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Gore today to set 'moon shot' goal on energy, climate change

news.yahoo.com — Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

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starmanjones, on 07/17/2008, -3/+2go al. you should have run for president. hillary is ok and obama is good but you were there and fixed the country and the economy after the reagan's "spend us out of debt" economic policies. we know thats crazy but those are his words and GW is following in his foot steps... and doing an even better job of spending insane amounts of money on questionable things.

that scene from blade runner keeps popping in my head...

"I need ya, Decks. This is a bad one, the worst yet. I need the old blade runner, I need your magic."

we need ya al.... worst one yet.
scamerica, on 07/17/2008, -7/+4Al Gore says any scientist who disagrees with him on Global Warming is a kook, or a crook.

Guess he never met these guys:

Dr. Edward Wegman--former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences--demolishes the famous "hockey stick" graph that launched the global warming panic.
Dr. David Bromwich--president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology--says "it's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now."
Prof. Paul Reiter--Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute--says "no major scientist with any long record in this field" accepts Al Gore's claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.
Prof. Hendrik Tennekes--director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute--states "there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies" used for global warming forecasts.
Dr. Christopher Landsea--past chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones--says "there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity."
Dr. Antonino Zichichi--one of the world's foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter--calls global warming models "incoherent and invalid."
Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski--world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research--says the U.N. "based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false."
Prof. Tom V. Segalstad--head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo--says "most leading geologists" know the U.N.'s views "of Earth processes are implausible."
Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu--founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, twice named one of the "1,000 Most Cited Scientists," says much "Arctic warming during the last half of the last century is due to natural change."
Dr. Claude Allegre--member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, he was among the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of global warming. His view now: "The cause of this climate change is unknown."
Dr. Richard Lindzen--Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, says global warming alarmists "are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right."
Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov--head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometria project says "the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."
Dr. Richard Tol--Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time "preposterous . . . alarmist and incompetent."
Dr. Sami Solanki--director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who argues that changes in the Sun's state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming: "The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures."
Prof. Freeman Dyson--one of the world's most eminent physicists says the models used to justify global warming alarmism are "full of fudge factors" and "do not begin to describe the real world."
Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen--director of the Danish National Space Centre, vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, who argues that changes in the Sun's behavior could account for most of the warming attributed by the UN to man-made CO2.
- monoa, on 07/17/2008, -1/+5The list can be summarised by the author of it, Lawrence Solomon: "I ... noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers." - http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=12d ...
  
  1. A detailed look at this list:
  * Dr. Edward Wegman, a mathematician, said "We were not asked to assess the reality of global warming and indeed this is not an area of our expertise."
  * Dr. David Bromwich - his research is based primarily on single site assessments at Amundsen-Scott Research Station. He does not deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
  * Prof. Paul Reiter is a medical entomologist (he studies insect-borne disease) and therefore has no training in climate science. He has not denied the reality of global warming, he has merely questioned the relationship between it and the effects on mosquito-borne diseases. He sits on the council of an organization called the 'Annapolis Centre for Science-Based Public Policy' which has received $763,500 in funding from ExxonMobil.
  * Prof. Hendrik Tennekes is a retired aeronautical engineer. He has provided no evidence to counter the accepted scientific consensus, and seems mainly concerned with the effect of turbulence on climate models.
  * Dr. Christopher Landsea has said "we certainly see substantial warming in the ocean and atmosphere over the last several decades ..., and I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming."
  * Dr. Antonino Zichichi has made a career out of controversy. He is widely ridiculed in the scientific community for his error-strewn publications.
  * Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski is criticised by Professor Hans Oeschger who says that some of Jaworowski claims are "drastically wrong from the physical point of view".
  * Dr. Tom V. Segalstad - he provides no evidence for his claim re. "most leading geologists". He claims "Man's contribution to atmospheric CO2 .... is small" and has, again, provided no evidence for this claim which runs counter to all other measurements (atmospheric CO2 has increased from 315ppm to 387ppm in the past 45 years). He collaborates with the discredited Dr. Jaworowski on many of his published articles.
  * Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu - "it is in the best interests of mankind to reduce the rate of increase of our release of CO2 ... Prominent climate change is in progress in the Arctic"
  * Dr. Claude Allegre - 20 years ago in "Clés pour la géologie", he wrote "By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature...". He now says "The cause of this climate change is unknown".
  * Dr. Richard Lindzen is also a member of 'Annapolis Centre for Science-Based Public Policy' which receives major funding from ExxonMobil. He also works for 'Cato Institute' - again funded by ExxonMobil.
  * Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov - his claims that solar activity is the main contributor to climate change have been discredited - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb ...
  * Dr. Richard Tol, an economist, does not deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change, he has merely debated the economic impact.
  * Dr. Sami Solanki - "since about 1980, while the total solar radiation, its ultraviolet component, and the cosmic ray intensity all exhibit the 11-year solar periodicity, there has otherwise been no significant increase in their values. In contrast, the Earth has warmed up considerably within this time period. This means that the Sun is not the cause of the present global warming."
  * Prof. Freeman Dyson - "One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."
  * Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen does not deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change and says "there is no reason to neglect a contribution from man made greenhouse gases. The question is how much." - http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html
  
  2. Many of the people on this list are taken from the discredited Heartland Institute - http://www.desmogblog.com/distinguished-scientist- ...
  
