(August 9, 2009 - Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images North America)
Good ole Al Gore was at it again yesterday as he spoke to reporters at the Global Climate Change Summit in Denmark. He found himself yet again in muddy water as he “misquoted” a few figures regarding the melting of polar ice caps. To be clear – he said that there was a 75% certainty that there would be no ice there in 5-7 years and his only source of information was the scientific equivalent to a house being sold over a twelve pack of beers – essentially he had no source and the one he quoted said he was full of crap. When will this guy just give up the fight? I am not one that believes that every ounce of climate change theory is a farce, but I am one that undeniably thinks that every word that comes from this guy’a mouth is a total crock. This move comes in the wakes of the Climate Gate email scandal, which followed the Polar Bear “misstatement” as well. When is he going to realize that he only succeeds in discrediting the theory at this point with his every word? He seems to have a blind and quasi-religious “faith” in this scientific theory that if gazed upon with any level of objectivity could only be seen as delusion at this point regardless of the validity of the fundamental tenets of his views. Someone please bless him with some melted polar ice cap water and tell him that his penance is done and he can finally shut up.
Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
However, the climatologist whose work Gore was relying upon dropped the former vice president in the water with an icy blast.
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr. Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 percent figure was one used by Dr. Maslowski as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Gore.
The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.
“I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
The blunder follows the controversy over hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which sceptics claim suggest scientists manipulated data to strengthen their argument that global warming is man-made.
Mr Gore, who narrated the Oscar-winning climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, told the conference that record melting of Polar and Himalayan ice could deprive more than a billion people of access to clean water.
Alluding to Dr Maslowski’s work, he said: “These figures are fresh, I just got them yesterday.
“Some of the models suggest to Dr Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire polar ice cap during some of summer months could be completely ice free within five to seven years.
“There are more than a billion people on the planet who get more than half of their drinking water – many of them all of their drinking water – from the seasonal melting of snow melt and glacier ice.”
His projection strongly contradicted forecasts made eight months ago by the US government agency that the ice cap may nearly vanish in the summer by 2030.
Dr Maslowki said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.
He added: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean.”
Following Dr Maslowski’s comments, Mr Gore’s office later said the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
Did he get caught in a lie here or did he get caught once again making data match his predictions? I can’t believe he even showed his face in Copenhagen.
The only good Copehagen is the kind you put in your mouth. Let Gore run his mouth over there and continue to screw himself and his future profits. GLobal warming is a joke and so is its biggest advocate.
I concur with both of you. I would like nothing more than for him to stay 5000 miles away and fight global warming one phony email at a time from a distance.
Al Gore is a visionary who has shed a much needed light on a subject matter that needed a champion. Through oil company ad campaign and lobbying efforts he has been attacked and ridiculed and none of it has an ounce of merit.
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