Al Gore and the Climate of Extremes

Featured on YouTube via TED Talks, former US Vice President Al Gore speaks about some alarming new signs of global warming.

In the video Gore talks about the alleged spread of oxygen-depleted "dead zones" in the oceans, and about methane emissions from lakes, including a video where some scientists set these methane emissions on fire. He then finishes up by debuting some campaign ads directed against clean coal technology.

Yet as it turns out, Al Gore is not at all a reliable source of information about global warming -- or as alarmists re-term it when challenged about the lack of a demonstrable warming trend, climate change.

Speaking via ForaTV, UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change member Patrick Michaels demonstrates how quickly Gore's sensationalist rhetoric can be exposed for what it truly is.

It quickly undermines any faith in nearly anything that comes out of the former Vice President's mouth, and reminds viewers that while individuals like Gore want to insist climate change will be the end of the world, and that we should all be extremely terrified of it, there's more afoot than these alarmists would have us realize.

It's difficult to overlook the extent to which climate change alarmism is being treated as a pretext for various political programs.

In Canada, Liberal MP Ken Boschoff let a wealth-transferring agenda slip when talking about Stephane Dion (and Michael Ignatieff's) carbon tax.

George Monbiot has been amongst the most extreme of the alarmists, writing a book that insists that climate change will reach a "point of no return" if not stopped as immediately as possible. Monbiot, who is not a climatologist, had also previously spoken on CBC's Ideas radio program about the need for a global Parliament -- something that legally-binding climate treaties like the Kyoto protocol could arguably (but not necessarily) lead to.

On the other side of the coin there are those who deny climate change outright. As Gore rightly notes, many of them profit from oil and coal -- just as those who profit from oil and coal will rightly note that Gore has a political agenda that is served by climate change alarmism.

It would be foolish to deny that climate change is a problem. At the very least, it would be foolish to deny that there aren't countless other good reasons to reduce carbon emissions and other industrial emissions -- air quality being paramount among them.

But to allow Al Gore and his extremist cohorts to terrify people ignores both the tendency of these people to promote alarmism at the expense of scientific fact, and the political agendas they seek to promote.

Patrick Michaels is absolutely right. People need to stop feeding the climate of extremes.

Heavy Metal and the Culture of Censorship

In Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Canadian film maker Sam Dunne traces the historical development of heavy metal music. Applying the discipline of anthropology to heavy metal, Dunne turns up some intriguing elements to this music long wrongfully written off as "unsophisticated" and "stupid".

While its amusing to hear Dunne describe Val Halen as metal, and even more amusing for Dunne to treat Victoria, BC as some kind of musical backwater, Dunne turns up intriguing links with more standard "sophisticated" fare like Wagner or Beethoven.

Considering the nature of heavy metal, the film should also provoke deep questions about the nature of the censorship directed at it.

Many would have people believe that conservatives are the driving force behind censorship. But the involvement of Tipper Gore -- while her husband, future Vice President and future Democratic Presidential nominee, Al stood quietly by -- puts the lie to this.

In fact, the Parents' Music Resource Centre, the group under which Gore organized her famed campaign against heavy metal -- which, interestingly enough, drew the ire of John Denver of all people -- was formed by Tipper Gore, Susan Baker (wife of Reagan-era Republican James Baker), Pam Howar and Sally Nevius.

The PMRC was largely a non-partisan affair. And while conservatives would later target artists like the Dixie Chicks for political purposes, and liberal activists would frequently target Ted Nugent, Gore made it apparent that it isn't merely conservative partisans who raise the flag of family values.

It can even be said that the moral panic that Tipper Gore raised over heavy metal staged something of a prequel for the moralization of the climate change panic that her husband would later promote.

Unlike the targeting of musicians like Ted Nugent and the Dixie Chicks was based on issue politics -- the Dixie Chicks drew ire for appealing to the anti-war movement, and Nugent continues to draw ire for his opposition to gun control -- the censorship directed at heavy metal must go deeper. This is because heavy metal is more than just music -- for many people it's a lifestyle. In countless ways the music is almost cult-like. More than a mere subculture, heavy metal is a culture all its own.

