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Feb 9, 2009 07:15 PM | 35
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Former vice president Al Gore keeps racking up the hardware in his campaign to fight global warming. First An Inconvenient Truth, his documentary on climate change, nabbed an Academy Award for best documentary. (Although the Oscar actually went to director Davis Guggenheim, Gore gave an acceptance speech.) Then he was awarded, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. And last night, to cap it all off, Gore's print version of An Inconvenient Truth won the Grammy for best spoken-word album, thanks to its release as an audio book.
Pres. Barack Obama, who has yet to collect an Oscar or a Nobel (but who boasts a better record in Florida politics than Gore), has brought home two Grammys in the spoken-word category himself for readings of his books Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. In fact, the award is becoming a near-gimme for liberal politicians: between Gore, Obama, Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken, and former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, a Democratic pol has been in on the spoken-word Grammy in each of the last six years.
Photo of Al Gore receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize by Kjetil Bjørnsrud via Wikimedia Commons
Tags:
Grammy awards,
An Inconvenient Truth,
global warming,
man-made climate change,
Academy awards
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35 Comments
Add CommentAl Gore is a fake. Any one who has any real knowledge of globle warming would know it isn't real. by only listening to one side of a story you only know what that side says. Try listening to someone who disagrees with him and then make an assumption. There is always 2 sides to a story and there are very few scientists (Like 2%) that even believe in globel warming and that is becouse its a big money market and Al Gore and the scientists that walk beside him are getting rich. Along with big companies that stand to profit from globel warming bull.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember when he said he invented the internet. I laughed my head off at that lie.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost people who have some real knowledge of global warming know how to spell 'global.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToo funny lol. Ok, I'm not perfect Sorry about that lol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbsjw38 may not know how to spell golbal but he's got everything else right !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually the reverse is true, it's about '2%' of coal and gas industry-paid scientists who dispute global warming, about 90% of scientists - world-wide - in specific and broad fields, acknowledge and agree on the evidence of global warming. Those 2% (the other side of the story) have a huge conflict of interest to be unbiased. I know it's scary but be brave and think rationally about it
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a fact the climate is changing on our planet earth. The earth has been through this before. I do believe we are effecting the change this time around. I'm not a scientist or intellect but can read and see what is happening. Whether we caused it or not it's taking place. Personally, I feel we have contributed. It is very interesting how the effect of ice melting will change the earths axis. This is scarry. When mother nature gets with it, we are at her mercy. Society is not ready for another ice age. I live in Washington state. Hopefully it will be more gradual than a year or two but look at the mini ice age hundreds of years ago. It happended for one year and lots of folks suffered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was just about to make the same remark. Also, I'm fairly sure more than 2% of REAL scientists agree that global warming is a problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuick somebody get a cork for Gore's mouth. Because I smell bull @hit; and every good Global Warmer knows methane gas causes the most enviromental damage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPart of the problem is that people are associating Al Gore with the body of scientific work. Mr. Gore is the spokesman who helped package it into digestible form. Another is that too many people are getting caught up in the global warming aspect. The problem is climactic change and the vast majority of scientists agree that there has been significant climactic change in a relatively short period of time.This has caused extended droughts, flooding, more powerful storm systems, etc. Whatever debate is whether or not humans are responsible, to what extent and if we can alter what's begun. Finally, people focus on the worst-case scenarios depicted in "Inconvenient Truth . . ." but when you want to shock people into action it is a very legitimate form of information dissemination. No one has made any claims that all of those disasters will come about. However, if we don't alter our slash and burn abuse of our planet we are indeed risking global calamities -- directly and indirectly related to climactic change. Disliking Mr. Gore doesn't change these realities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou, good sir, have fallen victim to what we like to call a "common misconception."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor your perusal: "Al Gore never said he invented the Internet, though he did state that "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"(emphasis added).[18] Gore was the original drafter of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, which provided significant funding for supercomputing centers, and this in turn led to upgrades of the Internet's precursor, the NSFNet and development of NCSA Mosaic, later renamed to Netscape Navigator"
I hope I have been of assistance, adieu.
Sources:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_misconception#Politics>
<http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp>
The problem is that too many people get their "scientific" information from Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd OBTW, Al Gore never said that he invented the Internet. The quote is "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." What he did was initiate legislation to allocate DARPA funds for the Internet precursor.
The problem is that too many people get their "scientific" information from Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd OBTW, Al Gore never said that he invented the Internet. The quote is "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." What he did was initiate legislation to allocate DARPA funds for the Internet precursor.
