The epitome of modern "conservative" thought in America:
* angry personal attacks against the opposition
* accusations of "disloyalty" for holding valid political views
* the heart of the attack, a vaugely-worded and unsupported claim that the U.S. is controlling greenhouse emissions "better" than European countries - entirely unsupported by factual evidence

It's revolting to see this sort of drivel written in a respected newspaper

Why are we doing that if there's nothing mankind can do that has any appreciable effect on the environment ? Seems like a waste of effort that's probably hurting our economy if it's doing anything at all.

OK, let's accept that this is true for a moment. It may be an unbelievable premise, but let's just pretend it makes sense... so what? We still PRODUCE more greenhouse gasses than any other nation in the world--including our environmental scape-goat China.

Even if we're GREAT at slowing that production, we're still the biggest offender. Who farking cares how we compare to European countries or any other countries? We're still producing at a rate that is harmful to the environment.

Let's focus more on solving the problem and less on petty claims about what other people are or aren't doing.

Here is a good PDF with actual data on 1990-2003 greenhouse gas emissions broken down by country/region. The US does not look to be doing very well

I thought algore was one o' dem blame America first Islamonazis?

Is he for serial?

/He has a private jet and a bullet-proof SUV
//Invented the internet.
///Lock Box

Why not convert to cleaner fuels and "green" technologies ANYWAY, and save the political debate for another day? Let's say Al Gore (and most of the world's scientists) are wrong, the great environmental champions Exxon are right, and global warming is a myth. In the end--all we would end up doing is help clean up the world, free ourselves from foreign oil, create new industry in the United States, return ourselves to the position of being a world leader and a country that leads by example, and in the end leave our kids and grandkids a safer and cleaner world.

Is that really so BAD?

i dont care about global warming because someone on the internet told me al gore went on an airplane.

RosevilleDan: Let's say Al Gore (and most of the world's scientists) are wrong, the great environmental champions Exxon are right, and global warming is a myth. In the end--all we would end up doing is help clean up the world, free ourselves from foreign oil, create new industry in the United States, return ourselves to the position of being a world leader and a country that leads by example, and in the end leave our kids and grandkids a safer and cleaner world.

Is that really so BAD?

It must be if the Libs want it, so the only valid choice is to screw ourselves over in order to spite them.

Wowsers, assuming the headline is true, it's time to celebrate by taking the Hummer around the block a few times! Yays amrerica.

Afternoon_Delight: FTFA: "So," said Al Gore at the recent Bali, Indonesia, conference on global warming, "I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that."

Well, no, Al, what we all know is that a sufficient degree of disloyalty, pomposity, vengefulness and incompetence can lead people to dismiss truths that don't lend them credence.


That's great. I love it.

Irony.

so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article.....

Weaver95: so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article.....

There you go clinging to your silly "facts" and "evidence" again.

Why do you hate America?

/stop. driving. your. SUV.

Weaver95: so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article.....

They can't, but it questions their faith, so they must attack it.

Weaver95: so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article.....

It's an Op-Ed.

Who cares what the author concludes? Except for the people who agree with him, of course...

/there are food- and sex- related threads to attend to

Weaver95: so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article.....

Had to come back to help you out with that..

Seneca Doane: OK, let's accept that this is true for a moment. It may be an unbelievable premise, but let's just pretend it makes sense... so what? We still PRODUCE more greenhouse gasses than any other nation in the world--including our environmental scape-goat China.

Even if we're GREAT at slowing that production, we're still the biggest offender. Who farking cares how we compare to European countries or any other countries? We're still producing at a rate that is harmful to the environment.

Let's focus more on solving the problem and less on petty claims about what other people are or aren't doing.

crayz: Here is a good PDF with actual data on 1990-2003 greenhouse gas emissions broken down by country/region. The US does not look to be doing very well

RosevilleDan: Why not convert to cleaner fuels and "green" technologies ANYWAY, and save the political debate for another day? Let's say Al Gore (and most of the world's scientists) are wrong, the great environmental champions Exxon are right, and global warming is a myth. In the end--all we would end up doing is help clean up the world, free ourselves from foreign oil, create new industry in the United States, return ourselves to the position of being a world leader and a country that leads by example, and in the end leave our kids and grandkids a safer and cleaner world.

