Gore's Staff Says He Was Misquoted On Hexametric Hurricanes 216
jamie writes "In a story on Thursday, Slashdot and its readers had a little fun at the expense of Al Gore, who was quoted as saying that the hurricane severity scale was going to go to 6. A correction was made the next day. The author of the piece that Slashdot linked now writes 'I retract the balance of my criticism.' Turns out Gore was misquoted. Luckily for Gore, this is the first time he's been ridiculed for something he didn't actually say. Well, except for Love Story, Love Canal, farm chores, and everyone's favorite, inventing the internet. (The original Slashdot story is here and its central link now includes the Washington Post's correction.)"
From Ezra Klein's update on his earlier piece: "I'm out-of-town and so away from my tape recorder. So I asked Gore's staff about the line and they have Gore saying: 'The scientists are now adding category six to the hurricane ... some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5.' That doesn't offend my memory of the discussion and it's entirely possible I missed Gore's qualifying sentence while trying to keep up. If so, that's my fault, and I apologize."
does he (Score:3)
Re:does he (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, WOW! The story has been SOOOO debunked. Al Gore never said that he invented the Internet! He said that he *created* the Internet which is the total opposite!
I know you're just trolling, but here's your sign [umich.edu].
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I didn't realize Al Gore was also a plumber.
Works better than "Land Shark".
Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a lot of respect for Cerf's contributions to Internet protocols we take for granted, but he was way off base there in that letter. Not his finest moment, and I particularly disagree with his assertion that Gore was not trying to take more credit than was due. He has a history of self-promotion before then and especially since then.
Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! (Score:4, Interesting)
You're suffering from confirmation bias. You dislike Gore, possibly because of his politics, and thus will tend to believe the worst of him in any situation, regardless of the evidence.
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Guess what? I don't give a shit about Al Gore, I just want to put this stupid notion that he really thinks he invented the internet to rest. I think he's another self-serving politician and it's not him I care about.
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You're suffering from confirmation bias. You dislike Gore, possibly because of his politics, and thus will tend to believe the worst of him in any situation, regardless of the evidence.
You're assuming a lot. I actually like Al Gore as vice president, thought he would have made a much better President than Bush during and after the 2000 election, and agree with many of his positions. However, I am not happy with his hypocritical environmental record (carbon trading is a scam that will not effect climate change either way, he takes incredibly polluting private jets, and his own home is extremely energy inefficient). He likes to promote, but half the time, he is promoting himself as the lead
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I don't know which is sadder, the fact that you actually believe Gore said anything to that effect or that 5 people modded you up.
"There is no controlling legal authority ": (Score:2)
Or to use the terms of a previous generation: "Those statements are no longer operative."
Yawn (Score:2)
Two peas in a pod (Score:2, Interesting)
The press nowadays is more a lapdog of the establishment than a watchdog. What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy, or that hurricanes are more extreme now? Klein let those statements pass without a contrary word. Besides, no matter how you spin what he said, it's factually ignorant. There is no top end to a Cat 5 hurricane classification, so no need for a higher rating.
Re:Two peas in a pod (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no top end to a Cat 5 hurricane classification, so no need for a higher rating.
This first part of that statement is factually true; the second part is your opinion. If hurricanes start becoming 4x as powerful, the category 5 is still applicable, but less useful. What Gore said was correct: there are scientists considering adding a category 6 to differentiate amongst the strongest of hurricanes.
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" there are scientists considering "
A reference to an expert scientist would have been helpful.
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Energy in the system or destruction will not be linear with wind speed. And that's a pretty damn good thing, or we'd be having houses falling down every time we had 50-70 mph wind gusts.
Oh, and sentences should begin with a capital letter and end in punctuation. It will help people take you a little more seriously when you're critiquing their sexual habits.
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Actually you are being ignorant.
When talking about the current hurricane rating system, it's about amount of damage that occurs. category 5 is more then twice as damaging then a category 4, but it isn't twice the wind speed.
