Serr8d...I just noticed your comment since I posted this picture, like most photoshoppers do, I get my source pics by google search, I found this one http://images.google.com/images?q=Al%20gore%20house&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-07,GGLD:en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi, and I believe it is on your photobucket...when I do find source pics I really don't notice who's it is and just download them, weird it turned out to be a FN member. Well if I had known, I would have asked for permission, so I'm sorry...I did read what you posted on your webpage, thanks..To which I replied..
Thanks for that.
The g00gle people pretty much hate right-wing bloggers; you notice that link didn't refer back to my site, but to some extraordinarily vacuous non-political (but SAFE! for O!) entity. My photobucket account is not opened up to g00gle; the only way g00gle found that photo was by searching my original site posting. But do I get the credit - hit for that photo? No way! Not the first time that's happened; and since I won't drink their lefty kool-aid, it surely won't be the last.
I'm moving that image around and putting up a less...attractive...alternate. Not to annoy that particular blogger, but to confound g00gle.
Again, thanks for the response.
(Eventually I'll get in the mood to do some more pshops. Right now, I'm resting my eyes. This 17" CRT monitor has to go too... )
Serr
Hi there,To which I replied..
Hey I was just reading your comments under the chop which used your Al Gore's house photo.
I can totally relate to your annoyance with Google...it's something they should fix....and it's been going on for a loooong time.
I "think" the reason why the other blog is getting the credit, is because of the way google decides which site has the most relevant content relating to the image.
Now I know....it's you image...you have it at your photobucket account...so technically YOU should get the credit going to your site....but Google images is....in short....stoopid sometimes.
The other blog has the picture linked via a hyperlink with the words "Al Gore's House"....now google will think this is highly relevant....also they have a stack of text surrounding the link, this isn't what I would classify as totally relevant, but google likes hyperlinks that are surrounded by text that "might be" explaining the image.
We have the same problem on our website and 99% of the time it's from blogger blogs....only they directly "hotlink" images hosted on our own server....and for some reason, Google will give these sites the credit in Google images and not ours....which ticks me off no end!
What you "could try" is put the original image back (lol...like what you did to it re the google message though) and perhaps add some more relevant text close to the image and use a hyperlink as the other blog has done in that text....and see if Google reverts the image back to your site.
What's scary about this google glitch is that a LOT of lazy webmasters have caught on...and they go to google images, hotlink straight from images which are on the first page for hot image search terms...usually to their blogger blog...then plaster that blog with adverts (like google ads etc). If they make sure they add more relevant content that relates to an image on their page than the site which owns the image...... they have a 50/50 chance of hijacking that image in google images for their own gain :(
EG...look at this search result:
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&q=angelina%20jolie&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Click on all the images from blogger blogs that show up....and then look up the top frame and see where the images have "really" come from!
In short...it sucks....but sometimes you can regain your "property" by adding extra elements to your page so that google thinks that your site is the most totally relevant to a particular image.
And from reading your most recent post on your blog, it seems you are used to the hotlinking thing....and also know that if you change the image some hotlinkers will just leave it...and you know, google will sometimes STILL give them credit, even when the image is no longer the same!
Sorry for the thesis.....but like you...I am so over this problem. Unfortunately there isn't much us mere mortals can do....google has to fix it.
I like our site's images being in google images, it brings us a stack of traffic, but if a popular image gets hijacked by a blogger blog, we can loose an awful lot of traffic...which is totally unfair.
Anyway....hope you have some better luck with google soon.
«redacted»
Hey, that's some great analysis. I'll add this letter as a post update (without your e-mail address or name of course) if you don't mind. Let me know.
Yeah, I know about relevancy. Google decides. But I don't blog for cash (good thing too!); I blog for the relief factor.
I cross a lot of my posts to TennesseeFree dot com (a strictly political site, where I'm an invited guest poster) and then find that g00gle will give them a hit over my home site..no matter if there's a image involved or not. Again, relevancy, but also there are liberal-left guest posters at TF; if g00gle is torn between deciding which site gets the higher hit results, they will choose TF, every time. Some of the same posts I cross to Protein Wisdom's pub, they won't show in the g00gle results at all. There are no guest liberal posters at PW..
Google is definitely biased to the left. And there's not a damned thing we can do about it.
Best,
Serr
We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership.Thank you President Bush.
The captain laughs, he says “You boys want some sex? You can squeeze the sails; you can lick the decks!”Prolly why I never joined the navy..