Is that really so BAD?

I think what you meant to say was "I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article other than people who disagree with me, and they obviously don't know what they're talking about so I'll ignore them."

/twit
//$deity forbid that your life has to change EVEN A LITTLE because you realize you're not the only farking person on the planet

Weaver95: so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions

I don't see any conclusions. The author calls Gore disloyal and pompous, and then makes some statements without saying where they come from.

"And we know that one such truth in your case is that America is controlling its increases in greenhouse-gas emissions..."? I didn't know we knew that. And I doubt we are doing as well as we could if we actually tried.

Afternoon_Delight: FTFA: "So," said Al Gore at the recent Bali, Indonesia, conference on global warming, "I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that."

Well, no, Al, what we all know is that a sufficient degree of disloyalty, pomposity, vengefulness and incompetence can lead people to dismiss truths that don't lend them credence.


That's great. I love it.

Yeah, let's just pretend that nothing's happening, and there is no problem.

I hope you live in a coastal area.

Meanwhile, I have a scientific background and I am not sure, at all, that GW isn't a natural cycle. Perhaps reducing greenhouse gasses would be fruitless. It's still stupid to do nothing.

Remember when conservatives were also conservationists? Now, they're land and water rapists.

Bwahahaha. You can't get any more of a typical global warming/climate change Fark thread than this.

1) Trolling ignoramus headline making an "inconvenient truth" "pun".
2) Link to ignoramus article, which has a very obvious bias and whose author clearly cherry-picks useless numbers in order to substantiate his pre-concluded conclusion.
3) A couple Farkers posting some good info, along with lots of Farkers making the inevitable pointless snark.
4) Weaver95 ignoring all posts to the contrary, and claiming or otherwise implying that the article is fact and based in fact and global warming doesn't exist shouldn't be the US's responsibility is whatever the right-wing talking points of the week say it is.

In fact, this article is so devoid of content, there's only one piece of "evidence" I can refute. After doubting global warming exists at all ("Supposedly, there's a 'scientific consensus'...), the article points to a list released by Bible Belt Republican(TM) Sen. Inhofe, which has 400+ "reputable scientists" who have "voiced serious doubts about one aspect or another of the thesis." In other words, few of them are CLIMATOLOGISTS, and most DON'T EVEN DISAGREE WITH THE BASIC CONCLUSIONS, just one minor detail or three. That's normal and healthy for the workings of Science. That's how Science works. But to ignorant-of-science, I-as-a-pundit-can-outthink-reputable-researchers-the-world-over blowhards, any quibbling over minor implications means the entire community is in controversy. The truth is quite the contrary.

Now, I do have to state that I can't seem to find the actual list. There is, however, some info on the Senator that's none too flattering:

It is well-known that Senator Inhofe is perhaps the most outspoken member of Congress in opposition to the understanding of global warming and climate change that is most generally held in the science community.

His views stand in stark contradiction to the conclusions presented in comprehensive and widely-vetted publications by the IPCC, as well as reports by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences -- about the reality of observed global warming

He has consistently adopted an adversarial stance toward mainstream climate science while using his political platform to promote the views of a few "contrarian" scientists out of all proportion to their influence and acceptance in the research community. His suggestion that global warming is a "hoax" perpetrated on the American people is an insult to the science community.

Yeah. He doesn't really sound like quite the guy to rely on when talking about global warming. Something tells me this list is going to be taking pretty desperate measures. But really, that's all the children of Big Oil have to fall back on.

Pundit shepherding makes me sad. It's really quite pathetic to see otherwise not-stupid people reduced to 4th- or 5th-hand mouthpieces for large corporations.

Weaver95: so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article.....