And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes. well, not humans becasue we will all be dead, the the planet could see it.
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And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes.
Well, why don't we have 700 MPH hurricanes now? Because global warming has stopped far short of that state for the entirety of Earth's history. It's a pretty easy to satisfy "if".
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And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes. well, not humans becasue we will all be dead, the the planet could see it.
Please stop. There is no conceivable scenario where the Earth could ever support a hurricane with 700 mph winds. All you're doing by spouting off nonsense like this is giving deniers more fuel.
The impacts of climate change are considerable enough without exaggerating them beyond reality. Stick to the science.
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You mean, as it did over sixteen years ago?
That's cherry-picking a statistic. Taking a single year with abnormally high temperatures then comparing all the years after to that one year to try and claim that average temperatures have not been rising.
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Taking a two-decade-old trend is not cherry-picking.
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It can be cherrypicking when there are cyclical trends whose period is longer than 20 years.
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So... let's see...
The sixteen-year period of global warming from 1980 to 1996, which was cause for great alarm, isn't cherrypicking, but --
-- the nearly seventeen-year period since then IS cherrypicking?
Got it. I think.
Re:Two peas in a pod (Score:5, Informative)
a storm four times more powerful means 540mph winds. do you seriously think that we will have storms in the 700mph wind speed category?
This is a willful misreading of the original post. "4x more powerful" is vague, of course, but by no reasonable reading would interpret it as "4x windspeeds". I read it to mean "4x as destructive". That could be a matter of an increase in as little as 10 mph. Damage to manmade structures is what we're interested in.
That by the way, is how the Saffir-Simpson scale was defined. If you look at the speeds involved, it seems to make little sense:
Cat 1: 119-153 kph
Cat 2: 154-157 kph
Cat 3: 158-208 kph
Cat 4: 209-251kph
Cat 5: 252+ kph
Herbert Saffir, who conceived of the scale for Atlantic hurricanes, was a civil engineer, and his scale was calibrated in terms of potential damage to a well-built frame house. Category 1 hurricanes have dangerous winds but pose only minor danger to a well-built frame house. Category 2 hurricanes commonly cause extensive roof and siding damage to well-built frame houses. Category 3 hurricanes commonly cause major damage to roof decking and gable ends of well-built frame houses. Category 4 hurricanes will cause loss of most of the roof structure and some side walls of well-built frame houses. Category 5 hurricanes cam be expected destroy many well-built frame homes in their path.
Now it's clear that in terms of just describing the potential effect of a hurricane on a well-built frame house, you don't need a category that goes above "complete destruction to many well-built structures". But the very success of the scale in terms of its impact on building codes means we probably should recalibrate the scale because of a change in the meaning of "well-built". But that would be confusing when comparing current to past hurricanes, so adding a category 6 representing "widespread destruction of frame structures built to modern building standards" might make sense.
If more powerful hurricanes become more common, we may also wish to have a category that represents potential catastrophic damage to reinforced concrete homes with shallow hipped roofs -- structures you'd expect to survive lower-end Cat 5 hurricanes largely intact.
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so when are the hurricanes finally going to become more powerful? i've been hearing this for years.
the year of Katrina everyone predicted a horrific season for the next year, and it was a dud.
same with sandy last year. so far the reality is that this year is a slow hurricane year.
asia has been getting hit by typhoons with horrific death tolls as far as i can remember.
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Define *your* criteria for "hurricanes becoming more poweful". Without that definition it's impossible to answer your question.
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This is a willful misreading of the original post. "4x more powerful" is vague, of course, but by no reasonable reading would interpret it as "4x windspeeds". I read it to mean "4x as destructive". That could be a matter of an increase in as little as 10 mph. Damage to manmade structures is what we're interested in.
