Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Al Gore in Warsaw


Yes, the world’s favourite eco-warrior was in Warsaw this week to collect an award given by the Confederation of Polish Employers.

The business club gave the Super Vector Award to the failed presidential candidate (he failed to beat George Bush let’s remember: anyone who can muster up a loss to that chump is not fit to be president in the first place) for ‘facts and figures regarding the threats to the global climate, but avoided a moralising tone.[?]’

I think they must have seen a different film than I did. Even Gore has said that global warming is not a political question but a ‘moral question’ – and the film was incredibly finger-waggingly moralising throughout.

And he spent a lot of time banging on about ‘The Science’. But, and this is an inconvenient truth, it has since been pointed out that his ‘science’ is not all that it could be.

Quite why a group of Polish businessmen would want to give Gore an award is quite strange when you think about it. Gore, when he becomes world president, will put such environmental tax on business (and customers) that will make their eyes water. So why would capitalists want that kind of burden?

Maybe it is because if a company can ‘look green’ it does their brand the (globally warming) world of good, and covers up the fact that their products are not developing quite so fast as their eco-profile. Can the green movement have given the brand industry a boost? Not only have Greens saved the polar bear but they have also given nasty big business a nice little side-line in building up their green credentials.

18 comments:

Gustav said...

They gave Al Gore an award because it would make the news and get their organization publicity. That's all it seems like to me.

Anonymous said...

Yawn. More finger wagging and moralizing from the BR denying global warming. Almost like you gotta meet a quota for this or that category of news.

beatroot said...

Geez
I think that there are sinister implications in that last remark, of conspiracy la la that I am just going to ignore it, because too silly. And stop calling me a denier.

Gus
For sure getting Gore over here is big coup. But just look at corperate advertising at the moment. Green, green, green. Yawn.

beatroot said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Sinister as if I'm going to don a black hat and long trench coat to start following you around reporting your every move to the evil environmentalists so they forcefeed you non-GM Brussels sprouts?

So you don't deny that man-made global warning is an imminent threat to our and the earth's existence?

Yea. Exxon is green, green, green.

Big bizness is green, green, green.

beatroot said...

So you don't deny that man-made global warning is an imminent threat to our and the earth's existence?

That depends on our response and the extent of the problem. Both those questions have complicated answers. I think that economic growth for this part of the world and in Asia, Africa etc is a priority and I do not want to see more developed countries getting in the way of the obvious benefits of that.

Anonymous said...

Human activity has and is effecting the climate, but to what extent and are we in danger of “an imminent threat to our and the earth's existence”? Science can’t give us a straight answer on this point. The politicized and emotional debate is counter productive, qualified people in the scientific community head for cover on this because rather then doing good science there is an atmosphere of you must take sides. This is just not the way to promote good science and form public policy on the result.

I saw Al Gore’s climate change documentary, it took only moments to realize something was very wrong with the material presented. It was evident to anyone with a science background that this was Hollywood not science. I applaud him for taking up this cause , but why loose your credibility with bullshit?

Good for the Polish business community “green” is marketing’s new word for the next decade.

More or less on the same topic, are Polish coal miners going to hell? There are 7 new sins, one of which is polluting.

The additions include polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice. Add that to the original deadly sins of gluttony, anger, envy, and lust.

Anonymous said...

The vast majority of credible scientists do indeed have an answer to the question posed.

The politicization of the issue comes from the BR-57s.

BTW, there are seven, not four, deadly sins. And istm the other "new" ones fall under the original seven. And genetic engineering per se wasn't included.

Brad Zimmerman said...

I don't care if there is conflicting science regarding the question of whether or not humans are adversely changing the earth. I, unlike the wait-and-see and volcanoes-and-cow-shit-are-bad-too!! types, would prefer not to assume that what we're doing has no effect. Rather, the opposite. And why not?

There isn't a drain plug for all of the toxic emissions from the various factories, cars, power plants and other major sources of pollution. And it's not as if we can all just pop over to Mars for 10,000 years while everything degrades naturally.

The deniers as just plain lazy. Too lazy to bother doing anything about their wasteful (and thus polluting) habits, even in defiance of the economic gains if they were to do something about it.

If the global warming crowd is right and we need to cut back on all the pollution, then we cut back, eliminating the stupidly wasteful things, and hopefully the Netherlands doesn't end up under a meter of North Sea.

If the global warming crowd is wrong ...what've we lost? SUV's? Coal-fired power plants? Single-paned windows, regular old-school lightbulbs, plastic bags blowin' in the breeze, your next-door neighbor burning leaves in his yard? Boo-hoo.

Anonymous said...

"...Greens ... have also given nasty big business a nice little side-line in building up their green credentials."