WASHINGTON — The stimulus bill working its way through Congress is not just a package of spending increases and tax cuts intended to jolt the nation out of recession. For Democrats, it is also a tool for rewriting the social contract with the poor, the uninsured and the unemployed, in ways they have long yearned to do.
This stimulus package ($825,000,000,000) is simply socialism disguised as economic relief; cod liver oil given disguised as koolaid. But to Democrats, nothing could be sweeter.With little notice and no public hearings, House Democrats would create a temporary new entitlement allowing workers getting unemployment checks to qualify for Medicaid, the health program for low-income people. Spouses and children could also receive benefits, no matter how much money the family had.
In addition, the stimulus package would offer a hefty subsidy to help laid-off workers retain the same health plans they had from their former employers.
Altogether, the economic recovery bill would speed $127 billion over the next two and a half years to individuals and states for health care alone, a fact that has Republicans fuming that the stimulus package is a back door to universal health coverage.
Who needs public hearings, anyway? You heard Obama: "I won". That gives him and the Democrats all the leash they need to implement their previously (somewhat) restrained desires to create France with two coasts, never mind the costs.Most of the aid is billed as temporary. But Republicans fear that states would get hooked on it, just as they might grow accustomed to a big increase in federal aid to education, also included in the bill.
Democrats said the current economic crisis did not allow time for public hearings on the legislation.
“It’s like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close,Even for Democrats, that should be a scary thought.
and the solution is to open the bar for another hour,” Mr. Hess said.
"Fifty-three percent of voters in this country -- we'll say, for the sake of this proposal, 53% of Americans -- voted for Obama. Forty-six percent voted for Senator McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Let's give the remaining 1% to President Obama, so let's say that 54% voted for President Obama and 46% voted for Senator McCain. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009, $540 billion of the one trillion will be spent on infrastructure as defined by President Obama and the Democrats. The remaining $460 billion, or 46% that voted for Senator McCain, will be directed towards tax cuts, as determined by me."Brilliant! The Keynsyian set gets to build their roads and bridges, pay for parks and abortions; Obama gets to hand out shovels to peoples who would rather have free gas and their mortgages paid for; and the supply sider's get corporate tax breaks and capital gains tax cuts, to really set things in motion. A little bit for everyone; and the president gets to save face (after all, he brought Rush into this, as Rush will certainly remind him for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, for as long as it takes..)
"One of his most important canvases [Actually the painting is on wood panel. -Erik], the Burial of the Sardine, represents Ash Wednesday, the obsequies of carnival... He engraved a world turned upside-down, in other words, the Saturnalia; the donkey, the he-goat, the monkey, the cat, the bat, the crippled, the mad, the hanged, the man skeleton, men-chickens, men sawn in two, flagellants, the tribunals of the Inquisition, nightmares, flying men and bulls, brigands, rapes, tortures, the stake, murders, executions, abandoned children, human sacrifice, cannibals; foetuses, gnomes, giants and dwarfs, sorcerers, devils, spectres, the fates; prostitution, prisons, famine, shipwreck, fire, plague. Is this Spain? What other Spaniard has painted it? Yet who has touched with equal sureness upon the blind monsters of age-old depths, the symbols buried for thousands of years beneath our memory? Once the tapestries were finished, the portraits and the religious scenes put aside, he did not paint ten spectacles that do not belong to a troubled world, from prostitution to torture." (Page 133, from Andre Malraux's Saturn: An Essay on Goya, Phaidon Publishers, 1957)A cadre of mendoucheous twatwaffles , and our newly-minted Fearless Leader.
It's bad enough that the GOP is a group of frightened ducklings right now, quaking and quivering before His Almighty O!neness. It's enough that Obama wants to have a single-party, unquestioned rule. And it's quite ENOUGH! that our fearful Republican 'leaders' are bending over and grabbing ankles, in an effort to accrue favor in the spirit of 'bipartisanship'. Why do we have to have Rush Limbaugh speak for those of us who would otherwise be voiceless?WASHINGTON -- President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
"Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing “eternal” power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy. If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of this TRILLION dollar debacle."Are the Republicans so cowed that they cannot speak out? Has Obama touched them, and struck them dumb? Why do we have to have an entertainer, a guy who has a radio show, speak for us? Is Rush the only man left standing between Obama and his desire to RULE?
Obama is desirous to do away with the two-party system of government, obviously. He’s almost there, given that the spineless Republicans now seem to be cowering like jelly before Teh One!.Tell me where Obama gets a pass by attacking a private citizen.
