The Man Who Would Be King

Sir Albert Gore. Has a nice ring to it don't you think?

The Guardian is reporting the British government has signed on Al Gore to sell climate change in the U.S. Sounds like a trip to London is on the horizon for the former next sore loser. Gore's carbon footprint is now bigger than ever - meaning even more sacrifices will be expected from the rest of us. You probably didn't want your thermostat above 45 degrees this winter anyway.

Gore's recruitment is in response to a report by a U.K. Treasury economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, that maintains inaction on climate change will cause a global economic catastrophe as bad as the 1930's Depression. A Stern warning, indeed.

Before you go converting all your mutual funds into gold bullion, consider the implications of an economist making predicitons based on weather forecasts. What could possibly go wrong?

Outside of Liza Minnelli's marriage counselor, is there an occupation that has a worse record of success in predicting the future than either economists or weathermen? Don't go out and buy an apple cart just yet.

Our favorite take on the story comes from former Late, Late Show writer, Julius Sharpe on his News As Gossip blog. (http://newsasgossip.blogspot.com/)

Here's Julius' take on the story:



British Government Hires Al Gore to Help Fight Global Warming in Pompous Way
The British Government has hired Al Gore as part of a plan to combat climate change using a combination of PowerPoint and pretension. Both Tories and whatever that other party is agree that Gore's unique mix of fake humility, intellectual superiority, and a put-on accent will appeal to British people, who all see themselves as much smarter than they actually are. Gore (pictured above making out with Hillary Clinton) said the first step in helping out will be to create some fancy transitions in between PowerPoint slides using a "whoosh" sound effect.
posted by julius at 9:56 AM

Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I think we've made some progress on the global warming debate recently as both sides seem to have made some small concessions to reality.

One the anti-global warming side, it's always struck us as deliberately argumentative when people attempted to call into question whether there was some planetary warming going on. Whether you take atmospheric measures or attribute some of the warming to the urban heat island effect, it seems to me that disputing the fact the planetary temperatures have been trending warmer is not the place where you want to build your climate change Maginot line.

On the pro-global warming side, Newsweek acknowledged this week that the track record of forecasting climate change is not anything that is going to make the highlight film of Greatest Scientific Predictions of the Last 100 Years. Well, at least, they kind of tried. Sort of.

Newsweek described a 1975 article they published like this: "Citing 'ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically,' the magazine warned of an impending 'drastic decline in food production.' Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect 'just about every nation on earth.' Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action ..." Some people might have considered this as a sincere, if somewhat belated, retraction by Newsweek.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. In the very next paragraph Newsweek asserts "the story wasn't 'wrong' in the journalistic sense of 'inaccurate.'"

I didn't major in journalism, so I can't profess to knowing what constitutes being "wrong" in a "journalistic sense," but it seems to me that if something you predicted "didn't happen" then you were pretty much "wrong" in whatever sense you want to use that word.

Clearer than anything, this illustrates the chasm between science and crisis journalism.

In science, if you predict that when you drop a rock it will float in the air and it subsequently doesn't, you are pronounced "wrong."

In journalism, this was simply a case where you had a good theory but the theory is being falsely maligned by special interests beholden to powerful corporations that have vested agenda in promoting the continual belief in gravity.

Okay, you're right. I was being too optimistic....

Link to the story is here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15391426/site/newsweek

An article by Steven Milloy (Junk Science.com) notes there's been an inexplicable silence about recent studies that go a long way toward suggesting a strong causal link between cosmic radiation and global warming.

With all the hot air directed toward businessmen and SUV owners, it seems the majority of global warming is caused by ...wait for it ...the sun. Who woulda thunk it?

You can read the article here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,220341,00.html


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