Another response to the Gore speech

I also got this response yesterday from a guy named Sean about my post on Al Gore's speech, and it's at least a little more reasonable than the response than the one I posted below. It reads:

It seems that Mr. Gore has changed his marketing message. While he still makes multiple claims that are a little hard to substantiate, he doesn't seem to be making the wild claims he did in An Inconvenient Truth (see http://globalwarming-factorfiction.com/2007/10/26/35-inconvenient-truths-the-errors-in-al-gores-movie-part-1-of-5/)

Now, Mr. Gore is taking the energy independence tactic. This is much more realistic and more people are likely to make "sacrifices" for the sake of energy independence if we state that we have to break away from the Mideast and destroy their power over us. He seems to put a lot of his reliance on solar energy though and we should probably include nuclear and hydrogen in that discussion.

Sean makes a good point here about alternative energy sources, and I totally agree - perhaps Al Gore is tacking differently now and trying another strategy. If so, good on him. I don't buy into all of the anti-Inconvenient Truth stuff, but it's certainly possible that Gore didn't get everything right in the movie. However, I firmly believe (as do many scientists) that the basic premise of the movie is sound. Sure, you can find scientists who disagree with Gore, and some of them might not even be sponsored by or work for Big Oil. But, those scientists are few and far in between. And as the North Pole continues melting as we speak, time really is running out for us.

I think Gore is moving to the next stage now. His movie and many of his speeches have sufficiently raised the alarm about the problem (I certainly hope). Now he's moving on to the Solutions stage. I can only hope our politicians are listening to reason. But, it's our job to make sure that they are.

More to follow on this, including some e-mails I've written to my legislators.

Picture above by Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times 

Another Drudge global warming distortion

[Click for larger image]

Perhaps some feel that Drudge isn't even worth the time to debunk. I'm not one of them - this guy has millions of hits on his Website every month, so it's safe to assume that some people actually believe this crap.

Quite frankly, I don't know what's more pathetic - Drudge's blatant distortions, or the fact that more than a few will simply see his absurdly misleading headline without clicking on the story. Anyone who actually clicked on the BBC News link would have quickly deduced after about three minutes of reading that scientists have concluded that global warming is happening, and that one shouldn't draw lots of conclusions from one year, or even a few years. So, global warming deniers (such as morons like Drudge and Sen. James Inhofe) love to make hay out of one or two cold years.

Funny, I didn't notice Drudge or his ilk saying much about the chunk of ice seven times the size of Manhattan that broke off of Antarctica last week. I guess 100 square mile+ chunks of ice just break off of the West Antarctic peninsula when the Earth is cooling.

NJ cuts down on idling... & pollution

We recently had dinner with our friends Jimmy and Jason in Collingswood, New Jersey. When we were walking down Center Street, I noticed this sign, and I love this idea. It seems to me this is one of those ideas that should have been implemented long ago, but either no one thought about it, or there was no political will to do it.

I'm heartened by the fact that communities seem to be coming up with many small ways to combat global warming, pollution, and with the astronomical cost of fuel, it's probably safe to say, fuel consumption, too.

I've also read where some schools in several states are implementing this regulation as well to control pollution around school children.

I'd love to hear counter-arguments to this regulation, but I'm no longer surprised by selfish, myopic global warming deniers. It's not difficult to imagine Ann Coulter pimping the idea of revving school buses, with free cigarettes for the kids.*

Seriously though, there are some people who will decry this new regulation as excessive government regulation. I'm not one of them.

*I'm just kidding, so don't take this seriously. Unless you want to.

When it's cold, Drudge is GOP's hot cocoa with lame global warming jokes

Could Matt Drudge possibly be any more lame? Or predictable? Every time a cold snap hits a portion of the US, you can always count on the GOP shill to poke fun at the global warming debate by pointing out how cold it is.

I use his ridiculously crude "siren" above just to mock him. Here's a guy who is always boasting how much traffic his site has, and he uses a "siren" that resembles something a first-year computer science major would make. Drop a few bucks on some real graphics, you cheap bastard.

Anyway, as usual, the GOP blowhard couldn't resist poking fun at global warming on his site today after NYC's latest frigid weather with the screaming headline "NEW YORK CITY APRIL COLDEST ON RECORD?" with the picture above. Right underneath was a link to a Bloomberg story about NYC's cold weather, and had several other columns prominently featured that dispute the science of global warming. The only dispute, in my mind, is why people insist that the evidence is inconclusive.

As for late, Drudge is trying to be a little more subliminal in his criticism of global warming - he's toned it down since he's taken, ahem, heat for using the stupidest of stupid global warming jokes several times this past winter.

I don't know why Drudge doesn't simply link to Senator Jim Inhofe's Website - the most prominent global warming denier in Congress. I'd at least respect Drudge for making his allegiance transparent to the easily duped.

Wake up, Matt - the threat of global warming is real and legitimate, unlike your Website. We all know you get your talking points from the RNC. You're about as objective as Bill O'Reilly.