That doesn't make much sense. We used to use such a subjective system for measuring earthquakes, the Mercalli scale, but it was mostly abandoned when the Richter Scale was made (and these days, the MMS scale is usually used, even when people say Richter). Building codes and materials change drastically over the decades, and buildings in hurricane country are more likely to be able to survive hurricane-force winds. New York had a lot of damage with Tropical Storm Sandy, but there was so much more -to- damage
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Well, I wouldn't say the Saffir-Simpson scale is *subjective*, but it is somewhat *arbitrary*. A lot of the problem is that we talk about hurricane classes as if they were purely descriptive of storms, but really the various classes characterize the potential interaction of a storm with man-made structures. Each hurricane class represents the likely level of damage to a wood frame structure built with construction techniques common in the US in 1971. This could easily have been calibrated using historica
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Because the poster had no argument with that part? Because the poster had no opinion at all on that part? Because the poster had no knowledge of the claims in the first place?
Or do you you require choruses of amens to almost everything before anyone can disagree with the one statement they have an issue with?
So what about YOUR ridiculous claim? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you ridiculously claim "What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy", where is your evidence for that?
"or that hurricanes are more extreme now?"
Uh, 2-11% increase in the top end. Pretty simple mathematics: hurricanes are powered by the condensation of moisture as it rises above the earth. And the Cassius-Clapeyron formula has been uncontroversial for a century.
PS when they say there is no top end to a Cat5, that is because they decided not to. They can absolutely decide that there needs to be a Cat 6.
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I left my "evidence" out of the OP, but if you're too lazy to look up the interview yourself, here is what Gore said:
"You mentioned my movie back in the day. The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that dem
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I left my "evidence" out of the OP, but if you're too lazy to look up the interview yourself, here is what Gore said:
"You mentioned my movie back in the day. The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that demagogic and absurd and irresponsible. It happened last October 29th, years ahead of schedule, and the impact of that and many, many other similar events here and around the world has really begun to create a profound shift."
That's fine and all, but Gore also claimed large swaths of the earth would be underwater by now.
So you're now giving us a quote. But saying that you don't have a problem with what he said in the quote, but with something else that he said, that you don't quote. So worthless then.
The trend for major storms since 1851 is negative. See for yourself.
Three problems there.
1) You claim the quoted statement is about hurricanes and imply it's only about hurricanes. Without quoting the bit that establishes your claim.
2) You can't simply link to a table of figures and say there's a trend.
3) That table doesn't cover the last 10 years.
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Uh, 2-11% increase in the top end. Pretty simple mathematics
You do realize that we can get that sort of increase by chance from the small number of such storms. And what's with that huge uncertainty in the increase of number of storms? With that much range, 0% is pretty darn close.
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So why don't we just remove the top end from Cat 3, and get rid of 4 and 5 entirely. After all with no top end there would be need for higher ratings, right?
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What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy, or that hurricanes are more extreme now?
If you want to make accusations about what someone said, you need to start with a direct quote. What have you got? After that we can discuss to what extent what he actually said, is right or wrong.
At the moment it's just coming across as a hater spewing bile.
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-Goddard Space Center [nasa.gov]
Al Gore... (Score:2, Funny)
Shouldn't he be out fighting the forest fires out west spewing carbon dioxide without paying for it?
The rest of the criticism remains valid (Score:2, Informative)
Generally, Gore’s characterization of the links between global warming and hurricane intensity is a bit fast and loose. Whereas Gore tells Klein hurricanes are “stronger now” due to manmade warming, the freshly leaked United Nations climate assessment is much more equivocal. Although the assessment says hurricane activity has become more intense in the Atlantic since 1970, there is “low confidence” of a human contribution.
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According to a leak unfinished reports based on a link that doesn't mention hurricanes.
Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid (Score:5, Informative)
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I used to have a hand-made mercury laboratory thermometer that was accurate to 0.1 degree. (In fact, fever thermometers have a nominal accuracy of 0.1 degree.) That's accurate enough to measure the difference between a weather station that was painted black or white.
