Drudge Blows It: Latest Attack On Gore’s Global Warming Stance Falls Flat

[CatWoman]

This morning, the Drudge Report has an enormous headline implying that Al Gore got it wrong in his movie, An Inconvient Truth, when he said that global warming would create more intense storms:



First, Gore never predicted that there would be more storms in 2006. He said that global warming made it more likely that there would be more intense hurricanes in the future.

Second, the fact that there were fewer hurricanes in 2006 does not suggest that global warming is not real or not dangerous. There are other factors — on a year-to-year basis — that can reduce the number and intensity of hurricanes. The article Drudge links to makes it clear that these factors were in play:

Storms were starved for fuel after ingesting masses of dry Saharan dust and air over the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists say the storm-snuffing dust was more abundant than usual this year.

In the season’s peak, storms were curving right like errant field goals. High pressure that normally hunkers near Bermuda shifted far eastward, and five storms rode the clockwise winds away from Florida.

Finally, a rapidly growing El Nino, a warming of water over the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifted winds high in the atmosphere southward. The winds left developing storms disheveled and unable to become organized.


http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/27/drudge-gore-global-warming/

[Phredicles]

1. Isn't Drudge supposed to be retired?

I thought he was going to retire if the Democrats took Congress.

[Mabus]

6. I heard that too

Instead, he's decided to retire his old lies and come up with new ones.

[marmar]

2. The concept of long-term patterns seems to be lost on right wing assholes...

Anything can happen from year to year, but look over a decade and the trend is unmistakable. Matt Drudge is such a troglodyte.

[stepnw1f]

7. He Will Have to Eat His Own Words

Just a matter of time..... Global Warming is a game to bet on. Global Warming is here and getting worse by the day. SO yes.... Drudge is a Troglodyte.

[neoblues]

11. They miss the bigger picture all the time...

Anal retentive and unable to understand science, what a combination. Had Gore said there's a 70% chance of increased storms (he didn't, of course, obviously) and there turned out to be a 69.98% increase (which would be closer than any technique for determining what constitutes an increase in storms could measure anyway), Republicans, by and large, would have jumped on it! Aha! Gore was wrong! 69.98 is SMALLER than 70%!!! See? Global Warming predictions are ALL wrong, ALL of them, no matter what they are!!! (Illogical)

So, am I saying all Repubicans are STUPID? Well, it IS VERY tempting--but, no. However, I will say that in my opinion, ALL Republicans are Wrong or Mistaken (sometimes even intentionally, though that makes no sense) in the majority of their beliefs.

[stepnw1f]

3. Oh Beautiful.... Drudge Setting Himself Up for Failure AGAIN

Anyone denying Global Warming at this point should be ignored and should have their credibility publicly scrutinized. It's only a matter of time.... no argument will make GLobal Warming's effect go away. I think this guy actually believes the shit he is spouting which is another knock on his credibility.

[Crankie Avalon]

4. Drudge was the same guy who made a stink about how...

...Gore gave a speech on global warming..."on the coldest day of the year!!!!!"

Apparently not a big picture guy, that Drudge.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Drudge cannot tell the difference between weather and climate,

actually, I believe he can. He is just deliberately misleading his followers as usual.

[sarge43]

5. Reading Drudge for scientific facts is like going to Karl Rove

for lessons in political ethics.

These people are so desperate now that they'll say anything.

[itsmesgd]

8. Drudge Blows

I like the first two words from your post.
With Thanksgiving last week, I had a chance to "preach" against Drudge to those family members who thought that Drudge had some hotline to god. I shot holes in nearly every headline on their page from Wed and Thur. I turned them on to actual news sites, with no real bias: Rawstory, Huffington Post (a tad liberal-but not as overt as Drudge), and a few other blog-driven sites that use actual news as the basis for the sites. I also tried to turn them onto DU, but they are not big "readers". They prefer to be told what to think in a quick headline without having to do any research on their own.
Thanks for the conversationtal ammo. DU.

[KSU Wildcat]

10. Let us face it...

We are doomed. If global warming is a natural phenomenon, there is nothing we can do about it. If it is caused by human activity, it is too late to do anything about it. There is absolutely no way to get around it. I fear the end is near.

