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 What is it with Al Gore? Why is he compelled to exaggerate climate
change (excuse me, “the climate crisis”), and then to propose
impossible policy responses? It’s like he’s inventing the Internet all
over again!
OK, it’s pretty much standard rhetoric in Washington
to say that if you don’t do as I say, there will be massive
consequences. But to say, as Gore recently did: “The survival of the
United States of America as we know it is at risk;” and: “The future of
human civilization is at stake” — that’s a bit much, even for the most
faded and jaded political junkie.
Here’s how Gore works. He’ll
cite one scientific finding that shows what he wants, and then ignore
other work that provides important context. Here’s a list of his
climate exaggerations from his well-publicized July 17 rant, along with
a few sobering facts.
Gore: “Scientists . . .
have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five
years the entire [North Polar] ice cap will completely disappear during
the summer months.”
Fact: The Arctic Ocean was much warmer than it is now for several millennia
after the end of the last ice age. We know this because there are trees
buried in the tundra along what is now the arctic shore. Those trees
can be dated using standard analytical techniques that have been around
for decades. According to Glen MacDonald of UCLA, the trees show that
July temperatures could have been 5-13°F warmer from 9,000 to about
3,000 years ago than they were in the mid-20th century. The arctic ice cap had to have disappeared in most summers, and yet the polar bear survived!
Gore: “Our weather sure is getting strange, isn’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory. . . .”
Fact:
The reason there “seems” to be more tornadoes is because of national
coverage by Doppler radar, which can detect storms that were previously
missed (not to mention that every backyard tornado winds up on YouTube
nowadays). Naturally, the additions are weak ones that might, if lucky,
tip over a cow. If there were a true increase in tornadoes, then we
would see a definite upswing in severe ones, too. If anything, the
historical record indicates a slight negative trend in the frequency of
major tornadoes, based upon death statistics.
Gore: “ . . . longer droughts . . . ”
Hogwash.
The U.S. drought history, given by the Palmer Drought Severity Index,
is readily available and extends back to 1895. There’s not a shred of
evidence for “longer droughts” in recent decades. The longest ones were
in the 1930s and 1950s, decades before “global warming” became “the
climate crisis.”
Gore: “ . . . bigger downpours and record floods . . . ”
It’s
true, U.S. annual rainfall has increased about 10 percent (three
inches) in the last 100 years. But it’s equally true that this is a net
benefit. Temperatures haven’t warmed nearly enough to increase
the annual surface evaporation by the same amount, so what has resulted
is a wetter country during the growing season. Farmers love this,
because most of the nation runs a moisture deficit during the hot
summer growing season. Increasing rain cuts that deficit.
Gore:
“The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make
dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our
ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis.”
This is likely James Hansen
of NASA, Gore’s climate guru. He has written and given sworn testimony
that six feet of sea-level rise, caused by the rapid shedding of
Greenland’s ice, could happen by 2100. Why didn’t Gore defer instead to
the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization with
at least a few hundred bona fide climate scientists? Its 2007
compendium estimates that the contribution of Greenland’s ice to sea
level during this century will be around two inches. Gore
also forgot the embarrassing truth that there has been no net change in
the planetary surface temperature, as measured both by thermometers and
satellites, for the last ten years.
It would be easy to go on,
particularly about the preposterousness of Gore’s “solution,” which is
to produce all of our electricity from solar, wind and geothermal
sources within ten years. I’ll leave that for the energy economists to
tear apart. Source
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