5 Oscars that are Al Gore's for the taking

Following his Oscar win last night, Al Gore's supporters are over excited. They are urging him to enter the race for the Presidency.

Here are five Oscars in wait for the former Vice-President should he follow this advice:

Worst Mistake Made by a Supporting Actor: Even with the support of the Clintons, Gore lost. This time the Clintonistas will be out to get him. They are a pretty scary bunch.

Best Foreign Language Film: Is there anything in Gore's new career that suggests he now speaks the language of Middle America? I'd say not. He always knew how to be a good policy wonk speaking the inconvenient truth. That's an entirely different skill.

Special Academy Award: Given to people past their sell by date when they are no longer able to win the real prize.

Best Makeup: It's his for the asking if he can repeat the bizarre claims about the internet that enlivened his last campaign

Least Original Screenplay: Failing to realise that you've lost and it's time to give up is the oldest political failing. Do his advisers really want to see him repeat a classic error?

This, right now, this is the high point of Al Gore's 2008 Presidential campaign. The crowds are cheering for more. It's the perfect moment for him to quit the race.

Comments

[Peter Nolan]

Wow, Al finally wins an election. Maybe we need a recount?

If not, maybe a bit of remedial science tuition might be good for the ex-Veep?

"For all of Gore's later fascination with science and technology, he often struggled academically in those subjects. The political champion of the natural world received that sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118 his senior year. The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet avoided all courses in mathematics and logic throughout college, despite his outstanding score on the math portion of the SAT. As was the case with many of his classmates, his high school math grades had dropped from A's to C's as he advanced from trigonometry to calculus in his senior year."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A37397-2000Mar18

That lack of application comes through in the film. Compare his oh-so-carefully presented tableau, implying, but never coming out and saying, that Katrina was an outcome of global warming, in flat contradiction to the study by Kerry Emanuel of MIT on hurricanes and global warming.

To quote an open letter signed by Prof "the main hurricane problem facing the United States: the ever-growing concentration of population and wealth in vulnerable coastal regions. These demographic trends are setting us up for rapidly increasing human and economic losses from hurricane disasters, especially in this era of heightened activity. Scores of scientists and engineers had warned of the threat to New Orleans long before climate change was seriously considered, and a Katrina-like storm or worse was (and is) inevitable even in a stable climate."

http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/Hurricane_threat.htm

Have a read of Prof Emanuel's FAQ as well:

"Q: Is global warming causing more hurricanes?

A: No. The global, annual frequency of tropical cyclones (the generic, meteorological term for the storm that is called a tropical storm or hurricane in the Atlantic region) is about 90, plus or minus 10. There is no indication whatsoever of a long-term trend in this number.

2.) Q: But I’ve noticed that there seem to have been lots more hurricanes, beginning around 1995.

A: You probably live in North America, Central America, or Europe and are talking about hurricanes in the North Atlantic. (It’s important to remember that only 11% of all hurricanes occur in the Atlantic, the rest are in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.) There has been a large upswing in the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes, beginning in 1995. This corresponds to an upswing in tropical North Atlantic sea surface temperature, which is very likely a response to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases. It is important to note that the late summer and early fall tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature closely follows the Northern Hemisphere mean surface temperature (including land), which makes it unlikely that regional Atlantic climate phenomena are affecting tropical sea surface temperatures ( and thereby affecting hurricanes) on time scales of more than a few years. In particular, there is no evidence for "natural cycles" of either Atlantic hurricane activity or tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature.

3.) Q: Is the intensity of hurricanes increasing with time?

A: There is some evidence that it is. Records of hurricane activity worldwide show an upswing of both the maximum wind speed in and the duration of hurricanes. The energy released by the average hurricane (again considering all hurricanes worldwide) seems to have increased by around 70% in the past 30 years or so, corresponding to about a 15% increase in the maximum wind speed and a 60% increase in storm lifetime."

Remember where Al Gore had his apprenticeship - this film is the climate policy version of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"

We need to start listening to the scientists, but very few journalists do. Probably the New Statesman's Mark Lynas and the FT's environment team are the only ones in the UK who have both the skill and the integrity to cover this area.