Because the subject matter of heavy metal is so intense and so extreme, it's simultaneously incomprehensible and threatening to people who don't share that intensity. When heavy metal bands make political statements, they make them in terms so extreme that the message can often be lost. Few individuals who aren't frequent listeners of Metallica recognize the anti-war message at the heart of "One". If not for the music video, featuring clips from Johnny Got His Gun, even some regular listeners may have missed the message. Many may still.

Not that the stereotypes don't have any credibility. Many of the bands featured in Headbanger's Journey play directly into the sterotypes that characterize shows like Metalocalypse, such as Mayhem, who wear necklaces made of skull fragments from their former lead singer, who killed himself with a shotgun.

Certainly, these bands do appear to lend credence to the condemnation of reactionaries. But to judge an entire culture based on its most extreme few examples always leads to the folly of narrow profiling.

Censorship is always based on whatever culture aspires to dominance, and is an effort to try to enforce those values on other cultures that don't share them. It's the last sad act of reactionaries who cannot tolerate cultural dissent.

A Picture Indeed Worth a Thousand Words

What do these two men have in common?

Two simple things: both talk a big game vis a vis global warming. And both, when actally in office, did nothing about it.

They obviously share one third thing in common: neither has realized that actions do speak louder than words. The inaction of these two men is worth millions of words.

'Nuff said.

Global Warming or Virtual Reality Redux -- Virtual Reality or Outright Intimidation?

Debate over climate change takes confusing turn

As previously mentioned, a significant portion of the debate over climate change revolves around a virtual reality ideology, wherein climate alarmists use the spectre of global warming to answer any question that can concievably be asked, regardless of whether or not it has any basis in logic.

A recent episode in the climate change debate has either highlighted this tendency, or highlighted the tendency of many climate alarmists to resort to threats and intimidation. Only the reader can decide for him or herself which they think is the case.

The matter revolves around an email recieved by Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow Comparative Enterprise Institute. The email, sent by Michael T Eckhart, read as follows:

Marlo –

You are so full of crap.

You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.

Mike

In the email, Eckhart basically threatens to lob accusations at Lewis of being a bought-and-paid-for corporate monkey. It's a popular accusation amongst climate alarmsts. In An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore levies that same accusation against supporters of natural variance theories regarding climate change.

It is entirely possible that Eckhart believes that Lewis wrote the article in question out of pro-business tendencies, in which case we see a virtual reality ideology -- in which the only valid answer to a question regarding how someone can disagree with the "consensual science" on climate change is "selling out" to major corporations -- at work. However, it is possible that Eckhart only wants to silence a critic of the aforementioned "consensual science", in which case he is clearly trying to intimidate Lewis.

However, when examining the original article, Echkart's outburst becomes more absurd.

While Lewis does, in fact, dispute the severity of warming trends to date, Lewis also finishes his article by advocating for worldwide research & development investment in renewable energy and elminating tax barriers to investing in such technologies.

Eckhart is the president of ACORE (American Council On Renewable Energy). As such, while Lewis raises his reservations about Kyoto and global warming, what he ultimately suggests would actually not only benefit Eckhart and ACORE, but would actually be more effective toward reaching Kyoto's targets than CO2 restrictions.

Yet, Eckhart is either too locked within his virtual reality belief system, or too intolerant of any form of dissent to simply accept Lewis' disagreements in order to benefit from his advocacy of support for Eckhart's industry.

Either way, Eckhart's email paints a very unflattering picture of the most rabid climate change alarmists.

Eco-Hero or Eco-Ego? Vol.4 - Live Earth

Today, to commemorate the "Live Earth" concert series, the Nexus of Assholery offers a special double-shot of Eco-Hero or Eco-Ego.

Al Gore: environmental messiah or flat-out hypocrite?

Today, people the world over are partaking in the Live Earth concert series, as nine festival-style concerts, on all seven continents (including the first-ever live performance in Antarctica) seek to raise awareness about global warming.

At the center of all this -- at times, in holographic form -- is Al Gore, the ultimate mastermind of the Live Earth concerts (a blatant rip-off of the Live 8 concert series in 2005), and the star of An Inconvenient Truth, the recently-christened favourite film of environmentalists and general left-wingers the world over (Michael Moore -- who recently thought Apple should postpone the release of the I-Phone so it wouldn'd draw attention away form his most recent film -- must be feeling absolutely abandoned).