McCain is no longer ours, if he ever was. McCain came back arguing for Hillary and for ‘bipartisanship’ (defined now as ‘Democrats Rule, the rest of you STFU and STFD’). If McCain is the defacto opposition leader, then this nation truly is doomed.
Rush represents the embodiment of the only real opposition to Obama’s socialism and the left’s ultimate success. That’s a great burden placed on such a small individual.
Not far from Sand Rock, where there are..large, climbable rocks.
And tent camping. Not of the improved sort. But one can set up camp as close to the edge as sanity will allow.
Locals get kind of red (well, it is Alabama) and party quite a bit. Read this account from another climber to see exactly what the nightlife is like. |
| Obamacles |
Iowahawk satirizes Obama's rise to the tune of The Odyssey. Homer would've wept. With glee. If he had lived in these times and knew this oh-so easily parodied group of bit actors who've played parts in Teh One!'s immaculation."At the sound of Hildusa's name even brave Obamacles was driven to wet his toga,A must-read for anyone who remembers The Odyssey, and wants to put in perspective this chuckle of a president.
For Hildusa, cuckolder of Bubba, was the mightiest of all the gorgons.
From her head grew a writhing nest of asps, and the mere sight of her cankles
Would turn a man to stone. Some said she came from Lesbos
But others said her only pleasure was torment and sucking the marrow from her victim's bones.
Around her at all times was a phalanx guard of mincing eunuchs,
led by Ickis, Wolfsonis, Blumenthalis and Pennis. At her side, an angry force
of menopausal PUMAs ready to strike on her command -- for the children."
At least some countries still recognize terrorists when they see 'em.Ayers Turned Away From Canada By Immigration Officials
Weather Underground founder and Barack Obama supporter William Ayers was not permitted to clear customs at a Toronto airport Sunday.Jeffrey Kugler, the executive director for the Center for Urban Schooling at the University of Toronto, said Ayers was deemed not admissible after being pulled aside by Canadian immigration officials while trying to clear customs at the Toronto airport.
Ayers had been invited to speak before the center. He was also scheduled to meet with the Toronto District School Board and do interviews with Canadian television and radio stations, Kugler said.
...
Ayers, a co-founder of the violent Weather Underground group and current education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told the Toronto Star that he didn't know why he had been turned away.
KatrinaAce's commenters are tearing holes into how "President" Obama managed to respond to Hurricane Katrina when he had been a junior senator for only a few months, and any bills he co-sponsored probably never made it out of committee.
President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.
President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration's "unconscionable ineptitude" in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. Obama visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region. He worked with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce legislation to address the immediate income, employment, business, and housing needs of Gulf Coast communities.
President Barack Obama will partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to rebuild now, stronger than ever.
Okay. I was giving the man his day, his year, his administration. A faint breeze of circumspection had been wafting across his bow for a couple of weeks. I was going to shut the fuck up and exhibit the class the left has been incapable of showing since 1968. No more.Read the rest. Great stuff, Vman.
Mr. Bush's disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.Contempt for the president, that's nothing new in the U.S. We've vilified presidents for centuries; this one is different in that the media joined forces with the kooks and flakes during a period of war. Not even pretending to be unbiased; instead, the majority of Big Media persuaded even the most hardcore 'Dancing with the Stars'-watching numbskulls to follow the BDS-inflamed idiots (a photoessay of various leftists and moonbats) to drive George Bush's ratings down.Here in the afterglow of the turnaround led by Gen. David Petraeus, it's easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago -- and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn't he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the man who will be sworn in as vice president today -- didn't limit himself to his own opinion. Days before the president announced the surge, Joe Biden suggested to the Washington Post he knew the president's people had also concluded the war was lost. They were, he said, just trying to "keep it from totally collapsing" until they could "hand it off to the next guy."
For his part, on the night Mr. Bush announced the surge, Barack Obama said he was "not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
Three months after that, before the surge had even started, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pronounced the war in Iraq "lost." These and similar comments, moreover, were amplified by a media echo chamber even more absolute in its sense of hopelessness about Iraq and its contempt for the president.
New Delhi: The Dalai Lama, a lifelong champion of non-violence candidly stated that terrorism cannot be tackled by applying the principle of ahimsa because the minds of terrorists are closed.FREE TIBET! You can go outside anywhere in San Fran and East Manhattan and hear the cursing lefties peeling those bumper stickers off their rides.
"It is difficult to deal with terrorism through non-violence," the Tibetan spiritual leader said delivering the Madhavrao Scindia Memorial Lecture here.
He termed terrorism as the worst kind of violence which is not carried by a few mad people but by those who are very brilliant and educated.