Oh for Petes sake-- al gore is a bafoon-- and the awarders of these prizes are mindless lemmings jumping off an intellectual cliff----- this is sooooo stupid~~~~~its insulting to people who can really think
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow all he has to do is catch Man-Bear-Pig.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd to think, we gave up an award winning, super smart Al Gore for a very stupid, death, destruction, and poverty George Bush...who can figure. Are these nay saying republicans even from earth?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObviously, there is a reason why that first persons name starts with bs...cause apparently they have no idea what they are talking about. I wonder if they even know what carbon dioxide is.....anyone who studies the earth would know that global warming is in fact a reality......and believe me, its not the environmentalists who are getting rich off the American people....its the oil industry and the car industry and the war industry that is getting rich off the backs of our people with no regard for our future or our environment at all....whether global warming is a reality or not is besides the point.....the point is that this is the only planet we have to live on..period..there is no other....so where do we go when weve destroyed this one? For sure, the planet will continue on without us....but we cannot live without air to breathe and water to drink and food to eat.... I am not a particularly religious person, but if 'God' did give us dominion over the earth, dont you think he/she/it would want us to take care of it? For those who are religious.....What would the Creator think if we simply destroyed the greatest gift that was ever given to us? What is the main difference between humans and the rest of the animal world.....arrogance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPS....Most arrogant man on the planet? Rush Limbaugh.....every word that comes out of his mouth...is not based on fact, but pure arrogance in believing that his is the only way.....yeah, thats the man I want to listen to. How much money has he made sitting behind a microphone, popping pills, talking about how everyone else in the world is less smart than he is?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhen in reality, he has less of a clue than that bs person up there
Sorry to be picky, but is It is always useful to know the background of the commentator. A man called Christopher Booker recently published an article in the Telegraph (UK) sneering at Darwin and evolution, and I discovered that he is a historian. Big deal huh!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho is bsjw38? Al Gore is not my favorite person and he is perhaps better to be understood as an advertiser. but his detractor states:'Any one who has any real knowledge of global warming would know it isn't real.' Well now, that's pretty heavy stuff ! We would wish to know of this 'real knowledge'? Tell us, bsjw38, where you got your degrees.
Gore is the poster child for everything that is wrong within the AGW religion. It's an insult to real researchers, legitimate peace activists and artists for Al Gore to even be mentioned in the same breath as them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAl Gore, the ultimate victory of style over substance.
Those of us who are real researchers, legitimate peace activists and artists know how to think for ourselves.....and those of us who search for truth instead of blindly following corporate agenda and political propaganda.......know that Al Gore knows what he is talking about......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismy degrees...AS in Enviromental Science and technology and BA in Geography and the Environment..........
Bush, the ultimate victory of idiocy over intellegence.
Way to go Al! Keep up the good work...someday theyll all understand.....maybe when the sea is lapping at their door and theyre wondering why they cant breathe anymore....but hey, you did your part, not your fault they wont listen
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPaulaC:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPersonally, I find your cheerleading for Al Gore and some fabled apocalypse misguided and puzzling. The Earth is cooling and has been for the last 10 years. The logical reaction to a cooling globe should be relief, not disappointment.
Shoshin:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand your degrees? a ten year cooling is fine, and may be due to any number of short term effects...but does nothing to conteract the 100 years of warming....CFC's take fifty years to break down in the atmosphere...the thinning that we see in the ozone layer is the result of what people were doing 50 years ago.....what will happen in the next 20 years when we just begin to get the effects of CFC's released in the 70's....to look at only the last ten years is a bit short sited when we are talking Earth time......we not only need to look at the last 100 years, we need to also look at the NEXT 100 years........when all those Walmarts are landfills and those nice new carlots become junkyards.
PaulaC:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy degrees are of no importance; appealing to authority or respecting someone with advanced degrees is a sign of scientific bereftment. Some of the smartest people and some of the stupidest people that I know have Ph.D's. Science is no respecter of degrees, experience, computer models, or consensus. Science does respect predictive capacity, repeatability and testability, all of which are lacking in the AGW arguments.
Your issue of time is interesting though, because depending on which time horizon you select, you can prove or disprove virtually anything. Take any trend and extrapolate it and make it fit your preconceived notions. Would the data be conistent with it? Absolutely. Is it scientifically valid? Absolutely not.
