Cold shoulder to global warming

I read some information and opinions about global warming in a friend's online journal (see "Other Journals" section, "America's Regression") today.  It reminded me of two funny (and true) stories from earlier this year.  Enjoy!

http://daily.scoopy.net/funhouse/craparchives/2004_01_15_craparchives.htm
Al Gore is schedulaed to give a speech on 'global warming' at the Beacon Theater today. Unfortunately, the speech may be called off because of the record cold temperatures, snow, and high winds.

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http://www.eureporter.co.uk/articles/article.cfm?id=1451

Gore Boosts “Honest Fiction” 
Written by Iain Murray 
Friday June 4, 2004

Former Vice President Al Gore and the George Soros-funded Move On campaign have joined forces once again to claim that the fantasy disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow” makes a significant contribution to the public debate on global warming.

In a speech at a Move On-organized event in New York City on May 25, Gore contrasted the “honest fiction” of the movie to the “Bush White House story about global warming.” Apparently, for Gore fictions are honest when they scare people into doing what he considers to be the right thing.

The movie opened worldwide on May 28. It might have been better for Mr. Gore if had waited to read the reviews, which ranged from poor to abysmal.

Richard Roeper, of Ebert and Roeper, had the most pointed words for the movement: “Memo to all the environmental activists who are relying on ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ to serve as a wake-up call about global warming: You might want to see the movie first. It's really quite silly. Citing ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ as a cautionary tale about global warming makes about as much sense as pointing to ‘Independence Day’ as proof we need to build an interplanetary defense system, because you never know when slimy, super-smart aliens will attack.

“Scientists and climatologists should relax as well. This film isn't going to send the public into a panic attack any more than ‘Finding Nemo’ convincedus that talking clown fish swim the seas.”

A. O. Scott in the New York Times (May 27) called it “a two-hour $125 million disaster” and went on to write that, “…if the film is meant to prod anxieties about ecological catastrophe and to encourage political action in response, it seems unlikely to succeed. Not because the events it depicts seem implausible, but because they seem like no big deal.”

The Boston Globe’s Wesley Morris (May 28) also panned the movie: “There's hail in Japan, snow in New Delhi, and, hey, a twister just ate the Hollywood sign! Now that's entertainment—for about 20 minutes. The other hour and 40 feel like the most expensive PowerPoint presentation ever made.”

After calling it “so very bad,” David Edelstein in Slate considered the potential political impact: “Is it possible that ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is a plot to make environmental activists look as wacko as anti-environmentalists always claim they are? Al Gore stepped right into this one, didn't he?”

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(MORE ON THE FIRST STORY...)

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1058120/posts

GORE TO DECRY 'GLOBAL WARMING' ON NEW YORK CITY'S COLDEST DAY IN DECADE
Drudge Report ^ | 1/14/2003 | Matt Drudge
Posted on 01/14/2004 5:11:05 PM PST by Dan Evans

In what political watchers are calling possibly the biggest gaffe in years, former Vice President Al Gore is set to give a speech tomorrow on the perils of global warming -- on what is expected to be the coldest day in New England in nearly half a century!

Against the advice of senior advisers, Gore is planning to appear at the historic Beacon Theatre in Manhattan on Thursday to issue an indictment of the Bush administration's "inaction on global warming."

Gore will make the warming case on a day forecasters are predicting the coldest temps in Boston since 1957, with wind chills in parts of New England plunging to 100 degrees below zero!

Even though forecasters predict Thursday night will bring the coldest temperature reading in New York City in more than 10 years [1 degree above zero], sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT that Gore is determined to deliver the speech -- hoping to make the case how "Global warming" is actually the cause of the record cold snap!

"The extreme conditions are actually the end result of the planet warming," Gore has told advisers, sources say, in explaining his motivations. "The Bush policies are leading to weather extremes."

Sources would not say whether the speech is to be given outdoors.

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http://www.canadafreepress.com/2004/media012604.htm

Media / Media Bias
It's much too cold for global warming
by Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor, Canada Free Press
January 26, 2004

Apparently not for Al Gore. The former U.S. vice-president and radical environmentalist gave a speech to an environmental crowd in New York City on January 16. In his speech, Gore called George W. Bush "a moral coward" and criticized the president for his failure to address "overwhelming and undeniable evidence" that global warming poses "a serious threat to our common future".