"They (terrorists) are very brilliant and educated...but a strong ill feeling is bred in them. Their minds are closed," the Dalai Lama said.
He said the only way to tackle terrorism is through prevention.
The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile left the audience stunned when he said "I love President George W Bush." He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties.
A legacy of President George W. Bush will be that he saved 10 million lives around the world.Yes, today, on the eve of the Obamanation, I will say again, Thank You President George Walker Bush.
His critics ignore it, but name another president about whom one can say that with such certainty. It is what historians will say a decade from now looking back. Not bad for a president who leaves office with the lowest approval rating in recent memory.
Montalban reprises his role as Khan in 1982's (the best of all of 'em) Star Trek Movie "The Wrath of Khan".Khan: Captain, Captain, Captain... save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born. Do you mean he never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain, no? Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space from the year 1996 with myself and the ship's company in cryogenic freeze?RIP, gentleman.
Capt. Terrell: I never even met Admiral Kirk.
Khan: 'Admiral?' 'Admiral!' 'Admiral'... Never told you how 'Admiral' Kirk sent seventy of us into exile in this barren sandheap with only the contents of these cargo bays to sustain us?
Chekov: You lie! On Ceti Alpha Five there was life! A fair chance...
Khan: THIS IS CETI ALPHA FIVE!
MOBILIZE NATIONALLY: Send Silly Putty to Kent WilliamsLet's do it.
We've had several missions for the RedState Army of Activists. You probably haven't noticed as we've primarily directed them to individual states.
This should be one for an individual state, but we need to take this nationwide and make it a national rebuke.
Meet Kent Williams. He is allegedly a Republican in Tennessee. The GOP took the State House in Tennessee and rallied to one of their own to be Speaker.
Williams had other plans. He made a deal with the Democrats, betrayed the Republicans, and got himself elected Speaker. He then put a Democrat in the number two spot.
On opening day of the legislature the outgoing Democrat Speaker of the House stood behind Williams whispering directions in his ears.
It's clear he's a weak mind and will be putty in the hands of the Democrats.
Here's the assignment:
Kent Williams' address is 126 S. Main Street, Elizabethton, TN 37643.
Go here and send Kent Williams some silly putty. Let's put in his hands a pretty accurate representation of what he is.
http://astore.amazon.com/reds0b-20?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=9
Sincerely yours,
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
"But Independent, hard put to find good borrowers in a suffering economy, and fearful of making the kind of mistakes that got it into trouble in the first place, is not doing much lending these days. So far it is using all of the government’s money to shore up its own weak finances by repaying short-term loans from the Federal Reserve. “It is like if you are in an airplane and the oxygen mask comes down,” said Stefanie Kimball, the bank’s chief lending officer. “First thing you do is put your own mask on, stabilize yourself.”But the ideology employed by Independent Bank should've been predictable, I'd say. Of course bankers are wanting to stabilize their own house before going further out on a limb. And easy lending practices are what caused this mess.
"This is not what the Treasury Department had in mind when it started this program, saying it would give the nation’s “healthy banks” enough money to start lending again, so that people could buy homes and businesses could invest and create jobs, thereby invigorating a disintegrating economy."
This influx of pure leftists, AKA ‘progressives’; I'll term the “Unicorn Socialist Party” (formerly known as Democrats), the party of O!topia, is bringing much hilarity and little change. I can hardly wait.
A preview, of sorts."Illinois campaign finance records reveal another side of Roland Burris that may give pause to those worried by the growing congressional culture of lobbyists wielding special interest influence to gain questionable earmarks, pork barrel spending contracts and insider favors with federal regulatory officials.A fine example of "CHANGE", to be sure. CHANGE you can POCKET.
"In his 2002 attempt to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, Burris depended heavily upon Joseph Stroud, an Illinois political heavyweight contributor, thanks to his ownership of Jovon Broadcasting and Telephone U.S.A. In the 2002 race, [Stroud] provided Burris with the following loans and contributions:
* Jovon Broadcasting individual contribution to Burris: $200,000
* Jovon Broadcasting in-kind contributions to Burris: $179,895
* Telephone U.S.A. (and USA) loans to Burris: $1,200,000
"Burris repaid $6,000 of the Telephone U.S.A. loans in November 2003, but no other payments appear in the records. This puts the total support from Stroud to Burris at $1,573,895.
"Presumably, these contributions were all legal, but the outstanding loans could create a potential conflict of interest should Stroud have issues with federal regulators once Burris is sworn-in as Illinois senator."
