The Gore Effect

Thank God people are acting like grownups this morning. After dipping their toes in catastrophe in Europe, Angela Merkle had a smile-ex with the euro-region leaders, who have agreed to “erect a firewall around Greece” to avert a cascade of market attacks on other European states.

The Senate here reached an agreement to forestall a government shut down, and I am delighted that I do not have to contemplate the collapse of the markets and the currency this morning, and have a chance to think about what happened while I was traveling. The climate up in Michigan was doing its thing: changing. The colors were coming out on the trees in the traditional yellows and oranges and scarlets. Just starting, but you can tell the effect of the Fall.

It was enough to make me think of The Gore Effect. The former almost-President and Nobel Laureate has become identified with a phenomenon similar to that linked with movie star Kevin Bacon and his degrees of separation from everything.

Truth in advertising, I have experienced the “Gore Effect” phenomenon personally. After the conclusion of DESERT STORM, the then-Junior Senator from Tennessee set me up in official testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. After he drew me aside (he arrived late) to whisper a private question, he rhetorically shot me in the face from his chair on the podium. Then he abruptly left the chamber, leaving the grown-ups on the Committee to sort out what he had alleged about me, my testimony and my Agency.

Anyway, that inclines me to accept that the Gore Effect does in fact lead to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Mr. Gore visits an area to discuss global climate change.

Widely known examples of the Effect include:

New York, March 2004: “Gore chose January 15, 2004, one of the coldest days in New York City’s history, to rail against the Bush administration and global warming skeptics… Global warming, Gore told a startled audience, is causing record cold temperatures.” (NY Environment News)
November 2006: Al Gore is visiting Australia two weeks before summer begins. “Ski resort operators gazed at the snow in amazement. Parents took children out of school and headed for the mountains. Cricketers scurried amid bullets of hail as Melbournians traded lunchtime tales of the incredible cold.” (The Age)
Washington, March, 2007, a Capitol Hill media briefing on the Senate’s new climate bill is cancelled due to a heavy snowstorm.
October 2007, Mr. Gore’s global warming speech at Harvard University coincided with near 125-year record-breaking low temperatures. (Harvard Crimson)
October 2007, the British House of Commons held a marathon debate on global warming during London’s first October snowfall since 1922. (The Telegraph). There is no evidence that Mr. Gore was actually present, though the MP’s did talk about him.
December 2009: World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped four inches of snow on the Danish capital overnight.
Here is a working definition of Climate Change that incorporates the Gore Effect’s inherent contradiction in what is going on:

Climate Change: a term used instead of “global Warming” because the full impact of human caused CO2 emissions isn’t known to scientists. Many experts are predicting that worldwide heating of the atmosphere may cause changes in ocean currents, and therefore, in some cases, cooling of some areas like the Eastern seaboard of North America.

The key fact here is that the existence of climate change is virtually undisputed by all the worlds leading scientists. The science is settled. The only people who mock it are fools who have been duped by the junk science crowd, who are manipulated by Big Oil and the Auto magnates, and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

If you aren’t sure whose motives are suspect, think of the old Roman proverb “look to see who benefits.” Environmentalists don’t have some secret hidden agenda, they sincerely just want to live on a habitable planet. They don’t make money from saving forests. Who makes money, the corporations, or the environmentalists?

Think about it, as a person who probably acts in their own rational self-interest, who is more likely to lie and cheat, the party who stands to make or lose money? Or the poor buffoon who just wants to save some owls, and maybe breathe clean air?

The consequences are clear. Hurricane Katrina (fill in hurricane, earthquake, as necessary) was an event that was made more intense by the effects of climate change. The people who say it is not are the same ones who told you cigarettes were OK.

I was not aware that Phillip-Morris was in the oil and gas business, but you can see this is a self-contained belief system, and more of a policy discussion than anything about peer-reviewed science.

If you want to “follow the money,” Mr. Gore himself is heavily invested in Green technologies, and thus has a real stake in government schemes to promote them. It might be useful to sum up the general state of play on what is largely a policy discussion, not a peer-reviewed scientific issue.