With Al Gore so solidly in the world's climate change-related spotlight, an exploration of his history and his true commitment to averting climate change warrants exploration.

Al Gore was actually addressing climate change -- vis a vis global warming -- in the 1970s, when global cooling, a theory that entailed that Canada would eventually be covered entirely in ice -- was still en vogue amongst climate alarmists.

Throughout the '70s and '80s, Gore co-sponsored various congressional hearings regarding global warming, among other things (including toxic waste). Unsurprisingly, Gore became an advocate of the Kyoto Protocol, which he signed "symbolically" on 12 November 1998, after the US Senate essentially vetoed participation due to a lack of binding targets for developing nations. Bill Clinton's administration never submitted the bill to the senate for ratification.

When Gore's film was released, he instantly became a left-wing media darling. Yet, it didn't take long for scientists to point out that many points in the film were either exaggerated or outright misrepresented.

Particularly damning is Gore's assertion that there is no significant disagreement on climate change, and that all the peer-reviewed scientific work insists that human activity is responsible for climate change. Yet, deeper investigations of much of the "peer-reviewed" work that suggests this reveals that such review can be politicized, wherein advocates of a certain structure of scientific belief ensure their work will be supported by submitting it to peers who are already pre-disposed to agree wth them. In order to insist that the process of peer-review overwhelmingly supports them, all these individuals need to do is ignore competing peer-review networks (which can also be politicized in the same way, although not all may necessarily be).

Of course, peer-review doesn't work well in terms of isolated networks. This is a tactic used by individuals on either side of the issue to avoid having to engage in any form of debate, and it's fundamentally unscientific.

Back to Gore. Gore has often defended his exaggerations -- including immediately refutable claims about the impact of climate change on hurricane patterns -- as either "necessary" (to get the message out), or as posed in "layman's language".

More recently, Gore has suffered from controversy regarding the usage of electricity in his home. Earlier this year, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research released a report on energy usage in Gore's home, noting that Gore's home consumes 22,619 Kilowatt-hours of electricity in a month -- more than twice what the average family uses in a year.

To be fair, the Nashville Electric Service did not confirm any requests for information on Gore's energy usage. However, one Gore's assistants noted that Gore was in the process of installing solar panels on his home, and Nashville's WKRN-TV noted that Gore purchased 108 blocks of "green electricity" (generated by solar, wind, and methane gas) from the Nashville Electric Service's renewable energy initiative.

However, it should be noted that "green" electricity used wastefully is still wasted, and is thus unavailable for use by other sources. This, by necessity, increases demand for electricity generated from non-renewable sources.

Perhaps the most telling moment in An Inconvenient Truth is the portion of the film when he addresses his 2000 presidential defeat. This is a man who is still moping over his loss -- as wrongful as it obviously was -- to George W Bush. However, it should be remembered that, as the speaker of the senate, Gore shut down complaints from various African-American members of congress and effectively annointed Bush president himself.

And as Gore's holographic appearance in Tokyo demonstrates, Gore has proven himself to be more than a bit of a glory-hound.

Al Gore has engaged in more than his fair share of loud-mouthery north of the border, as he as at times has accused the governing Conservative party's green plan -- demonstrably superior to Kyoto -- of "fraud", and has accused them of being funded by "big oil".

Yet Gore's own performance tells an entirely different story. Despite his early attempts to draw attention to what he seems to believe is a pivotal world issue -- which he deserves credit for -- the example that he himself sets for the world is less than admirable. Furthermore (and finally) his tendency to insist that the splotlight shine so brightly upon himself, his tendency to pout over past defeats (even when they are largely self-inflicted) and attempt to garner political capital by attacking foreign leaders who are making greater contributions toward alleviating climate change than he is are very illuminating to say the least.

Al Gore so desperately wants to be seen as an eco-hero. That is what makes him an eco-ego.


The artists: how much do they really care?

Things aren't quite so black an white among the artists supporting the Live Earth concerts with their talent. Among them, there are some who legitimately claim to care bout the issue of climate change. Others simply can't.