OK, it's been over 24 hours, so I guess I can do this post.
Click to enlarge any of these.
Cheerleaders at halftime..cold, eh?
Wide-angle shot of the halftime show.
Nashville's skyline..the water vapor holds the light for the reddish tinge. No post production work needed.
Back next year, if I'm in the mood.
Yeah, some kids took advantage of the "Whack the Flac" pickup truck. I didn't see much in the way of sledge hammers or tire irons, so I passed on that exercise. No, I'm not the one who took a knife to the truck's front tire, either.
The obligatory Edgar Allen Pied. Poor guy, read some poetry and caught pie. I should be so lucky.
There's much local interest in tomorrow's Ravens-Titans Divisional Playoff game, and the radio stations do a fine job keeping the fans occupied. Kudos to Plaster and his crew. I'll be there. Look for pics tomorrow night, unless they lose, then I'll put it off until Sunday. Or Monday. Who'll care?Five Years. Mark it down.
Al Gore spoke to a German audience today [December 13, 2008], at the opening of a dinosaur park. In this German news clip you can hear him talk about the polar ice cap disappearing in 5 YEARS!
Good grief.
A quit coach from the quitline will call the
smoker and support them through every step
of quitting smoking. Together, the coach and
the smoker will formulate a plan for quitting
and talk about ways that the coach can help.
The smoker and the coach can have multiple
conversations about quitting.
Oh, and this..."Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, he said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’”There's plenty of obnoxious smells we cross in our daily lives. Without getting too specific, we don't normally run away every time we encounter a bad odor. Boston, New York; I'll bet strolling the streets in those or any other overpopulation center is an exercise in aroma avoidance.
The belief that third-hand smoke was harmful greatly increased the likelihood the respondent also would enforce a strict smoking ban at home, Dr. Winickoff said....
“That tells us we’re onto an important new health message here,” he said. “What we heard in focus group after focus group was, ‘I turn on the fan and the smoke disappears.’ It made us realize how many people think about second-hand smoke — they’re telling us they know it’s bad but they’ve figured out a way to do it.”
Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who heads the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the phrase third-hand smoke is a brand-new term that has implications for behavior. [emboldenings mine]Loving the smell of 'behavior implications', aren't you? Government intervention follows closely, I'll warrant. Banning smoking in homes where children are present; banning smoking in cars that might transport children; and why not ban smoking during working hours, even outside, because a smoker drags those nassty 'third-hand smoke' molecules back into the office where they might harm an innocent party?
It looks as if Barack Obama and his transition team know how badly Bill Richardson’s resignation reflects on them. They have started leaking to the press that Richardson’s to blame for the embarrassing spectacle this afternoon of his withdrawal as a Cabinet nominee.Richardson can't make Obama look any worse than Obama has already made himself look. He's already been caught lying to the press about his contact(s) with Rod Blagojevich (at about 3:14 into the video).
The Indianapolis Colts lost in San Diego tonight 23-17, after a hard-fought game that went in overtime. League MVP Peyton Manning could only look on in dismay as Philip Rivers orchestrated a final drive setting up Darren Sproles' 22-yard run for the win.
You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.Wow. Paging AlGore; talking points cleanup in your own back yard!
Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.
1. First, the expression "climate change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850, during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots -- and even revolutions, including the French Revolution -- were the rule of thumb), followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing, and agriculture has flourished).OK, now, William, you better rally your troops to put this guy away. Forever. Under the bus.So, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the "Mann Hockey Stick," created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression "climate change": It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, "manmade global warming," which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore's camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of "climate change," which is absurd, obscene, even.
2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.
Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. "Their relationship is actually very complicated," he says, "but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." The word "complicated" here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph. You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not "complicated." When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason, warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02 increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase take place? During the super El Niño year of 1998.3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.
Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a "flat-Earth" mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor.
4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide -- a trace gas. Water vapor's absorption spectrum also overlays that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.
If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars. In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth's oceans. Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays. When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling "Svensmark clouds," low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.
Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700, during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.
Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years. Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth's molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say, just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow? Who is the "flat-Earther" now?
What about heat escaping from volcanic vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming, upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again, who is the "flat-Earther" here?
The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be "ruled" by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.
To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.
So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.
Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology.
And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.
P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by volcanic venting) -- and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the alarmist camp have taken to referring to "old ice," but, again, this is a misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.
More to the point, 2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica. (There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.
For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way, your contention that the Arctic basin will be "ice free" in summer within five years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that!