Let me give it a shot.

According to TFA, what Gore said was "I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that.".

The article tries to refute this in three ways. First by stating how the US has controlled "its increases in greenhouse-gas emissions better than a long list of European and other Kyoto-signing poseurs." The second point is that the targets that the Bali conference were trying to come up with would "throttle economies and create vast misery". And third, the author makes the assertion that it doesn't matter anyway since climate change may be bunk.

The first point (besides the issues with an unsourced statement like that)has nothing to do with Gore's assertion. The obstruction that Gore is talking about had to do with the US delegation's stance towards targets.(p) That position was later reversed to the dissatisfaction of the current US administration.(p) So Gore is right about the US obstructing the talks in Bali, even though the US may be doing better in reducing it's emissions (still an unsourced statement, BTW).

As for the second and third parts of TFA's arguments, these ideas have been hashed over and over again in threads like this, and is beyond a simple treatment. Suffice it to say, that the science overwhelmingly favors anthropogenic climate change, and the higher costs of not acting on climate change have been covered in such places such as the IPCC Working Group II and III reports(p).

Whew. Hope that wall of text covers the basics.

Weaver95: so far I don't see anyone challenging the conclusions reached in that article.....

What is there to challenge? The author makes a statement, but then shows no empirical evidence to back up that statement. There is just a conjecture that because we have more programs listed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that we are somehow doing more than others.

But the results are what is important. While we might have these programs, are we funding them completely? Are these programs actually effective or are they just window dressings? The writer chooses not to give data showing that America is doing more than other countries... so until we have that data we cannot assume that we are actually doing anything positive.

Mordant: Why are we doing that if there's nothing mankind can do that has any appreciable effect on the environment ?

Because producing cleaner energy and reducing energy usage is a good thing to do. I don't believe that mankind is responsible for the warming trends, but that doesn't mean we can pollute to our hearts content. Cost effective pollution reduction is good regardless if global warming is/isn't man made.

crayz: the heart of the attack, a vaugely-worded and unsupported claim that the U.S. is controlling greenhouse emissions "better" than European countries - entirely unsupported by factual evidence

submitter: "America is controlling its increases in greenhouse-gas emissions better than a long list of European and other Kyoto-signing poseurs"

as far as i know, this idiot (author of tfa) might have included a loophole that is factually accurate...and it might well be the only accurate thing in tfa.

Afternoon_Delight: Show us the opposite data then.

Link (new window)
This data was compiled from data collected in 2005 based on 2002 data, because it takes time and resources to compile the data.

Afternoon_Delight: so... what does your chart prove?

That you are an obtuse dullard if you have to ask that question.

I wonder if the wingnut global warming deniers will go the way of the Bushbots: Once everything they have said will have been proven wrong beyond the shadow of a doubt, will they take a short leave of absence and then create a new Fark login to shill for the next right-wing cause in need of astroturfing? Magic 8-ball says: "YES".

I believe in global warming, but nothing that has been proposed yet will do anything about it. and some of the things that have been proposed will make america a destitute nation. infact there are so many economically retarded facets to the current global warming do gooders. like what do you do about outsourcing pollution if you dont control it in the developing world? is a factory that IMPORTS things to germany better for global warming then if it was in germany?

wake me when global warming is more than a way to express hatred of america/the west and demand absurdly unrealistic things.

To be an 'Inconvenient Truth,' an assertion first has to be a truth.

I once thought Al Gore was telling the truth, then I remembered he was just a politician and decided to investigate the other side of the "debate". The UN = The New World Order = One world Government. You might want to think twice before you get too sucked in by the propaganda!
Global Warming or Global Governance?
Link (new window)

I thought the "inconvenient truth" was him forgetting to mention the contribution cattle makes to this whole mess, as he runs cattle (doesn't he?).