  3. Who should you believe? The handful of discredited or misquoted scientists on this list or the thousands of credible scientists in *every* national academy in every developed country on the planet who say dangerous climate change is happening and is largely due to human activity?
  
  4. "...no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on ...
  
  5. There is another, equally dishonest and discredited, list of 31,000 'scientists' who deny anthropogenic climate change will cause "catastrophic heating". It's known as the 'Oregon Petition' and has been debunked as oil-industry propaganda - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
  
  So, the entire list is composed of lies, misquotes and discredited claims - and this is all the reality deniers have available to them, along with wilful ignorance and dishonesty. Again, the author of the book, Lawrence Solomon, says: "I ... noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers."
  
  Also, Lawrence Solomon, who is not a scientist of any kind, has demonstrated his complete lack of integrity and honesty: http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/b ...
  
  scamerica keeps pasting this list even though he knows it is fraudulent. That makes him some combination of dumb, deluded, dishonest and deranged.
  - jcm267, on 07/17/2008, -3/+1Just because Lindzen (for example) gets some funding from Exxon Mobil, he's automatically not a credible source? Don't these people NEED to get funding from large corporations (when they aren't relying on government funding) just to do their research?
  - card51short, on 07/17/2008, -1/+1Yeah and how do you know"your" scientists funded by the environmental companies?
- starmanjones, on 07/17/2008, -0/+1>The list can be summarized
  >by the author of it, Lawrence
  >Solomon: "I ... noticed something
  >striking about my growing cast of
  >deniers. None of them were deniers."
  
  i'm glad you went and got it because i didn't have time to.
  
  >Al Gore says any scientist who
  >disagrees with him on Global
  >Warming is a kook, or a crook.
  
  the measurements and the science behind it CANNOT lead you to the conclusion its not real... or that its a hoax for political ends. if you can look at the data and see anything but... yikes this is serious... and it will take decades stop if we start now.... then your opinions are based on some rhetoric or philosophy other than science.
  
  you all spin because you don't have anything of substance to say. its all just "nana no its not."
jcm267, on 07/17/2008, -7/+1Gore has completely lost his mind. He says that the US can switch completely to carbon emission free power within ten years, ignoring the time these things take to plan and build and the political road blocks that have been prevented us from doing anything significant thus far. Unless we can find a place to put nuclear plants, nuclear waste, and Kennedys we will not see this objective even coming close to being accomplished.
- FyreGoddess, on 07/17/2008, -1/+5I'm sure people thought that Kennedy was out of his mind in proposing that we reach the moon before 1970. I think the biggest difference here, and the primary reason that more people won't get behind this is that there's no clear "race" to win. The rest of the world can, and maybe even will surpass us when it comes to alternative energy and it won't be cause for alarm because there's no consensus of perceived threat here.
  
  The political road blocks are an excellent point, but I don't think that they're insurmountable. The bottom line is that people need to let go of their Dem vs. Rep issues when it comes to alternative energy and to look at the benefits, both cost and environmental, that everyone will enjoy from achieving a goal like this.
jcm267, on 07/17/2008, -5/+3I read Fred Singer's (not mentioned in the list) book and thought that it was very well explained and made perfect sense.. But the fact that he was a tobacco company shill and the fact that some of the most prominent global warming skeptics have similar shady ties concerns me.

This whole global warming hysteria just comes off as hype to me, in the same way that 30 years ago so many prominent scientists were saying that our sooty industry was driving us into an ice age. With the most prominent global warming alarmists like Gore having huge conflicts of interest like being involved in a carbon offset company, there's reason for alarm on both sides. The skeptic argument that many scientists are afraid to speak out for fear of being ostracised and losing their funding also is very convincing.

I really don't know what to think, but I lean towards the "this ***** is overblown" side.
- FyreGoddess, on 07/17/2008, -0/+3Regardless of whether or not the whole "global warming" thing is blown out of proportion, I still think that this is a good goal to set. Considering the technological advances within my lifetime alone, it's astounding that we're not further progressed in terms of alternative energy sources and still so reliant on fossil fuels.
  
  I hate that people (gen) let their political leanings and/or their distaste for specific people get in the way of a good idea that is good for *everyone* as well as good for the environment.
  - jcm267, on 07/17/2008, -1/+3Let's say that it's all overblown. The technology to produce power cleanly (with only mostly CO2 as a byproduct) using coal is here. It's much cheaper than renewables are. Why not exploit coal?
    