So it's the greens' fault that their message is being hi-jacked by business interests? Maybe they should just shut up then?

Preposterous!

Anonymous said...

geez said...”The vast majority of credible scientists do indeed have an answer to the question posed.”

This is just it; they don’t have a conclusive answer “they think”. There are plenty of alternative views in the scientific community.

From: www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

“The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide-open breach for any latter-day Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.”

Brad Zimmerman said: “If the global warming crowd is wrong ...what've we lost? SUV's? Coal-fired power plants?”

If they’re wrong then some of the policies will cause serious economic damage. As it stands all the green technologies are just not good enough to offer themselves as an alternative that amounts to much than a small fraction of our energy needs. And of course nuclear isn’t going to fly. The only real hope is with future technological development still decades away.
Do you think any Polish government of any political shade can go to the Polish people and suggest they live a portion of the day without electrical power and forget any notion of buying a car? Just try getting elected.

Ever single effort in the western world to go green amounts to an absolute zero when balanced against the refusal of China, India and Russia to participate until they get their economies advanced to western standards. Not to mention numerous smaller developing economies that take the same position.

Anonymous said...

There are plenty of alternative views in the scientific community.

There are plenty of not very good scientists.

IF you want to believe these guys, go ahead:

"At the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank that receives funding from Exxon Mobil, chief executive William O'Keefe and President Jeff Kueter issued a statement urging "great caution in reading too much" into the report."

And the report mentioned, of course is that of:

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of hundreds of scientists from 113 countries, said that based on new research over the last six years, it is 90 percent certain that human-generated greenhouse gases account for most of the global rise in temperatures over the past half-century.

Declaring that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the authors said in their "Summary for Policymakers" that even in the best-case scenario, temperatures are on track to cross a threshold to an unsustainable level. A rise of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels would cause global effects -- such as massive species extinctions and melting of ice sheets -- that could be irreversible within a human lifetime. Under the most conservative IPCC scenario, the increase will be 4.5 degrees by 2100."

You really want to take that 10% chance?

Of course, the political problems you note in dealing with global warming are quite real. But let's not start by denying the reality of global warming, heh?

Anonymous said...

We are being asked to buy into a climate prediction for the next 100 years by a field of science unable to give an accurate forecast for the following week. And these people are equipped with super computers and satellites.

What is the mathematical model and isn’t this still being hotly debated excuse the pun.

“Ever since the great mathematicians of the mid-20th Century, we've been trying to create predictable models for unpredictable systems...economics, weather, bubble chamber patterns, casino games, the stock market.
These mathematical scientists failed. The outcome of that was Chaos theory which said that as few as 3 independent variables can predict highly "intelligent" and yet unpredictable behaviour.
Climate falls into that category. For chaotic systems, the past is absolutely NOT a predictor of the future, no matter how many years of data. There are no "regular cycles" -- yes, you may see ups and downs in a few narrow periods, but over long long times you will see ... well, craziness! ”

This science is at the level of “our best guess is” and that is not an accepted standard in the realm of science for anything close to certainty.

Anonymous said...

Well, if you want to place your faith in chaos...

And everything is unpredictable...

And it's just a matter of strength and will...

Sounds like...

Anonymous said...

Just out of interest, Gore did beat Bush. The problem was that he couldn't beat the Supreme Court judges (many of whom were appointed when papa bush was president or vice-president) who ordered the recount to be stopped. If the statewide review of all ballots had been allowed to take place, it would have become known that Gore won more votes in Florida and so should have been president.

But why let facts get in the way of your oh-so predictable green-bashing?

Anonymous said...

BTW, while daily or weekly weather forecasts fall into "that category," the study of climate change is a bird of a different feather.

And look again at the incredibly large rise in global temp over the past hundred or so years -- a rise like never ever before, not just a matter of some rise or even a dramatic rise in a short period. The rise that confronts us now is even way bigger than the past dozen or so rises in short periods combined.

Anonymous said...

Eat, drink and be merry! After us the flood.

Anonymous said...

[url=http://firgonbares.net/][img]http://firgonbares.net/img-add/euro2.jpg[/img][/url]
[b]autocad drafting, [url=http://firgonbares.net/]buy office 2003 enterprise[/url]
[url=http://firgonbares.net/][/url] downloadable softwares problems with adobe.owl.dll with adobe photoshop cs3
Adobe Macromedia Apple [url=http://firgonbares.net/]buy cheap microsoft software[/url] selling software in the
[url=http://firgonbares.net/]shop 7.0 software[/url] buy second hand software
[url=http://firgonbares.net/]manager software price[/url] windows vista themes
buy cheap software review [url=http://firgonbares.net/]buy adobe software from[/b]