Like many rappers, Ludacris and Snoop Doggs are known for their love of vehicles -- from SUVs to big pickup trucks to fuel-economy-challenged sports cars. Snoop Dogg's fleet of cars was featured in an issue of Lowrider magazine. Fellow participant Xzibit may be best known for hosting MTV's Pimp My Ride, wherein various cars are made even harder on the environment by upgrading them with various unnecessary luxuries, such as flat-screen TVs (bad idea in a car, any day of the week).

Metallica, a recent addition to the London concert, are renowned for the size of their stadium stage -- actually two stages connected by a walkway. The accompanying lighting and sound rigs have ensured that Metallica is one of the heaviest big-rig users in the history of the business. In the excellent documentary flick Some Kind of Monster, lead singer James Hetfield is even seen ripping around in a gas guzzling open-cab roadster. To make matters worse, he's also shown recieving a speeding ticket. That can't be helpful for his already-massive carbon footprint. In the companion book, This Monster Lives, filmmaker Joe Berlinger describes the band's absolutely astonishing reliance on private jets to constantly fly back-and-forth across the country.

Frankly, Metallica's participation, like that of Ludacris, Xzibit and Snoop Dogg, is disingenuous.

And in all honesty, how much are we supposed to believe The Pussycat Dolls could possibly care about climate change? In their annoying reality-TV show The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll, the would-be Dolls spend more time backstabbing one another and fawning over expensive watches than doing or saying anything that suggests they know -- or care -- anything about what's going on in the world. It's much more likely that The Pussycat Dolls are only on board because it's become so fashionable to care about global warming.

Likewise for Rhianna. Her "ah-ah, ah-ah, yeah, yeah... Uhm-BRELL-ah" wouldn't much good to her under conditions of a climate-change induced drought. Fortunately, she likely doesn't really believe in it.

On the other side of the coin, however, are acts like The Beastie Boys and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, who have always cared about political causes. The Chilli Peppers, for one, have their earthchild-rocker cred intact, having contributed to a variety of environmental benefit CDs, including the third volume of Music For Our Ocean Mother. The Beastie Boys have defined political activism through their music, especially their support for Chinese-occupied Tibet. Live Earth is certainly nothing new to either one of these acts.

Garth Brooks has also addressed environmental issues before -- well, okay, fair enough. In his video for "We Shall Be Free", which he and his wife Trisha Yearwood sang together at the Washington DC concert. Brooks has always been known for his willingness to address social issues, from domestic abuse to terrorism.

Madonna is well-known for her support of various political causes. She has also been accused of kidnapping babies from impoverished countries, but those criticisms turned out to be less than fair. Melissa Etheridge may have wrote a corny and, frankly, painful-to-listen-to song in support of Al Gore's film ("I'm throwing off the carelessness of youth/to listen to An Inconvenient Truth -- yech), but it's unlikely she knows any better.

Yet, at the heart of the matter, one very fair criticism can be directed at the Live Earth concerts: they don't do much of anything.

Sure, they make it fashionable to care about climate change. Then again, the Live 8 concert series made it very fashionable to care about poverty in the developing world -- a much more demonstrable problem, which actually outranks climate change in the Copenhagen Consensus. Yet, two years later Bob Geldof and Bono are complaining about the lack of aid actually delivered.

Furthermore, more questions could be raised about the artists themselves. In 2005, many questioned how much of their own money multi-millionaire celebrities would donate to wipe out developing-world poverty. Today, questions are being asked about the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by the artists playing Live Earth. What are they doing to fight climate change? The Foo Fighters admit, "not enough."

Then there's the matter of the concerts themselves. Rock concerts use a lot of electricity, most of which is generated from non-renewable resources, and involves the emission of a lot of greenhouse gases. The Live Earth concerts -- like the Live 8 concerts before them -- are using up a lot of resources -- in terms of money and energy -- that could otherwise be invested in alleviating climate change (most notably in the development of green technologies).

The artists themselves have to settle for an even split. Those using the Live Earth concert to promote their own careers or simply make themselves look environmentally conscious (especially when it can be demonstrated otherwise) can count themselves amongst the eco-egos.

There are, however, some legitimate eco-heroes in the bunch -- one just has to look a little harder to find them.