The fact that the 2000 Democratic nominee for president gave this speech during a time when severe cold was gripping the eastern seaboard of the United States, including New York City, was not lost on much of the media. In the outrage of the week portion of CNN’s Capitol Gang, Kate O’Beirne made fun of the Gore speech that was delivered, according to O’Beirne, on the coldest day in memory when the temperature was -1*F or -18*C.

Even the media’s most Democrat-friendly newspaper, the New York Times, couldn’t resist taking little pokes at their boy Al. According to the report in the Times, the audience had to stand in line shivering in sub-zero temperatures while waiting through security before being allowed in to see Gore give his presentation which included pictures of glaciers melting.

Needless to say there were some left wing papers such as the Philadelphia Enquirer and the Los Angeles Times that left out any reference to the freezing temperatures outside of the hall where Gore preached his doom and gloom scenario of impending global disaster.

Closer to home, there have been a few instances this month where forecasts for moderate or heavy snowfall were broadcast, only to be followed by a light dusting of the white stuff. During the first weekend in January, the media was saturated with severe winter storm warnings for Toronto that was followed by very little accumulation of snow. On a subsequent weekend, there was another light dusting when forecasters had predicted 10 to 20 centimeters of snow.

Perhaps the media could put the current forecasts and the global warming scenario together. It would be interesting to have the left lib media explain to its readers, viewers and listeners why they unconditionally accept global warming that is based upon computer models of what the average temperature will be in the year 2100, when the science of weather forecasting can’t accurately predict how much snow is going to fall two days later.

Don’t hold your breath waiting.

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http://www.californiarepublic.org/archives/Columns/Hayward/20040130HaywardTuningOut.html

Dr. Steven Hayward- Contributor
[Courtesty of Pacific Research Institute] 

Dr. Steven Hayward is Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies for the Pacific Research Institute. He is also nationally recognized for his recently released book, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order 1964-1980 (Prima Publishing, 2001), and Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity (Prima Publishing, 1997). [go to Hayward index]

Tuning Out Environmental Gore
Cold days for global warming...
[Steven Hayward] 1/30/04

Washington is besieged with snow and ice again this week, which means it is time for another meditation on -- wait for it -- global warming! Of course, I have a tough act to follow, given the perfect comic timing of former Vice President Al Gore, who recently chose the coldest day in the northeast in the last 15 years to make a speech about global warming.

Big Al was funnier still: he made the speech to MoveOn.org. If ever there was one subject about which the left won't ever "move on," it is global warming.

Earth to Gore: No one is listening.

To the amazement of environmentalists and the media, President Bush's approval ratings on his handling of the environment have stayed near or even above 50 percent throughout his presidency, despite the mountain of adverse headlines in the media, the nonstop fury of the political environmental groups, and the huge generic party advantage Democrats have over Republicans as the party best able to protect the environment. At no point in Bush's presidency have his "disapprove" ratings on his handling of the environment trailed his approval ratings.

The most recent Newsweek poll found 44 percent approving Bush on the environment, with 40 percent disapproving and the rest undecided. This is exactly where his ratings stood when he took office three years ago. In fact, Bush's environmental poll numbers are very close to President Bill Clinton's poll numbers for the comparable point in his first term, which must drive Gore out of his mind.

Gore complains that "The problem is that our world is now confronting a five-alarm fire that calls for bold moral and political leadership from the United States of America. With such leadership, there is no doubt that we could solve the problem of global warming. After all, we brought down communism, won wars in the Pacific and Europe simultaneously, enacted the Marshall Plan, found a cure for polio, and put men on the moon."

The trouble is that the Clinton administration itself estimated that the cost of the Kyoto Protocol to the American economy for just one year would be more than twice the total cost of the moon project and the Marshall plan put together. This is the reason President Clinton did not submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification, or lift a finger to implement it.

This is why in 1998 the National Environmental Trust blasted the Clinton administration for its "intransigence," for "abandoning the core principles of the [Kyoto]global warming treaty" and for "abandoning any pretence of living up to its rhetoric about cutting global warming pollution."

And in a speech in April 2002 Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, one of the leading advocacy groups for urgent action on the issue, had harsh words for the Clinton administration: "Finally, I'd like to offer a special posthumous award to the Clinton administration. For talking big about climate change on the international stage but doing next to nothing about it at home, I present the Clinton White House with the award for best costumes."

Gore and MoveOn.org are hoping that everyone will forget this inconvenient fact about the Clinton-Gore record.

copyright 2004 Pacific Research Institute

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(lol, the irony of the first sentence in this next article...)

