheets. An Inconvenient Truth made this crisis easy for all to understand, and that is what certain interests hate…truth. Those interests that seek to keep people in the dark about the science in order to manipulate opinion in their favor. Perhaps that is what your seminar should focus on since it is they who have now brought us to the point where this planet is heading for a two degree increase, possibly a four degree increase by the end of century if we do not intercede with action now.
I dislike him because he believes everyone must change their lifestyle to stave off a disaster …….. except for the people like him who are ever so clever.
Here we are still debating Gores half truths and the planet is cooling again.
I find the man repulsive because of his profiteering and elitist attitude. Money is the only thing that man believes in.
Really great post, well written, concise and comprehensive. Thank you.