Why Al Gore's Nobel Prize Depresses Me
I know I should be happy, but instead I am sad.
I was living in Tallahassee in 2000, which is where a great deal of the shit went down during that long, long election. It’s hard to remember, looking back, how absolutely thrilling the statistical tie and ensuing debacle were at the time. Now it’s just something that happened, something that stank. I remember driving by the Florida capitol building (which housed Jeb Bush’s own semi-legitimate regime), seeing the reporters camped out with their massive entourages, waiting to find out if we were going to have to start over and call another state-wide election. No one knew with any certainty what would happen next, or what victory would look like for either candidate.
Seven years later, and Al Gore has won a Nobel Peace prize, while George W. Bush has basically devastated the globe (Okay, it’s not that bad, but he’s still got 15 months). You could say that Gore’s Nobel is politically motivated, that it’s just a gob of spit in the eye of an already unpopular president, but the contrast between the two men is still striking, and you can’t help but wonder how different the world would be if Gore had won (or been allowed to win).
And now there’s even talk of Al Gore running again. Serious talk. I just don’t see it. Here is a man who’s heart was broken by national politics, who still managed to get out of bed and do something. I don’t think he can take another White House bid. I worry about what might happen to him.
But think about this: what would George W. Bush be doing right now, if he hadn’t won the election? Not makin’ no movies. Not winnin’ no prizes. He’d still be rich. He’d still be a jerk that nobody liked working for. And he’d still probably have tried to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis, but at this point, seven short years later, without an army, he’d only be up to like…seven or so.
Fri, October 12, 2007 at 5:25PM
Reader Comments (12)
One thing that gives me hope that Gore will run is his book, The Assault on Reason. He loves this country and loves the Constitution and I have to believe that if has a chance to save it, he will. And if he's going to jump into this race, why do it now and subject himself to 13 months of being bashed in the media like everyone else? DraftGore.com can easily raise enough money to get him on all 50 ballots. All he needs to do is agree to be the President if we vote for him. That's all I need to hear. I'll get out and start collecting right this second if he does.
And I think he knows it.
Give it some time. There's reason for hope
What depresses me is that no matter what award is given to who, no matter what leadership we have for the next 100 years; we're still fucked. We've been irreversibly fucked for a good while now. The last seven years especially were heavy loads of shitty icing on our cake.
Um... I hate to always be such a predictable conservative, but I hope you and other progressives don't forget all this global warming mush when you're 60-years old and preaching about another impending disaster because you've recognized how wrong Al Gore was. Here's an interesting article. The most important part is the final sentence, where the skeptical scientist (hey, there's a novelty!--a skeptical scientist!) says, "It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong... But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."
You mean-- Wait, are you saying?-- Yes, money doesn't just infect politicians. It corrupts scientists too.
FTA:
Well, if he has statistics, he must be right.
Well without taking sides on this issue (really, I'm not):
What does Al Gore use? Statistics + cartoons of cute polar bears drowning?
I dunno, I seem to recall Gore's movie hitting the Ethos/Pathos/Logos buttons pretty consistently. Maybe I saw the director's cut.
I found it relied heavily on pathos and really really fell short of a sound argument.
Mind you: I agree with the conclusions. I believe that humans have affected the climate and pollution has become a critical concern. And I believe the government should pass legislation that limits the freedom of corporations to ignore environment. Yes: limits the freedom of corporations. More than just incentives. Impose fines. Levy taxes. I believe in all that.
But Gore's presentation relied on anecdotal evidence and huge leaps from individual images and statistics to conclusions about general trends. Graphs without numbers and images that show the 'vast' changes at work are not scientific. It was a dumbed down argument that may have gotten to reasonable rational and even accurate conclusions (ultimately) but it gets there falsely.
Both before and after the argument his ethos is hindered by the fact that he's not an expert. And he does little to form a claim from a place of established expertise from which I trust his ability to recognize patterns more than I trust my own. And as I have heard him respond to specific challenges of his claims I have not yet been impressed by his ability to address the challenges effectively.
He answers a Marlo Lewis' criticism of his data regarding Antarctica and Greenland by saying that there is disagreement around the "edges" of the issue but the "central" issues are all completely accepted by all credible scientists. Findings that disagree with his, he merely says are based on a "so-called study" instead of countering the claim with more specific data or challenging the method of the study that yields the contrary result.
His claim of Greenland's catastrophic melting leaves out that it would take place over millenia. The lowered levels of Lake Chad are significantly affected by depletion due to damming and irrigation but Gore blames only climate change. There is no real consensus among scientists that the disappearance of snow from Kilimanjaro is due to climate change.