Here's a graph that shows a 0.8 degree rise. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11639/dn11639-2_808.jpg [newscientist.com]
Are you saying that if in 1900 they had thermometers with greater accuracy, they would have only gotten a 0.7 degree rise?
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because no one anywhere ever thought of putting thermometers anywhere else othr than cities (heat island) and no one anywhere ever realied that concrete absorbs and re-radiates a lot of energy.
nope.
not one person.
those weather monitoring stations in that NOAA spread around the country, in the middle of nowhere, on mountain tops, at rest areas (nearly every RA has one), on farms....those are all just for show. to disguise how ignorant they are. and all those individual peoples who contribute data over the ye
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also: hand blown vs digital has jack all to do with it. accuracy to the 0.0001 degree isnt that relevant. water boils and freezes at precisely defined and well known and easily obtained temperatures (and pressures, but for the sake of simplicity since im probably the only one in this thread that actually calibrates teh damn things, we'll keep it simple).
TLDR: creating an accurate thermometer isnt difficult.
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False, there are omissions in your knowlege.
I have worked with laboratory grade spirit and mercury thermometers with calibration reports in the $200 to $300 range. Those reports can go to more than 0.5 degrees over the range of the instrument. Your claim of accuracy of hand made thermometers is laughable.
So do you imagine that merely taking the freezing and boiling points and making a hundred equal divisions gets you an accurate thermometer? Look at a calibration report and educate yourself.
We won't eve
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And putting an accurate thermometer on top of a building in the middle of a 20 acre blacktop parking lot will return skewed data... Many people tend to ignore the fact that cities have their own bubble of warmer temperatures.
I haven't actually looked at the data yet, but I suspect that the last 135 years of recorded temperature data were gathered by more than one guy in one location.
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oh, there is a compensation for it but manner in which it is done is not public nor transparent.
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Sigh, another denier (not a skeptic, mind) to killfile.
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you imagine words, there was not a word of denial, only accusations of poor scientific rigor
sigh, another victim of moden education with no reading comprehension.
creating the internet (Score:2, Informative)
Al Gore authored the legislation that made Darpanet public, which created the internet thus making his comment which was "I practically invented the internet" correct. A lot of people don't remember Darpanet.
Re:creating the internet (Score:5, Informative)
Of course he never said "I practically invented the internet". He said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet", which in a political sense was completely true.
Sure, he wasn't writing code for the TCP/IP stack, nor does he have a single RFC to his name, but the people who were doing that work have always been very clear that Al Gore was the first and for a while only politician to really understand the value of what they were doing. After the legislation you just mentioned (called the "Gore Bill") was passed, and Gore became VP, he continued to push the Clinton administration to make the Internet more ubiquitous. He also remains the only VP with a photo-op of him putting Cat-5 cabling into a school.
So yeah, he totally did that.
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Nicely stated, but we can also refer to an acknowledged expert:
"He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions," said Vint Cerf [wikipedia.org].
'Nuff said, far as I'm concerned. Snopes [snopes.com] has a nice writeup.
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Of course he never said "I practically invented the internet". He said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet"
That's the same damned thing.
Sure, he wasn't writing code for the TCP/IP stack, nor does he have a single RFC to his name
And that makes a big difference. He didn't design or implement it. He cannot claim inventor status. Now, I think it would be quite fair to say "I shepherded the Internet from infancy to adulthood." Maybe without his funding it could have been a forgotten experiment. Without his help the Internet may have been delayed for years. But that is a far, far cry from inventing or creating it.
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Al Gore authored the legislation that made Darpanet public, which created the internet thus making his comment which was "I practically invented the internet" correct
That's bullshit. The people writing the code, the people doing the design, the project managers, and maybe even the guys laying some cable, those are the people I would say created the Internet.
um, yeah ... (Score:2)
Other Hurricane Scales (Score:5, Informative)
The Saffir-Simpson scale is pretty antiquated for the exact reasons mentioned. Just measuring wind speed gives a very poor idea of how dangerous or destructive a storm will by, and gives no indication of relative size.