On a geological time scale, 10, 20, 100 or 1000 years are micro-blips. You see a multi-year trend and declare "Global warming!!" I see a multi-year trend and yell "Looming Ice Age!!!"
You say potato, I say tomato.
Touche'...who is right and who is wrong.......in the end, does it really matter? What really matters is....do we love and need this planet enough to want to take care of it? And do we love our children enough to want to give them something better.......and do we really care enough to want to learn from, as well as teach, others.....that is what Al Gore is doing....he is teaching what he knows.......it is your choice to do with it what you want.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut, I think he is a brave and brilliant man.....potayto, potahto
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Seriously, Al Gore is the biggest hypocrite in the world. If you REALLY believe what you are saying--set an example for us. Al, quit trying to get everyone else to live "green" and do it yourself. Until then, shut up!
This is simply yet another organization fallen prey to political correctness. These awards now all mean less than nothing to me.
There are several issues at play here. One is whether Al Gore knows what he's talking about. A second is whether actual training and education in a field means your opinion is more valid that that of someone who gets his news via talk radio. A third is that some folks who don't actually care about issues like this enjoy making fun of anyone who takes life, the world and the future seriously. Computergeek would appear to be one of the latter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe notion that one person's opinion is just as good as another, no matter what the subject, is partly one of those unfortunate holdovers from the Sixties, and partly the same disrespect for expertise that let the Bush White House disregard anyone, no matter how qualified, who disagreed with them. It got us political appointees editing scientific reports at NOAA, and heading FEMA. The latter is an excellent example of what happens when UNqualified appointees bump up against reality. (I live in New Orleans!) It also led to dismissal of generals who advised against invading Iraq, and said it would require a whole lot more troops. That one worked out well, too.
I have an MS in Marine Geology and Geophysics, a PhD in Geology, worked in research in both industry and academia, and have been a physics teacher for the past 15 years, so my leanings on expertise vs. talk radio education might be too obvious. In the real world, everyone's opinion is NOT of equal value. If you choose to ridicule and ignore 98% of the scientists who have expertise in the area (and agree on global warming), have at it. I suggest you buy some beach-front property, preferably on a barrier island, and watch the sea roll in for the next few decades. In the meantime, this is MY world these people are screwing up, too.
Al Gore is an intelligent layman who took the trouble to educate himself over decades about an important issue nobody else in power seemed to care about. He has done more to put it front-and-center in the minds of people and governments worldwide than any other human being. He never claimed to be a scientist, any more than he actually claimed to have invented the internet. Real research scientists don't have time to address rotary clubs, government agencies, legislatures and the UN on the subjects of their research, and tend to be too technical about it when they do. They also tend to look down on colleagues who do, as Carl Sagan could have told you. It takes a Gore to boil all the scientific findings into a message that will actually move people to act. He deserves the awards.
Now theres a person I might actually want to talk to......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry to disapoint you but I dont have a degree in anything. I am a Christian, I am a truck driver and I am 42 years old. I am a republican also. I have had that name scence my first computer and I think at that time I was like 28. I do concider myself an amature scientist. A shed scientist I guess you can say lol. No professional training. I just like learning about science. I wanted to be a scientist when I was a child but made a few wrong choices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I do know is the earth rotates and so does the climate change and there isnt anything we can do to stop it. Yes, we can take care of it the best we can but we wont ever stop the climate changes that mother nature has in store for us. All we can do is prepare for it. I respect our planet and yes, people do take advantege of all our planet has to offer amd sooner or later the earth will be depleated of its resorces and its sad. But its inevitable as long as we continue to populate. but there isnt anything we can do about the climate
ewarzeski:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this98% of scientists do not agree on global warming. However I agree with your assertion that not all opinions are of equal value. But given the failure of computer models to predict anything, the questions raised regarding ground based data collection, and the irrational flip-flopping of the AGW supporters as to which data they "like", my opinion is that something is out of whack with the AGW movement. I recently read an article as to why cooling is really consistent with warming. Sorry, but I can't take this stuff seriously.
t takes one to know one. So I guess your a fake too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt takes a fake to spot a fake I guess.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisto bsjw38,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this**global and
**because
Perhaps you have not seen the movie, but Gore quotes "the vast majority of scientists' agree that Global Warming IS real"
and fyi- there are always **THREE sides to a story.
Cheers!
to bsjw38,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this**global and **because
Perhaps you have not seen the movie, but Gore quotes "the vast majority of scientists' agree that global warming is real"
and fyi- there are always **THREE sides to a story
Cheers!!