When Gore says "that's why the citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand" he overstates the fact that some residents have simply moved out of fear of the effects warming. His use of Katrina may be technically relevant as an example of the dangers of not heeding warnings but it's clear he is using it because it implicitly makes the claim that the effects are already upon us. It's rhetorically powerful. But there's some logical chicanery going on there. Even if the explicit claim is accurate.
He left some of these gaps in his film. Does that make all claims suspect? No. Does that mean everything in it is wrong? No. These are admittedly minor gaps. But it's not solid. Even if it's effective and even if it's right.
And I will repeat for the sake of clarifying my point: I agree that government regulation is necessary. I believe some taxes are in order. I believe science supports the conclusions.
I don't believe Gore hit the ethos/logos buttons consistently in his argument of the same.
see here for a court ruling that counters dismissal of the film, claiming: "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate." It was a quarry from which I mined several of the pebbles I just tossed.
I see Gore's expertise as a politician who has cared about and legislated on environmental matters for years and years being sufficient. He isn't a climatologist, but he listens to them. As far as your factual concerns, I got nothin'. You're probably right for the most part.
I don't want to let Gore off the hook for any sloppily made arguments, but just for the sake of contrast, "An Inconvenient Truth" may as well have been an article in a peer-reviewed journal compared to anything Dick Cheney or G.W. have to say on the subject of climate change. The Right is only concerned with factual accounting when it can ding the Left, and every other day of the week invents whatever truths are convenient (ha!) to its purposes.
When I hear the President of the United States cite an environmental study he didn't PAY for, I'll be much more open to a discussion of Gore gaming the facts. And again, I'm not saying your criticisms aren't legitimate, or that any amount of intellectual dishonesty is permissible if the other side is doing worse, but Gore's questionable presentation of a problem we all agree exists contains about a tenth of the factual and ethical errors in Bill O'Reilly's breakfast.
On the other hand, I have to admit anything with the word "Truth" in its title is just asking for it (Brian, I'm looking in your direction).
O'Reilly does more than just leap over the gaps in his logic. He has the balls to say the gaps are necessary.
I frankly find the left's eagerness to believe in global warming to be highly suspicious, and I can't help but think that it is motivated by unrelated ideology...
My thought experiment goes like this: imagine all the "science" was the same: the earth is warming, we're causing it... but now imagine that the cause is too little carbon dioxide. This would be the proposed "solution" would be to pump more CO2 into the atmosphere. An easy fix: deregulate coal-burning industries and other fossil-fuel burning machinery.
In that case, I wonder where those who currently describe themselves as "environmentalists" would be on the issue -- would Mxrk, Al Gore, and others, be willing to watch industry go balls-to-the wall in an effort to save the planet? More explicitly: my suspicion is that leftists found Marxism a losing strategy but still don't like the free market and are currently "using" global warming alarmism as an excuse to undermine market economics.
To which I respond: attack directly... it may very well have been expedient for communist politicians in the USSR to point to Sputnik as proof that their model was more effective than ours, but in retrospect, that was obviously obfuscatory political rhetoric.
I'm not convinced that human beings are causing global warming, so I see two issues: 1) free-markets and economic regulation and 2) the environment.
Curiously enough, I'm sympathetic to both causes when they are presented separately: I certainly don't want to see social security abolished or safety net programs like welfare and public schools and whatever else destroyed... I sincerely favor that kind of intervention in the otherwise free market. And, perhaps surprisingly, I am very interested in keeping a clean and relatively unpolluted planted... when I was a child, I heard "don't litter" and "recycle!" all the time, and I have never objected to those causes.
So the question presents iself: what if we are really running out of scarce resources like oil....? Should we admit this problem to our populus ("Sorry, we all need to get rid of our toys.") and force our people to cut back on consumption honestly (i.e., by tax penalties or law), OR might we confuse the issue with something unrelated, play against the ever-present human fear of apocalypse, and make them think they are being virtuous by abstaining from consumption?
The fact is, the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by natural warming cycles... not the other way around; Look that fact up.
Oh wait -- why would anyone bother to look up a fact that might undermine his economic ideology? Here's a direct link.
O'Reilly's actually made a great argument about global warming: ... haha, just kidding. He's a self-fellating d-bag.
Why is it so bad to err on the side of caution? It's not like he's asking us to kill for the climate... yet. I'm ready to you all down with a tire iron for a glacier.