The better scale that the AMS is starting to lean toward is the Hebert-Weinzapfel scale, which has a much easier to spell name as the Hurricane Severity Index, or HSI.
With the HSI model, the speed of wind and the size of the wind field are taken in to account so a storm that is moderate intensity but very large in footprint, like Katrina, has a similar rating to a hurricane with a high intensity and very small footprint like Andrew. Both were similar in the amount of destruction they caused but Katrina was only SS Cat 3 at landfall, where Andrew was SS Cat 5.
But hey, lets just make jokes about Al Gore instead, cause Al Gore. Am I right here people?
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Both were similar in the amount of destruction they caused but Katrina was only SS Cat 3 at landfall, where Andrew was SS Cat 5.
Hurricane Ike produced a similar situation a few years ago. It hit Texas as a very large Category 2, causing far more damage than one would expect from the wind speed.
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Yep, I rode that storm out in Houston. It was a Cat 2 but HSI 45 while in the Gulf and low 30s at landfall. Katrina was mid-30s at landfall. Most of those points were, of course, for size.
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But hey, lets just make jokes about Al Gore instead, cause Al Gore. Am I right here people?
That never happens.
I wonder how history will judge this generation of leaders.
Re: Other Hurricane Scales (Score:3)
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Only 6? (Score:2)
Man. Bear. Pig. (Score:2)
Next you'll be telling me that "manbearpig" wasn't really his cause. Yeesh.
Let's Not Forget ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Gore is trying to be the next Tesla. Excuse me while I use by Gorebook Pro to get on the Gorenet and buy some more of these Gore carbon credits to power up my house before Hurricane Albert hits us at category 28.25.
Using Category for hurricanes is as useless that fucking red-orange-yellow-green terror alert from the early-to-mid 00s. Why don't we recognize that having a category 2 to cover range of 3 mph is patently ridiculous.
Just measure the hurricane by how fast the winds are! 250 mph winds? That sounds
Re:Let's Not Forget ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not his central message (Score:2)
his central message is that humanity changing the climate in ways that will have serious negative implications for ourselves.
No, his central message is that there is no concern. Otherwise he would not have a house that uses as much energy as a small town, nor fly constantly on a private jet... his actions are saying more than words ever can.
If he really thought there were negative consequences he would act in ways that helped.
In the end, that's how you can tell when someone is really a scammer - when noth
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Otherwise he would not have a house that uses as much energy as a small town, nor fly constantly on a private jet... his actions are saying more than words ever can.
If he really thought there were negative consequences he would act in ways that helped.
Whilst it's hard to argue that he's not a hypocrite, it's also true that if he stopped doing those things it would have sod all impact on humanity's footprint. The actions of individuals are just too small. What matters now is how governments (and I use the plural pointedly) deal with this. How governments set up energy policies. How governments reconcile capitalism's thirst for limitless growth with the obvious problem that such growth isn't possible. Whether Gore is a hypocrite or not has no bearing on th
His actions do have a huge effect (Score:2)
it's also true that if he stopped doing those things it would have sod all impact on humanity's footprint.
Just as if I stop doing anything it will have "sod all" impact also. So why should I change at all? Why should anyone?
Leaders of causes are there to present an example. His actually acting as if there is a problem will not cause a huge impact by itself, but could cause millions to act similarly. Lots of people point to his own inaction as a reason to not act, therefore his actions are in fact having
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Leaders of causes are there to present an example. His actually acting as if there is a problem will not cause a huge impact by itself, but could cause millions to act similarly. Lots of people point to his own inaction as a reason to not act, therefore his actions are in fact having a "sod some" level of impact already.
Ghandi didn't do much either all by himself. When millions did the same thing it had an impact.