We need to stop trying to be amateur client scientists and use our own knowledge as consumers, politicians, businesspeople or engineers to DO something, not fall into either hysteria or complacency.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/01/news/climate.php

[Tris]

"There has been a large upswing in the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes, beginning in 1995. This corresponds to an upswing in tropical North Atlantic sea surface temperature, which is very likely a response to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases."

Thanks Peter. That puts Gore's case nicely. In summary - Manmade greenhouse gases have very likely led to an increase in Hurricanes similar to Katrina.

Well, I left out any jibes about either sleeping with interns or wrecking entire countries. They seem pretty childish, and are the kind of thing that will keep the guy with the best track record on the biggest problem we face out of office.

[Peter Nolan]

At the risk of wasting space in the comments posting further questions from Prof. Emanuel's paper:

7.)Q: Does this mean that we are seeing more hurricane-caused damage in the U.S. and elsewhere?

A:There is a huge upward trend in hurricane damage in the U.S., but all or almost all of this is due to increasing coastal population and building in hurricane-prone areas. When this increase in population and wealth is accounted for, there is no discernible trend left in the hurricane damage data. Nor would we expect to see any, in spite of the increase in global hurricane power. The reason is a simple matter of statistics: There are far too few hurricane landfalls to be able to discern any trend. Consider that, up until Katrina, Hurricane Andrew was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. But it occurred in an inactive year; there were only 7 hurricanes and tropical storms. Data on U.S. landfalling storms is only about 2 tenths of one percent of data we have on global hurricanes over their whole lifetimes. Thus while we can already detect trends in data for global hurricane activity considering the whole life of each storm, we estimate that it would take at least another 50 years to detect any long-term trend in U.S. landfalling hurricane statistics, so powerful is the role of chance in these numbers.

8.)Q: I gather from this last discussion that it would be absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming?

A: Yes, it would be absurd.

9.)Q: OK, maybe we won’t see global warming effects in landfalling hurricanes for another 50 years or so, but shouldn’t we still be worried about it?

A: The answer to this question is largely a matter of one’s geographical and time horizons. For U.S.-centric concerns over the next 30-50 years, by far the most important hurricane problem we face is demographic and political. Consider that Katrina, as horrible as it was, was by no means unprecedented, meteorologically speaking. More intense storms have struck the U.S. coastline long ago. The big problem is the headlong rush to tropical coastlines, coupled with federal and state policies that subsidize the risk incurred by coastal development. Private property insurance is heavily regulated by each state, and political pressure keeps rates low in high-risk regions like tropical coastlines, thus encouraging people to build flimsy structures there. (Those living in low-risk regions pay for this in artificially high premiums.) Federal flood insurance pays for storm surge damage, and like private insurance, its rates do not reflect the true risk. We are subsidizing risky behavior and should not be surprised at the result

On the other hand, if one’s view is not confined to the U.S. but is global, and/or one’s time horizon is more than 50 years, global warming may indeed begin to have a discernible influence on hurricane damage, especially when coupled with projected increases in sea level.

None of this is advanced physics, just basic English comprehension of what a scientist who is concerned about the public debate and who seems to be independent is saying.

Remember, we had a unanimous cross-party vote against the Kyoto treaty in the Senate, including Kerry, Feinstein and the rest.

Then, Gore was happy to let Joe Lieberman, his former running-mate and supposed friend twist in the wind over his re-election, the same senator who's been making all the running among Senate Democrats on global warming with the Climate Stewardship Act.

What we have in Gore is yet another sleazy politician. Not that he'd be too bad as a President - he would probably make my second choice after Senator Clinton. His record, as a hawk on Iraq, an economic conservative, a champion of NAFTA shows that the MoveOn crowd are deluding themselves if they think Gore is their man rather than an American version of David Cameron.

If you want to celebrate a politician for tackling global warming, start with Maggie Thatcher and her 1988 Guildhall Speech. It was the dash to gas and the deregulation of the electricity industry which has kept the UK under its Kyoto targets, not Al Gore and certainly not the swampies.

The whole saga shows, that environmentalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

[Peter Nolan]

It could be even worse!

The betting markets are showing a high-probability that Gore will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

http://news.us.newsfutures.com/market/market.html?symbol=GORENPPY

Still, after Carter and Pinter, I can't shake off the suspicion that the Nobel committee would plump for President Ahmadinejad instead for his committment to reducing Iranian carbon emissions.

[Firozali A.Mulla MBA PhD]

Where is ET?