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3969910/site/newsweek/

Gore Gets Green, Rough and Righteous: The former vice president accuses the Bush administration of being beholden to corporate interests on environmental policy.
By Brian Braiker, Newsweek
Updated: 5:12 p.m. ET Jan. 15, 2004

Jan. 15 - Some 2,500 New Yorkers slogged through several inches of snow on a below-freezing afternoon to hear a speech on global warming Thursday. The draw: former vice president Al Gore. In a multimedia presentation at the Upper West Side's Beacon Theater, Gore tore into President George W. Bush's environmental policy....

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http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/005724.php

January 16, 2004
GREENHOUSE AL'S GIFT FOR TIMING

It’s not often that a weather report makes you laugh like Santa Claus on nitrous oxide:

Residents of the U.S. Northeast shivered through an extreme blast of Arctic air and snow on Thursday as temperatures from New York to Maine plunged toward record lows.

A five-inch blanket of snow grounded more than 225 flights at New York City airports and canceled school for children in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. As much as 10 inches of snow fell in Michigan.

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http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200401\POL20040115e.html

Gore's Global Warming Speech Gets Icy Rebuke
By Melanie Hunter
CNSNews.com Deputy Managing Editor
January 15, 2004

(1st Add: Includes comments from Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.)

(CNSNews.com) - Former Vice President Al Gore's speech on global warming to MoveOn.org Thursday is getting booed by a public policy research group, after the Democrat called the president a "moral coward" who abandoned the public's environmental interests to placate his financial supporters.

Gore made his speech to a crowd at New York's Beacon Theater on the coldest day in the city in decades. He said at times it seems "the Bush-Cheney administration is wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining industries."

"While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward," the former vice president said.

Gore also took the administration to task for its efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. He accused the White House of gutting environmental laws and not doing anything to prevent global warming.

But the National Center for Public Policy Research, one of Gore's many critics, said "the speech is full of demagoguery, misleading statements, formulations intended to deceive, unsupported allegations of wrongdoing and hypocrisy."

"From a scientific and environmental perspective, Al Gore's speech today should be ignored. No serious policy person could give the speech Al Gore gave today," said Amy Ridenour, the center's president.

"It is impossible to draw any conclusion other than that Gore is keeping his options open for a future presidential run, and is throwing red meat at the left-wing activist base of the Democratic Party in order to keep his presidential hopes alive," Ridenour added. "Time constraints forbid one from commenting on all the speech's inaccuracies."

Ridenour said "the science on global warming is not settled. Even the models and theories of those who support the theory disagree with one another. Climate science is too complex to be settled."

In challenging Gore's claims, she said the Democrat failed to fight for the Kyoto Protocol during the Clinton administration.

"But if Gore believes the science is settled, why didn't the Clinton-Gore Administration submit the Kyoto global warming treaty to the Senate for ratification? Gore condemns Bush for not supporting a treaty Bush believes is harmful and unnecessary -- yet Gore, holding the opposite view, didn't fight for it where it counted," Ridenour said.

Instead, she believes, Gore is using the speech as "an opportunity to troll for votes, yet he hypocritically tells his audience that those who disagree with him have been bought by industry."

"The 'bought by industry' canard is a nice applause line for politicians to use while addressing a left-wing crowd and convenient way to undermine those who sincerely disagree without actually debating the merits of the case," Ridenour added.

"For the record, there is more money available to those on Gore's politically-correct side of the global warming issue. The money and power whores tend to be with Gore. And a serious man wouldn't be afraid to seriously examine the scientific merits of the global warming case," she added.

Ridenour also pointed out that Gore "intentionally deceived his listeners by leaving the most important facts out."

"Listen to Gore and you'd suppose the Clinton-Gore administration regulated mercury emissions from power plants, while Bush eliminated or loosened the regulation," she said.

"In fact, the Clinton-Gore Administration DID NOT regulate mercury emissions from power plants, despite eight years in office. It just talked about doing so. Bush is actually doing it. Gore's actual complaint is that he would have written the rule differently. Why did he waste eight years?" Ridenour asked.

The Republican National Committee accused Gore of engaging "political hate speech."

"Al Gore today engaged in political hate speech in an address to MoveOn.org, the same group which recently posted ads comparing President Bush to Adolph Hitler on their web page," said RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie.

"Instead of repudiating these tactics, Al Gore chose to embrace the vile tactics that are becoming the hallmark of the Democrat Party at its highest levels. Like the Democrat presidential candidates, Al Gore has once again chosen to use his time at the podium to attack the President rather than put forward apositive agenda of his own," said Gillespie.