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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-02-25

Al Gore For President

Al Gore should ABSOLUTELY run for President. Here's why:

He is, of any of the Democratic contenders, THE one-issue candidate. And the thing is, he is SUCH a one-issue candidate that he becomes the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

And, no, that wasn't a reference to his . . . . rotundity.

In the first place, none of the other contenders holds a candle to his resume. So, none of them can address foreign policy at his level ( . . .of incoherence . . .but, they're all like that), none of them can lay claim to being part of a strong economy (of course, that didn't work for him once), and none have yet to run a national campaign, not to mention the instant monopoly he's likely to have on all of Hollywood's money. And, of course, he doesn't want to talk about any of that, anyway.

He'll want to talk about global warming. And the rest of them will either concede the point to him, or . . .

and this is what I'm hoping for. . .

they will be in the uncomfortable position of arguing with him about it.

At which point Republicans should just sit back and wait for the smoke to clear.

Which is, perhaps, why he did not announce for President tonight. I think some of the important people in charge of the internals of how these things work got in touch with him and begged him not to run. In all likelihood, they probably had to make him some ridiculous promise to go with it--like a cabinet-level post. "Environmental Policy Czar", or some such thing.

But, just in case he's still thinking about it, let me point to a couple resources that not only argue against the idea that humans are responsible for global warming, but whether global warming is happening AT ALL.

All resources courtesy of Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

:this chart shows mean surface temperatures at Punta Arenas, Antarctica, which seems TO ME to show that 2004 was an unusually warm year, at the tail end of a block in which 39 of the last 44 years had mean temperatures at or below the historical mean
:this chart shows mean surface temperatures at Angmassilk, Greenland, which seems TO ME to show a cyclical movement, in which we are now engaged in an uptick, though only 1 of the 10 warmest years on record are from in the last decade
:this chart shows mean surface temperatures at Norfolk Islan, New Zealand, which seems TO ME to show almost no noticable trend in surface temperatures over the past 90-some years
:this chart shows mean surface temperatures at Canon City, Colorado, which seems TO ME to show almost no discernable trend in surface temperatures over the past 120-some years
:this chart shows mean surface temperatures at Charleston City, South Carolina, which seems TO ME to show no discernable trend in surface temperatures over the past 120-some years; in fact, if anything, Charleston has COOLED somewhat (perhaps 1/10 of one degree Celsius) over that period of time
:this chart shows the atmospheric CO2 concentrations at the South Pole, which clearly shows that CO2 levels have been increasing steadily (though far less dramatically than the chart seems to show--put that same chart on an Excel graph that shows where zero is and you get a fairly undramatic increase) for the past 45 years; this is also the place closest to the Punta Arenas station which, if you saw the above link, shows very little movement in surface temperatures
:and last, but not least, this chart which shows the sunspot cycle for our sun, seeming to indicate that over the past hundred years or so the suspot cycles have had higher solar maxima; there is also a discussion of how decreased sunspot activity in the past has coincided with periods of unusual cooling on earth

At this point, I am unwilling to say that Global Warming does not exist--this chart here shows that it does. However, given that the same chart seems to show that the sum increase since 1880 is a whopping .8 degrees Celsius, and given that even during periods of CO2 increase like the one from 1940 - 1970 there was NO change in mean surface temperatures, and given the other data based on sunspot activity, I AM UNWILLING TO SAY THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS A MAN-MADE PHENOMENON--shockingly, contrary to what the U.N. said two weeks ago.

I think the Earth is a very complex organism with very complex systems, most of which we do not understand very well at this point. I tend to think that the Earth (Mother Earth, to my Boulder friends) is far FAR more capable of taking care of itself than we give it credit for. Perhaps Al Gore should stop arrogating to himself all the responsibility for saving the Earth, and work harder to stop real, imminent catastrophes like the ones brewing in Iran and North Korea.
Or even the smaller, more human catastrophes like persistent poverty in corrupt third world countries--or corrupt inner cities in America.

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Posted by: Michael / 2/25/2007 09:30:00 PM

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