Not being a technocrat, I have to rely on those who study these matters as a profession. I should hasten to add, this is relatively new development, largely funded by government grants to public institutions.

Here is a measured approach that I find plausible, since the one thing the climate does not do is not change. I am inclined to believe that the climate is changing, since it is. What that means, precisely, I am not sure about. We are 12,000 years out from an Ice Age, and had a smaller version a few hundred years ago from which we may be climbing out. Or it could be something else.

I found a survey by Dr. Robert Balling, Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University and published under the aegis of the George Marshall Policy Institute think. I will get to that in a minute, but will provide a disclaimer up front:

He is also the author of The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions versus Climate Reality and The Satanic Gases. In fairness to the sprit of the debate, he has reportedly accepted funding from the petroleum industry- just as the proponents of the settled science have made a significant industry out of self-sustaining clarions of alarm. The sources of funding appear to be the better basis of bitter attacks than the actual science these days.

Dr. Balling suggests the history of the earth is marked by regular and significant fluctuations in global temperatures that have nothing to do with people.

The countervailing view- the mainstream view, at least as of 2009- might best be presented by Professor Katharine Richardson, Professor in Biological Oceanography and Vice Dean for Public Outreach for the University of Copenhagen. Her pronouncement at the Conference in 2009 was that “it now almost impossible for the world to achieve the UN target of preventing global temperature rise exceeding 2C.”

She predicted a rise closer to 6 degrees (Centigrade) in this century.

The public policy debate about Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AWG) is a fascinating one. The logical consequence- proposed at the blizzard-marred conference- was clear. A global grand agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocols needed to be struck to redistribute the resources of the First World in order to permit the Developing World to (eventually) adopt the stringent CO2 emission requirements to save the planet.

It actually wound up being a continuation of the old anti-Colonial reparation claims for the Third World.

That put everyone a little off, and in the three years since, the dire predictions have not manifested themselves. Not that three years makes a climate; that is just weather. Things do continue to change, just as the discipline has.

The modern science of climatology was initially concerned about global cooling (1970s) and then global warming (since the late 1980s).

Dr. Balling considers that more accurate temperature records and a greater understanding of the causal mechanisms of variation in climate will clarify what this all means, and what effects human activity have on a very large and very complex system of systems.

At this moment in time, Doctor Balling is prepared to say this:

• Global surface temperatures have risen in recent decades.
• Mid-tropospheric temperatures have not warmed much over the same period.
• The disparity is not consistent with predictions from numerical climate models.

I do not know what Professor Richardson says about that- the latest controversy is about where the missing heat from the mid-troposphere has gone. Some academics suggest it is hiding in the deep ocean, and maybe it is. No one has gone to actually look; it is just what the models say, since they cannot account for anything else.

Never-the-less, taken with the disastrous economic news, the urge to directly couple CO2 levels with warming- or change- is deflating. In alarm, Mr. Gore held a 24-hour teach-a-thon on his internet to re-energize the discussion about CO2 control. He claimed millions surfed the site during the event, although the numbers are a matter of some dispute.

The Gore Effect struck again: his campaign coincided with the Administration realization that the imposition of the new limits by the EPA was going to finish off the economy and put the new restrictions on indefinite hold- or at least until after the 2012 election.

This is a matter of faith, now, and I can certainly understand why there is an imperative to action, if this is happening. But when you do things swiftly, you get the inherent and unintended consequences of speed. Dramatic change is accompanied by endless opportunities for those who have the ability to construct and then manipulate the intricate scheme of cap-and-trade.

With so much cash in play, the incentive for active mendacity by those who stand to benefit most from the state-directed allocation of resources grew large.

Like our pals at bankrupt Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer who donated lavishly to the last winning Presidential campaign, and who pocketed the half-billion in government loans before padlocking the building and throwing a thousand workers out of their subsidized green jobs.

One thing about horsing around the largest economy in the world is that you can do amazing things in terms of scale.

Beware those who tell you there is no time to think.

That naturally includes me, of course.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com