Hiatus

Everyone needs a break sometime - even a poor old Dog Named Kyoto, so I've decided to take this opportunity to explore other parts of this wonderful planet.

Rest assured, I will be looking for evidence of anthropogenic global warming wherever my travels may take me.

And trying my best to keep cool.

Ahhh...

Al Gore: architect of fear

An excellent article by Marc Sheppard: Al Gore's Real Assault on Reason:

In the opening chapter of The Assault on Reason, its seldom reasonable author accuses the Bush administration of exploiting people’s fears “to short-circuit debate and drive the public agenda without regard to the evidence, the facts, or the public interest."

[...]

What’s most confounding about these stinging allegations is that they were penned by the very same man whose Oscar awarded fear-exploitation-film proclaimed – in a gross distortion of prevailing evidence and facts -- that: “Humanity is sitting on a time bomb."

Al Gore has made the exploition of people's fears into an art form. Hypocrisy is no stranger to the former VP. He is himself one of the great architects of anxiety and fear:

As fear of impending doom plays such a crucial role in hysteria-building, it’s no wonder that AGW has been blamed for everything from lighthearted Costa Rican Frog Die-Offs, Australian cockroach migration, Swedish beetle-infestation, Great Britain’s puffin decline, a rise in hay fever and even staff shortages at Bulgarian brothels to deadly serious outbreaks of Malaria, Dengue Fever, West Nile Virus and Cholera, the killer Indian Ocean tsunami, and even last week’s Lake Tahoe wildfires.

In fact, when U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon wrote a WaPo piece this month actually blaming the genocide in Darfur on AGW, his was, not all that surprisingly, not the first. In fact, back in April, Stephan Faris had suggested in an Atlantic Monthly article that:

“The violence in Darfur is usually attributed to ethnic hatred. But global warming may be primarily to blame.”

A good read.

Gore should call for an end to distortion of science

From Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny in the Chicago Sun-Times

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads,

"We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth."

Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.

If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.

A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

The author, James M. Taylor calls on Al Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science and goes on to list a number of distortions that Gore could easily correct - if he means what he says.