Good points, but he also has some perks to fight the political machine set in front of him: He won't be desperate for funds. There are many who feel guilty for electing Bush over him. He'd have as much or more momentum as Hillary or Obama. If he did join, he'd be sure beforehand from his campaign analysts that the Gore hating core is able to be offset by other votes. I'd think his personality and speeches would be a more significant factor in his electability.
White House ‘Eviscerates’ CDC Director’s Senate Testimony On Global Warming Today, Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the “Human Impacts of Global Warming.” Gerberding told the committee that global warming “is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans,” but gave few specifics, instead focusing on CDC’s current preparation plans. From her statement: CDC officials are now revealing that the White House heavily edited Gerberding’s testimony, which originally was longer and had more “information on health risks“: The White House’s deletions included “details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming and the scientific basis for some of the CDC’s analysis on what kinds of diseases might be spread in a warmer climate and rising sea levels.” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today put out a statement, stating, “The Administration should immediately release Dr. Gerberding’s full, uncut statement, because the public has a right to know all the facts about the serious threats posed by global warming.” The Bush administration has not only repeatedly attempted to suppress global warming facts, but has also muzzled its officials from speaking out. A January report found 435 instances in which the Bush administration interfered into the global warming work of government scientists over the past five years. The administration also attempted to censor the government’s top global warming scientist, James Hansen, who has been outspoken about the dangers of climate change. http://thinkprogress.org/
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/?ic Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’ Intro by Joe D’Aleo, Icecap, CCM I was privileged to work with John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel in the year before it became a reality and then for the first of the 6 years I was fortunate to be the Director of Meteorology. No one worked harder than John to make The Weather Channel a reality and to make sure the staffing, the information and technology was the very best possible at that time. John currently works with KUSI in San Diego. He posts regularly. I am very pleased to present his latest insightful post. COMMENTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING By John Coleman jcoleman@kusi.com it is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental wacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus. Environmental extremist, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridicules manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment. I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it. I suspect you might like to say to me, "John, look the research that supports the case for global warming was done by research scientists; people with PH D's in Meteorology. They are employed by major universities and important research institutions. Their work has been reviewed by other scientists with PH D's. They have to know a lot more about it than you do. Come on, John, get with it. The experts say our pollution has created an strong and increasing greenhouse effect and a rapid, out of control global warming is underway that will sky rocket temperatures, destroy agriculture, melt the ice caps, flood the coastlines and end life as we know it. How can you dissent from this crisis? You must be a bit nutty. Allow me, please, to explain how I think this all came about. Our universities have become somewhat isolated from the rest of us. There is a culture and attitudes and values and pressures on campus that are very different. I know this group well. My father and my older brother were both PHD-University types. I was raised in the university culture. Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a PHD in Meteorology and become a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture. They all look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else. And, there is something else. These scientists know that if they do research and results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish. But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way. So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas. Then their like minded PHD colleagues reviewed their work and hastened to endorse it without question. There were a few who didn't fit the mold. They did ask questions and raised objections. They did research with contradictory results. The environmental elitists berated them brushed their studies aside. I have learned since the Ice Age is coming scare in the 1970's to always be a skeptic about research. In the case of global warming, I didn't accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science. I am not alone in this assessment. There are hundreds of other meteorologists, many of them PH D's, who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy is based on bad science and is not valid. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming. In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.
Well then his life long expertise is irrelevant, because climate change is the science of climatology, not meteorology. Meteorology is only concerned with short term forecasting, certanly no more than several months into the future. Seriously, a meteorologist has perhaps a little more insight into the specifics than the average person, but they are in no way capable of being called experts on climate and I also have no doubt he knows that and is intentionally muddying that distinction to make his point sound more relevant.
Wasn't there something in the last few years about Repubs and private weather services... oh right, here it is... So, there's a little background. Some more background... here's Wiki's bio of Mr. Coleman... OK, now look at the article itself... Not exactly a rigorous scientific method we're talking about here. What papers? What scientists? What did you study? All that said, it'd be really great if he's right... but that hope would also be a crappy foundation to base a policy on.