I don't disagree with you: setting an example is important. Gore should do better. What I'm getting at is that dealing with our environmental impact requires rapid and sweeping changes, and some of these changes aren't palatable. A few greenies being eco-friendly isn't going to cut it. Similarly, people aren't going to make sacrifices just because some rich bloke built an eco-house and stopped flying. Ghandi isn't a great example, since he was promoting a message his countrymen wanted to hear. Nobody wants
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his central message is that humanity changing the climate in ways that will have serious negative implications for ourselves. That is not a message that is easy to dispute.
It's not easy to support either. It's not easy to deduce anything about climate because of how weak and incomplete our measurements of it are.
The point is that if you over-use your resources really bad things begin to happen. This has happened many times in the past without fossil fuels. Examples include: Easter Island, the Anasazi, the Maya, and the Sumerians.
But it didn't happen in the US which has a history of serially overusing resources.
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It's not easy to support either. It's not easy to deduce anything about climate because of how weak and incomplete our measurements of it are.
But it didn't happen in the US which has a history of serially overusing resources.
Not yet it hasn't happened to the US, but the symptoms are there. Unless you want to pretend that resources are limitless, then you have to accept there is problem that needs solving. The Anasazi were North American and the source of their collapse is worth looking into. Amongst other things they suffered from water shortages, which is something that the Western US is having to deal with right now. There are farmers in California who've realised they will make more money by keeping their fields fallow and s
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Not yet it hasn't happened to the US, but the symptoms are there.
Of course they are. Such things as using resources more efficiently or going after resources that were harder to get before. Before comparing current human civilization to past ones, keep in mind that there are unique differences to our civilization now.
It's great that you know about Easter Island and the Anasazis. But there are flaws in those analogies. They couldn't fluidly move from one place to another. They didn't have global extent.
They couldn't develop new technologies to get around their depen
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Sure, and if he didn't then there would be cries of "put your money where your mouth is" to criticize him.
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Because Al Gore.
It's the same fuckwits who screamed hysterically about Nancy Pelosi when she was Speaker. Same technique as Orwell's 2-minute Hate.
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Yes, because it harms his credibility. There's no reason for him to have lied about the temperature of Earth's core, so it's clear that he made a mistake and spoke in error. There are three possibilities here: he knew the right answer but misspoke, he knew an answer but it was wrong, or he didn't know the answer but spoke anyway.
The first case is most forgivable. Smart people get tongue-tied all the time. It happens. Still, it's an important reminder that not everything out of someone's mouth - even if they
Gah (Score:2, Interesting)
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In the case of someone who is repeatedly attacked for things he didn't actually say, by idiots with an agenda, it sometimes does. Al Gore isn't a scientist, he isn't always right, but there's a whole cadre of people who feel the need to make things up in order to justify their points.
Wonderful Leader (Score:2)
Thank God we have a person like Al Gore among us. His efforts to confront the problem of global warming may enable the saving of many lives. This is a man we desperately needed as president who was cheated by the corrupt slime of the right wing. And mentioning hurricanes has public value as well. Wind speed alone does not inform the people at risk to the degree they need to be informed. We also need some sort of local tag that can inform people as to other dangers from a particular storm. For exam
cat6 huricanes, spot on. (Score:3)
As for the hurricanes: consider this 2006 article from abcnews: Category 6 Hurricanes? They've Happened [go.com]
Excerpt:
In fact, say scientists, there have already been hurricanes strong enough to qualify as Category 6s. They'd define those as having sustained winds over 175 or 180 mph. A couple told me they'd measured close to 200 mph on a few occasions.
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This link [go.com] works.
DOH! Thanks
I'm confused... (Score:2)
I must be missing something here. The Washington Post originally claimed Al Gore said, "The hurricane scale used to be 1-5 and now they’re adding a 6." A correction was issues that claims he actually said, "The scientists are now adding category six to the hurricane....some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5." OK, but so what? Don't both statements essentially mean the same thing, even if the quote wasn't correct? Even worse, aren't both still false, as Chris Va
Re:I'm confused... (Score:4, Informative)
You're trying very, very hard to be confused.