Colbert Misses the Point on University Movie Protest

Colbert Not Quite Savvy Enough About his Inconvenient Truthiness

Let me start off by saying how much I actually like Stephen Colbert. His neocon character surely infuriates some views -- particularly president George W Bush -- but he aptly exposes the hypocrisy of the kowtowing American "conservative" media (I would argue that many of these outlets aren't pandering to conservatives per se, so much as they're pandering to the administration in general).

Let it also be known that he can identify a true neocon when he sees it -- thus, his "Tip of the Hat" to the Liberal party for their infamous "soldiers with guns" ad in early 2006.

But the human condition being what it is, even the most astute observers will be wrong from time to time. As was the case on last night's Cobert Report broadcast, when he commented on the case of Barry Lucier, a Roger Williams University student who was forced to watch An Inconvenient Truth for course credit.

As Lucier describes it, in order to graduate, he was required to take a lab course wherein one of the mandatory lab sessions was replaced with a screening of Al Gore’s film (presumably still mandatory, but explicit details are scant).

Colbert describes the entire situation in fairly cut-and-dried terms (provided one can read past the subtext), "at a 'college', Barry was forced to learn about something he didn't already think," Colbert lampooned. "When you confront young people with information that doesn't jibe with what they already believe they can get confused."

Colbert’s implicit theory: Lucier came to university to learn. Suck it up and go to class.

"He's enrolled in a class where the teacher thinks he knows more about the subject than the students," Colbert quipped.

Yet, if the professor in question -- or Colbert himself -- knew more about the film itself it's unlikely that Colbert would make such a joke.

While controversial on its own due to the “heated debate” that surrounds the climate change issue, Gore’s film courted further controversy by also being extremely inaccurate. Various observers have dug into the film and found it wanting on the scientific facts. In the film, Gore also exaggerates some of the potential consequences of climate change.

Gore even cranks up the climate change terror alert level by citing 9/11. This is actually a very sophisticated psychological technique whereby Gore can predispose his audience to become terrified of climate change by reminding them of the fear they felt on September 11th, 2001. Gore also proves that nothing is sacred by trying to forge a bizarre link between climate change and a near-fatal accident suffered by his son.

But perhaps the greatest disservice that Gore and Colbert do to the climate change debate is exaggerating the amount of consensus there is regarding the issue. In the film, Gore claims that no peer-reviewed publication has published anyone suggesting climate change is due to anything other than human activity. Colbert -- perhaps jokingly -- makes his own estimate about the proportion of scientists who disagree, “Sure, there’s a vast consensus of global warming science, but doesn’t the opposing five percent deserve fifty percent of the time?”

Au contraire: while it can be demonstrated that the various exhaust gases produced by human activity (particularly the combustion of fossil fuels) lead to a demonstrable greenhouse effect, the natural variations in the planet’s climate have been demonstrated as well. Gore’s film was found to have ignored key variations over the past 1000 years in order to portray the “hockey stick” model that suggests there has been little variation.

The claims on behalf of climate change alarmists that the opinions of such scientists are invalid unless they study a field directly related to climate change notwithstanding, the alarmists have their own problematic members. Aside from Gore (who is not a scientist), George Monbiot -- author of Heat doesn’t study a directly related scientific field. He’s a zoologist.

Where they haven’t successfully managed to dispell dissent with science, alarmists have resorted to declaring dissent ”immoral”, or outright slandering their opponents by giving them “awards” that suggest they believe the earth is flat.

Despite all the basic academic issues surrounding the film, and ethical issues surrounding the debate, Colbert dismisses Lucier’s concerns as “rigidity”. “The Barry Luciers of the world are entering a mindfield of knowledge. Who knows what destructive information they’ll be confronted with next?”

Then again, when one spends as much on tuition as one does at an American post-secondary institution, one also expects that everything they will be taught will be accurate. Gore's film politicizes the contentious science surrounding climate change -- using his film to try and teach the subject only politicizes the classroom. Unless a direct effort is made to debate the film -- which, in all fairness, may have occurred (again, details are scant).

“He might double-plus think despite unwell school.”

Whereas Colbert should double-plus think despite unwell movie.