I am sorry to be so gloomy but facts are facts. All indicators show that global warming is steam rolling. There are too many people in the world creating heat and pollution and there is nothing we can do.

[wtmusic]

12. We are certainly doomed if we accept misinformation like

"global warming is a natural phenomenon", and "there is nothing we can do". :eyes:

[KSU Wildcat]

13. What can we do?

There are way too many people in the world and too many industrialized nations polluting the world. If it is man made it is too big of a gorilla to get off of our back. Global warming is happening too fast and it is way too late to turn it around. The world is on a self destruct mode because of overpopulation.

I am hoping that it is just a cyclical phenomenon and will turn around. That may be just wishful thinking on my part.

[wtmusic]

22. If you haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth"

I would highly recommend it.

There's a lot we can do. It may not guarantee our survival forever, but will certainly prolong it. If you've seen the film, then you know about the people who claimed there was nothing we could do about holes in the ozone layer. Thanks to a determined international effort to ban CFCs the problem is on its way to being fixed (it will take about 20 years).

It's going to take sacrifice, and political action which will not be expedient and will not be popular--but it's our only hope.

[KSU Wildcat]

24. The ozone hole??

The ozone hole is getting larger.http://www.latinamericapress.org/article.asp?lanCode=1&artCode=4919 There are other sites that point this out also. Just do a Google search for ozone hole.

It is going to take more than the US to turn global warming around. All of these other just recently industrialized countries will have to participate also and I really do not think that they will be willing. They are enjoying their newborn wealth.

Global warming created by humans has been let out of the bag and there is no getting it back in. The world has reached a saturation point population wise. There is just too many people occupying this fragile planet.

[wtmusic]

27. Hmm

As the consumer of 25% of the world's energy, yes, it's up to the US to turn things around. We have the highest per capita energy consumption of any country on the planet, and it's mostly disposable energy. So if you want to continue choking everyone with that Hummer, I'm going to be working to make sure you pay bigtime for the luxury.

[KSU Wildcat]

30. 25%??

This is indeed startling. I thought it was 35 to 40% at the very least. The very best we could possibly do is cut back our emissions in half. I doubt seriously if that is attainable. The other up and coming industrialized countries are gaining on us fast. In a few short years they will surpass us spewing greenhouse emissions.

The curtailing of emissions on our part will send more manufacturing overseas which will help our cutting back on emissions but will not help the global situation. As we transfer more and more manufacturing abroad there will less gas guzzling suvs here which will also help curtail our emissions. The down side of this is the countries that we ship jobs to will be more prosperous and they will be driving the gas guzzlers.

These newer industrialized countries will not be concerned about green house emissions and the pollution as we are.

Things indeed look bleak.

[wtmusic]

32. These newer industrialized countries will not be concerned??

China's emission standards, in two years, will beat our own until 2016:

"China has emission standards for cars sold in their country that will, in two years, exceed what we are aiming for here in California for the year 2016. So are automakers gearing up to make cars for the Chinese market? Perhaps they are (secretly), but meanwhile they are suing California to keep those emission standards at the low federal levels, presumably so they can continue to sell those ever popular, planet-busting behemoths that make them more money."

Also:

'But it won't stop global warming' some have declared gloomily. It is disturbing to me that so many succumb to this outlook that nothing will come of anything. It's been bad for so long, they say, why would I, now, be so embarrassingly Pollyannaish? Why should I be the one to do something when so few others will? Why should I be so inconvenienced? "It won't work, it's not enough, it's too late", they whine.

<>

There is a scene in the movie that is easy to miss, but it holds a key to the path we must take. In this scene a research scientist is pulling out an ice core. The ice cores can be dated as precisely as tree rings. He points to a brownish part, after which the ice is clean again.

"There right there, is when the U.S. passed the clean air act in 1970".

It took me a moment to realize, hey Antarctica is a long way from the U.S. yet here we can see a definite change from one point to the next that is attributed to a policy change in this one country. No wonder everyone is waiting for the U.S. to wake up."

http://www.energybulletin.net/17288.html

[KSU Wildcat]

33. I am glad you are optimistic.

You probably sleep better at night than I do. I keep thinking of the ozone hole getting bigger. We have replaced an efficient refrigerant (r12) with a refrigerant not so efficient (r134a) at a great cost and the hole keeps getting bigger every year.