The original quote said they were adding a 6. Full stop. 6 is coming. There's no debate.
The amended quote says some scientists are proposing to add a 6. There is a debate over whether or not to do so.
If you can't see the difference between those two concepts, you are deliberately trying to be confused.
Further, your third quote only refutes the first - It is only relevant if Gore says they are absolutely adding a 6. But he didn't.
He just forgot the (hyperbole) tag (Score:2)
Ahaa? (Score:2)
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for a car analogy that would be doing the old Coffee can and Thermite trick on the hood.
part of the problem with reporting now a days is they disect every single word somebody says and then try to find the absolute worst "spin" on it.
personally i would say that having N as the top of the scale is a good idea.
How else are you going to sort out wrecked a county > counties > state > states levels of hurricane??
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Example? of course not.
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Yeah, Al Gore is basically the Town Joke around Nashville, TN. During the three years I lived there, I never once heard his name mentioned in a respectful manner, and that includes on the local radio stations.
Most of the time you could get a laugh just by dropping his name into a conversation.
I'm sure that's nothing to do with jealousy [wikipedia.org] or partisan politics. It's not like his political opponents had any bias [halliburton.com] or anything.
I'm sure the political right is so clear, honest and straightforward that they'd never resort to ad hominem attacks.
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I wouldn't Godwin it. Adolph Hitler absolutely deserved Time's Man of the Year for 1938. Absolutely no one else on Earth shaped events like he did. They were horrible, cruel events, but no one cast a longer shadow. Not Stalin, not Roosevelt.
Your mistake is treating "Man of the Year" like it's some sort of award or honor. IT WAS NOT.
Sure, after Time's fall from grace, they lost their balls and Person of the Year became an award to honor people we like (Re: Rudy Giuliani instead of Osama Bin Laden in 2001) bu
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Yeah, Al Gore is basically the Town Joke around Nashville, TN. During the three years I lived there, I never once heard his name mentioned in a respectful manner, ...
I think that says more about the people around Nashville than Al Gore.
Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Al Gore is basically the Town Joke around Nashville, TN. During the three years I lived there, I never once heard his name mentioned in a respectful manner, and that includes on the local radio stations.
Most of the time you could get a laugh just by dropping his name into a conversation.
In the 2000 election, in Davidson County, which shares its boundaries with the city of Nashville, Gore received 120508 votes to Bush's 84117. (Source [american.edu]; scroll down to get the Tennessee data set.) So I suspect your observations say a lot more about the kind of people you choose to associate with than they do about Gore or anyone else.
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Yes, the city-county of Nashville/Davidson County is one the two blue spots in a red state. But the people I knew and worked with, and the people who staff the radio stations, and the people you talk to on the street, don't all live in the Blue Hole known as Davidson County.
You must be getting tired from moving those goalposts. Sit down, take a rest.
I see that you're not from there, and have probably never set foot on the ground there, so I'll give you a hint: check the "doughnut" counties.
Never said I was. I'm familiar with that kind of political geography, though. Let me introduce you to these fascinating concepts known as "data" and "logic" that allow us to ... oh, wait, I'm talking to a right-winger. Never mind.
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Where can I go to get paid to work for the Daily Kos downmodding your posts?
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Cause making money is evil?
It can be if the methods and results are evil.
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The reason Al Gore get's misquoted by right wingers is because they can't find much to argue with amongst what he does actually say.
So it's misquotes, insults and vague handwavey comments like "he puts out mind rot".
who can blame those who misquote him on purpose?
I can. They are liars and cheats. It says something of your lack of integrity that you don't condemn it.
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cf: Palin's "I can see Russia from my house."
People are accurately quoting Tina Fey in a SNL sketch. Unlike the Gore misquotes, this wasn't a misquote concocted for political purposes.
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Al Gore's father was a senator. He had a 'farm' the way George W. Bush has a 'ranch'. A tax dodge for his summer home.