    I'm all in favor of clean energy, but I'm not in favor of clean energy at the expense of the nation's economy when alternatives that are viable exist. I fully support nuclear, hydroelectric, and other renewable sources of energy. I DO like that my State provides generous tax breaks for those who install solar panels on their rooftops. Something needs to be done to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, not much has been done.
    
    Honestly the whole question of "Is CO2 a pollutant?" cannot be resolved (to me) by a hypocrite with major conflicts of interest Al Gore and whether the contrarions are all shills and kooks is not a matter that I decided for myself.
  - FyreGoddess, on 07/17/2008, -1/+3"Something needs to be done to reduce our dependence on foreign oil..."
    
    I want this to read "Something needs to be done to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels..."
    
    I'm not arguing with clean burning coal, and I don't know enough about the viability of nuclear energy to really speak to that. It's encompassed by my statement that people need to remove political affiliations from the entire energy argument. To me, that's the biggest problem in the whole issue, that people refuse to see what the best options are for energy, simply because they can't see past political rhetoric.
  - jcm267, on 07/17/2008, -1/+3Other than the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource, what's wrong with America exploiting its vast deposits of it while it's a more economically viable option? I'm honestly trying to not be political about this (Gore being called hypocrite with a conflict of interest is more of an attack on the public spokesman for one camp and not taking sides).
  - FyreGoddess, on 07/18/2008, -0/+1The problem I have with continuing to use fossil fuels is that it creates a false sense of security. Americans in particular tend to be very reluctant to change and to see burdens in situations that require a change in thinking or in behaviors. The rising gas prices is evidence of that as people claim entitlement to cheap gas and as much consumption as they want. Exploiting the "vast deposits" is only going to serve to continue our dependency on fossil fuels and make it easier for people to flat-out refuse to make changes toward the use of alternative energy sources.
    
    If you look around, you see people making statements that they're going to drive as much as they can and consume as much gas as they can to throw it in the face of environmentalists. People claiming they're going to buy the biggest gas-guzzler they can with craptastic mileage because THEY can afford it and it will piss off the "hippies". This is the sort of political weirdness that I see happening. Please don't think my politicalization comment was directed at you, it was more of a generic statement.
    
    The bottom line is that we have had the technological capacity to be exploring alternative energy sources for well over a decade, but because of a combination of political and corporate interests, we have not pursued them as aggressively as we could/should have. By allowing Americans to continue their status quo of fossil fuel dependency, it seems less urgent to be pushing those alternatives and we'll wind up being held back by that lack of urgency.
    
    People don't like change, but we're at a point where change is *necessary* to meet our, the world's, growing energy demand. By no means am I saying that we should cut ourselves off from fossil fuels entirely, that would be a stupid and ignorant thing to say, we're not there yet, but by opening up new sources that won't make all that much of a short-term difference you wind up feeding complacency, and the bottom line is that new ways of thinking are what need to be fostered.
  - vault, on 07/18/2008, -1/+2If we had a viable alternative to fossil fuels that could be produced for less than the cost of pumping oil and wouldn't simply drive up the cost of some other commodity, then I think most people would be ok with that. If they weren't ok with it in spirit, they'd be ok with it in cost considering the high price of oil. Ethanol from corn wouldn't be an example of a viable alternative, yet from algae might be but we're still years away from that.
    
    Many people support nuclear power, though it has traditionally been organizations like greenpeace (who recently changed their position), the Green Party, Ralph Nader, etc. who don't. I'm not politicizing this for the sake of it, but that is reality. Solar is expensive at the moment and the industry itself is having growing pains (I know this because I own http://finance.google.com/finance?q=wfr which makes the wafers used in solar panels), and wind power- while a great idea- is still somewhat in its infancy.
    
    I agree many people don't want change. That mindset will change once there's a cheap enough alternative. No one is willing to change for the sake of the environment except a small % of the population.
jodimcmullen, on 07/17/2008, -0/+4Gore addressed those who describe "the challenge as not politically viable" and called on them to "go before the American people and try to defend the status quo and then bear witness to the people's appetite for dramatic change." Over thunderous applause, Gore continued, "The time is now."
- jcm267, on 07/17/2008, -4/+1So what has Congress done to promote renewable and nuclear energy lately? We do, after all, already have a President who is EAGER to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and who called on Congress to encourage the proliferation of nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc energy and nothing has been done.
  
  Gore's little "moon shot" is pathetically and laughably unrealistic.
xekko, on 07/17/2008, -0/+3Watch Gore's speech from today, it's surprisingly very good: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dt9wZloG97U
and his new site here: http://wecansolveit.org/
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Gore today to set 'moon shot' goal on energy, climate change

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