And either way, I figure I'm just one person. I'm not a climatologist, I can't begin to understand this or figure out who is speaking BS and who speaks the truth. Hell, the climatologists' heads seem to be spinning over it. So I'll just try to make my own footprint as small as reasonably possible, keeping my car maintained and driving/flying when necessary and not for shiats/giggles, and turning off lights in unoccupied rooms. *shrug*

/turn off some of your flatscreens, Al, it isn't funny

aeai: I believe in global warming, but nothing that has been proposed yet will do anything about it. and some of the things that have been proposed will make america a destitute nation. infact there are so many economically retarded facets to the current global warming do gooders.

wake me when global warming is more than a way to express hatred of america/the west and demand absurdly unrealistic things.

1) Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl)

2) Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer

3) Clean or replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner

Source: Hatred of america/the west and absurdly unrealistic things. (new window)

/Rise and shine, sweetheart.

I'm so glad Al Gore put a human face on global warming so I can use ad hominem attacks against it.

Afternoon_Delight: FTFA: "So," said Al Gore at the recent Bali, Indonesia, conference on global warming, "I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that."

Well, no, Al, what we all know is that a sufficient degree of disloyalty, pomposity, vengefulness and incompetence can lead people to dismiss truths that don't lend them credence.


That's great. I love it.

What in God's name is wrong with people like you and subby? It is people like you who have destroyed conservatism. It's no wonder people dont respect conservatism any more.

I remember how Gore swore to fight Tobacco until the day he died. Then that issue was no longer sexy.

Nemo's Brother: I remember how Gore swore to fight Tobacco until the day he died. Then that issue was no longer sexy.

Tobacco lost. Al won it with the likes of RFK Jr. and Mike Papantonio. Are you more upset at Al Gore or at the Supreme Court who relieved them of having to pay the billions in fines that would have broken the tobacco industry? Somehow I don't think your problem isn't that AL Gore didn't champion your cause hard enough.

When will Al Gore realize that no one cares about Bali.

aeai: I believe in global warming, but nothing that has been proposed yet will do anything about it.

Sure there has. Kill the carbon economy.

and some of the things that have been proposed will make america a destitute nation.

Yeah, well, can't be top of the heap forever, now can you? To just come in line with the average global per capita carbon emissions the US would have to give up most of its cars, airline flights, etc.

Of course, this will never happen and so we'll muddle along with reductions of a few percent while patting ourselves on the back, making certain we don't really look behind the curtain.

I'm as guilty as anyone. This winter I will burn about 1000 litres of oil to heat my house. I could tear my house down, rebuild it full of passive solar, extreme insulation and energy saving devices, but the capital cost would be far higher than any sort of savings that would be seen over the lifetime of the building.

We've built an unsustainable infrastructure. We'll do what we can and pray for the best.

Damnhippyfreak:
What is really bizarre is the claims that :
-the Kyoto reductions would kill the economy
-America is reducing more than Kyoto requires anyway and doing fine

in the same article. Sweet

POAC: Nemo's Brother: I remember how Gore swore to fight Tobacco until the day he died. Then that issue was no longer sexy.

Dude you are so right. It was all about the sex appeal man. His sister dying of lung cancer after being a habitual smoker since she was 15 had nothing to do with it at all. You are a bastion of logic in a sea of discontent. I for one applaud you for being completely wrong!

ilambiquated: Damnhippyfreak:
What is really bizarre is the claims that :
-the Kyoto reductions would kill the economy
-America is reducing more than Kyoto requires anyway and doing fine

in the same article. Sweet

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."

Jay Ambrose must depend on his audience inability to think critically.

He contradicts Gore's statement that that "the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.".
Yet he provides absolutely no argument why this is not so.

The "progress here in Bali" refers to an attempt to come to some kind of international agreement. But rather than provide any evidence that we are supporting this progress in Bali, he instead completely sidesteps the issue and attempts to focus on progress made without any treaty, and progress on a treaty with India and China.

He further claims that these things are somehow inconvenient for Gore. How would Gore be inconvenienced by evidence that his fight against global warming, is having some success?