Yeah, "I have thought about it. I know I am right," went out with Aristotle... But maybe "natural philosophy" will make a comeback, given current science and math education in the US.
That's where I stopped reading. If I turned that in to my 10th grade English teacher, I would have gotten an F.
The founder of the weather channel stepping forward to speak out against global warming is about as relevant as the founder of the oxygen network deriding women receiving pathaloma vaccinations.
The following was a GREAT moment in American History. <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GyKlcQ_HiD4&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GyKlcQ_HiD4&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
You do know that meteorologists do a lot more than just predict the weather right? I'm not saying the guy has more insight than a climatologist but to say the guy has only a "little" more insight than the average person is just plain false and you know it.
Yes, meteorologists do (or should) know more about climate than the average person. They typically do not know more about climate than the average climatologist. The consensus view among actual climatologists is that global warming is real, it is almost certainly primarily man-made, and that it will become a very significant problem in the next few decades, particularly if no action is taken to counteract it. Plus, the article in question is so badly written as to lack any credibility and so weakly supported as to lack any weight.
Not true. They are very specific, limited, and practical in their training. Everything they do is all about some version of weather prediction. They are all about short term trends and all of their training develops from baseline conditions of what weather does in the current climate. None of their training as anything to do with the things that a climatologist deals with and they have no training for making statements about what happens if baseline climate conditions change.
Gore and Bush, Together Again By BEN FELLER – 49 minutes ago http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jiUG2__c1X2VWmcooQmcaZ2gK2ywD8T5K0900 WASHINGTON (AP) — Talk about an inconvenient truth. Al Gore finally won his place in the Oval Office on Monday — right next to George W. Bush. Forever linked by the closest and craziest presidential race in history, the two men were reunited by, of all things, White House tradition. Gore was among the 2007 Nobel Prize winners who were invited in for a photo and some chatter with the president; Gore got the recognition for his work on global warming. The two men stood next to other, sharing uncomfortable grins for photographers and reporters, who were quickly ushered in and out. "Familiar faces," the former vice president said of the media. Bush, still smiling, added nothing. The two also had a 40-minute meeting in the Oval Office, part of Bush's effort to show some outreach to his longtime rival. Bush aides said it was private and would not comment on it. Gore, trailed by the press as he left the White House very publicly on foot, allowed that he and Bush spent the whole time talking about global warming. "He was very gracious in setting up the meeting and it was a very good and substantive conversation," Gore said. "And that's all I want to say about it." Gore's presence added unlikely buzz to a photo op that normally would have been buried by Bush's Mideast peace forays. It is not like these two cross paths much. They have not met privately since then-President-elect Bush paid a visit — short, and not that sweet — to Gore's residence in December 2000. That was back when the acrimony was fresh, in a country still in disbelief over an election that seemed never-ending. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court certified Bush's 537-vote victory margin over Gore in Florida to settle the outcome. Since then, Gore has not shied away from criticizing Bush; his latest book, "The Assault on Reason," is a relentless attack against the administration. And the White House's response when Gore won the Nobel Prize was less than giddy. Never mind all that. "I know that this president does not harbor any resentments," White House press secretary Dana Perino said. "Never has." Indeed, the White House tried to make clear that Bush was hosting Gore not out of obligation, but genuine interest. Bush personally invited Gore. The White House changed its original date to accommodate Gore. And then there was the private Bush-Gore meeting, too. When it was over, the scene took a bit of turn for the weird. Gore said he didn't want to comment. But with the media waiting for him, Gore and his wife, Tipper, walked out along Pennsylvania Avenue and up 17th Street, apparently toward their car — even though the White House is adept at helping people slip away unnoticed if they want. The media horde followed the Gores for several minutes. When a veteran reporter asked Gore if he missed all the attention, he adeptly turned the question around. "When you leave this beat," he said, "I'm gonna ask you."
I thought it was classy of Bush to host Gore, particularly given that he could've just not rescheduled when Gore wouldn't have been able to make it on the initially-scheduled day.