The US is not the big polluter, it is the rest of the world. We have no control over them so the problem will get worse and worse.

If man is truly causing global warming, it looks very bad for the future.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. I am old enough to remember the first Earth Day

And I remember well the gross images on my TV screen of polluted lakes and rivers and skylines. The most graphic image from that time period was the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, which was full of so much pollution that it spontaneously caught on fire. I can still remember my dad shouting to my mom to "come take a look at this, Dear" when Walter Cronkite was talking about the burning river. It came to be known as the most polluted river in the US. Randy Newman wrote a song called Burn On about the Cuyahoga River.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River

Ten years ago, on a trip back east, I deliberately drove to northern Ohio so I could take a look at this river. I was amazed. No fires today. It was beautiful and very clean. I heard this river was one of the first projects taken on by the newly formed EPA in the early 70s.

So if they can clean up the burning Cuyahoga, they can alter human activity to prevent more damage to our environment.

[Shakespeare]

15. Oh, there's plenty we can do, and it's not hopeless.

You should educate yourself on what can be done (and IS being done). We've got a long way to go, but we haven't yet reached the tipping point.

[neoblues]

16. And even before Global Warming (G.W.?) makes itself unavoidably undeniable

We'll be facing enormous water shortages (which others have mentioned as a cause for the Bush's alleged purchase of land over a gigantic aquifer in Paraguay). No doubt we'll have many, many other problems.

Perhaps we should be calling Global Warming, Global Climate Change instead. Perhaps even Catastrophic Climate Change (CCC). There are so many things about Climate that matter to us...

I figure that mankind's influence on climate is like rolling a bowling ball. Mankind goes through a few paces in which they are controlling the ball (approximately 1900-2000 CE), then at some point they've let go of the ball. At that point, where it goes depends on how well they handled the ball before letting it go. If it runs true down the center of the lane; mankind aimed well and the climate and ball continue working as we were so lucky nature had arranged them to be. If it goes off into the gutter; the climate is destroyed. If it's just a bit off, mankind gets a few points for having stewarded the ball/climate well. Not a perfect analogy; when are they ever. Point being, in the real world, we don't know when it's too late--we don't know when we've let go of the ball and it's going to go wherever it's going to go. Some Scientists have said we have ten or twenty years before climate change is irreversibly catastrophic--meaning it will get worse and worse no matter what we then do. Who knows.

Anyway, I agree. The future can hardly avoid being filled with dramatic changes. Some say we won't see those kind of changes for fifty years or so... who knows. It's interesting that it's quite possible that if we've gone too far, the warming may just continue to get worse and worse and worse until even the slightest semblance of a livable environment will disappear--for many millions of years, if it ever recovers. It's so easy to think that if we just stop polluting--once it becomes obvious that it's either stop or go extinct--that it will then start to recover, no matter how far along we've gone.

It's also rather interesting that we'll start seeing increased shortages of oil in an entirely separate, but also significant problem for mankind, in ten, twenty, fifty years; who knows how long. Already mentioned was the shortages of fresh water; again in the same time frame.

Wow. This century looks like a rite of passage. If we survive it, maybe we'll have learned how to live without destroying our environment. One thing seems sure, there's no way 6.5 Billion people (that too's gotta stop) can have even a small part of the lifestyles we've known here. The world couldn't handle it, and besides, there isn't enough oil. If only we'd have begun to run out of oil forty years ago? What if we come up with viable alternate energy? Then the population will continue to grow; people will have more; and unless we change--we'll destroy the world (or make it more and more terrible to live in) through overpopulation or some other thing. In any case, it's going to be painful, but at least it will also be facinating (spoken like a scientist wannabe). If only mankind could learn self-discipline and come to intelligent global decisions about things like population... (considering U.S. politics, the notion of the world coming to consensus over anything seems incredibly remote). Oh well... we'll see.

[Strelnikov_]

19. Is It Not Immoral Not To At Least Try?

Is it not immoral not to at least to try to reverse the trend in anthropogenic global warming, irregardless of the actions of the rest of the world?