Jay Ambrose holds interesting views which seem to run in lockstep with this administration. I looked up a few of his pieces and apparently Scooter Libby did no wrong, Joe Wilson is the bad guy, water-boarding isn't so bad and we don't really use it anyway, etc. Oh and whatever the situation, it is obviously the Democrats' fault. Man what a sweet job! Check the White House press releases and the Drudge report, spell-check, rearrange a few paragraphs, send it over to the Boston Herald, and then take the rest of the day off to battle the looming cognitive-emotive dissonance over there in Ambrose's Bizarro-world.

Not that anyone here cares about the truth or even if it's relevent to anyone who expresses concern about global warming but...

The reason America's growth in emissions has been less is because or economy is becoming decreasingly based on manufacturing activity. Anyone wanna argue that? That doesn't mean that we aren't by far the biggest contributor, or that because Kyoto signers have still grown their emissions contributions faster than us that we should abandon all emissions concerns. And besides the aim of Kyoto was begin REVERSING emissions output. If the assertion of the author of the article is that Kyoto was a failure, then he's not diminishing the threat of global warming by emissions output in the slightest (although that seems to have been his intention), a more reasonable conclusion is that we aren't doing nearly enough!

NewportBarGuy: //Invented the internet.

1. Snopes (new window)

2. Vint Cerf says Al Gore was very important to the Internet (new window) -- that's Vint Cerf, people. Vint Cerf. It's towards the beginning of the video (the intro is long, but Vint eventually makes it on there... heh)

POAC: astroturfing?

That was the word that I was searching for. To see all the same factually unsupported talking points thrown out again and again in these threads, despite all the debunking provided by responsible and thoughtful people---

It reeks of a vested interest trying desperately to pretend that there is any real controversy here.


ASTROTURFING.

It's what Global Warming threads are made of

sparkmysmeg: I once thought Al Gore was telling the truth, then I remembered he was just a politician and decided to investigate the other side of the "debate".

What office does Al Gore hold, or is running for?

The UN = The New World Order = One world Government. You might want to think twice before you get too sucked in by the propaganda!

Indeed.

POAC: Source: Hatred of america/the west and absurdly unrealistic things.

You know what kills me? People who argue that conservation is going to kill the American economy.

First, there's the whole thru-the-looking-glass economics where waste is good. Think about that for a second--What perverse economics are in play where it makes sense to waste?

Second--let's take a very personal view here: I just bought a high-efficiency clothes washer today. I am going to save a buttload of energy both in heating water for my washer and in electricity to dry clothes, since these new high-efficiency washers do a much better job of wringing out the water before you stick them in the dryer. I save energy, and money, and I just bought a major appliance from my local dealer who is now going to have a happier holiday because of it. Who is losing in this equation?

POAC: Tobacco lost.

Not really

Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler's deputy at the time, Dan Meron.

News reports on the strategy changes at the time caused an uproar in Congress and sparked an inquiry by the Justice Department. Government witnesses said they had been asked to change testimony, and one expert withdrew from the case. Government lawyers also announced that they were scaling back a proposed penalty against the industry from $130 billion to $10 billion.

Skleenar

The energy company. Duh.

Old not too scientific data.
China surpassed the US late this year and India made large gains.
Both China and India are polluting ground water and farming areas.
China is building one coal burning generating plant per week.
None of the developed countries that signed the treaty to limit CO2 have lived up to it.
Australian who ran on adopting the treaty as the first thing he would enact when elected has now recanted after finding out the cost to the economy vs benefits.

Water Vapor is 98 percent of what controls temps and at .0373 of one percent of the problem CO2 emissions are not the problem.
CO2 is however a cash cow if you are selling carbon credits.
Forget we will run out of fresh water over much of our grain belt long before we burn up or drown in the ocean.
On a bright note the Tarpon are returning to Port Aransas Tx. the former Tarpon Capitol of the US.

They quit coming to the western Gulf in the 1930's.
They are returning! Why ?

Maybe the temps are returning to normal?
Who the Hell's knows.