Or do we adopt a riot (a.k.a. Republican or Libertarian) mentality?


I can proudly tell the young I have never voted for Republican filth.

I can, with some hesitation, tell the young when I became aware of climate change/energy depletion I significantly changed my lifestyle to reduce my impact.

I want to be able to apologetically say to the young, "we tried".


And for those taking the 'rapture' approach to mitigation, there are some passages regarding respecting His creation. Think the landlord is going to be happy?

. . .

So it's raining really hard. There's a fundamental Christian living beside a river and it starts to flood. The sheriff's deputies come by and tell him he should leave before the river cuts off the road.

"The Lord will save me," he tells them.

The river is up to the front porch and the some folks come by in a boat and tell him to hop in and they'll take him to safety.

"The Lord will save me," he tells them.

The water rises above the first floor and the man has to climb on his roof. The National Guard comes by in a boat and begs the man to come with them.

"The Lord will save me," he tells them.

The waters keep rising and the man is clinging to his chimney. A helicopter appears and lowers a rope, but he refuses to go, telling them "The Lord will save me."

Finally he is standing on top of the chimney and the river is still rising.

"Lord," he calls out, "Lord, why have you forsaken me?"

The sky splits open and a HUGE voice booms out... "I sent two boats and a helicopter... What more do you want?"

[Kashka-Kat]

17. IDIOT!!!!! record typhoons in the south pacific this year but I guess those don't count cos they

didnt affect us.

[Beelzebud]

18. It's only real if it happens in Amurica!

[KSU Wildcat]

20. It is too late... We are doomed..

As stated in an earlier post, it is too late. Even if the US stopped manufacturing and polluting, industrial revolution is happening in what used to be third world countries, and they are not going to slow down one bit. It is out of our hands.

Maybe the UN can do something about it but that is doubtful. The UN is really pretty impotent. I see no way out of this.

As far as Drudge, he just provides links to other publications around the world. He writes very little his self. He is harmless.

[trumad]

21. I just did a search on your earlier posts

It's a hobby of mine.... You've got an interesting way of defending the indefensible.

[KSU Wildcat]

23. Global warming is a serious problem...

Is that indefensible? We have got a serious problem (global warming) facing us. I think that problem is indefensible. It took a while for me to really believe that it is a problem, but I did some reading and I am convinced.

Are you one of the skeptics about global warming? If you are, do some reading and you will be convinced also.

[Vanje]

35. I dont think thts what he meant

but i think you know that.

[Vanje]

34. What do you drive,Wildcat?

I drive an Urban Sporty motor scooter....when I'm not carpooling or on my bike,or walking.

[Kashka-Kat]

36. what if you were a compulsive smoker starting to suffer ill effects

chronic cough and choking on phlegm, cant get up the stairs without getting out of breath and your general health &immune system shot to hell

would you just say Im gonna die I got cancer might as well smoke myself to death?

I know I'd choose to find another way to deal w/ my emotions rather than numbing them out w/ nicotine. I know this bc its exactly the choice I made when I stopped smoking 15 yrs ago.

Even if theres no turning back theres still some room to mitigate the damage. What a strange fatalistic all or nothing point of view you have- says as much about YOU as anything else!

[Blue_In_AK]

25. We're having a colder winter here than we've had for years...

...but I still believe in global warming.

[NYCGirl]

26. That's why it should be called "climate change", which encompasses extremes

in weather.

[lovuian]

28. Gore is RIGHT the conveyor belt in the Atlantic is shutting

down. which means the Atlantic is cooling off meanwhile the Pacific saw some of the strongest Typhoons this year


Gore is right on!!!

[goforit]

29. And the clock keeps ticking! They will be under water.

[VOX]

31. Being a wingnut means being increasingly ignorant; why are they so proud of that?

Just how stupid does one have to be to *really* believe that mankind can have no impact on the environment?

A very simple exercise: Put 100 people in the same room, and in a few minutes it's stuffy, humid and uncomfortable -- just because people are there, breathing.

From that elementary exercise, how hard is it to go to the bigger picture, where you have Earth, a finite place, being overdeveloped, deforested, fouled with pollutants, overpopulated, etc. ???

:grr: