Al Gore, Bungled

And you thought North American journalists screwed stuff up. The original Maktoob article (Maktoob is Jordan based) is gone, but Marc Sheppard's American Thinker post gives the gist of it:

“The North Pole ice cap is 40 percent gone already and could be completely and totally gone in the winter months in the next 5 to 10 years.”

Such thaw, cautioned Gore, “could increase sea levels by 67 metres” and that “each one metre of sea level rise (SLR) is associated with 100 million climate refugees in the world.” That’s up a full 47 meters from the already horrifying predictions he’s made previously.

The swiftly corrected version, however, reads:

Gore said if Greenland and West Antarctica, made up of massive ice sheets, were to melt it could increase sea levels by 6-7 metres, speaking in the heart of an oil-rich region not known for its regard for the environment.

In other words, 1) Gore is not talking about polar ice (which lies over water so would do very little to raise sea-levels were it to melt), and 2) is not talking about something that is due to happen in the next five to 10 years, though both the Greenland and Antarctic sheets have indeed begun to shed mass.

Maktoob claims to have "checked the tape" and Gore did apparently refer to arctic ice-cap disappearing in the "winter" months, so he might have reversed his seasons inadvertantly. Also, this statement seems a bit mysterious to me:

"Greenland and West Antarctica are such massive amounts of ice each one of would lead to a six to seven metre increase in sea level if it were to melt. And both West Antarctica and Greenland are beginning to melt," he said.

The six/seven metre is right enough for the Greenland sheet but, were the Antarctic ice cap to melt (not something anyone expects anytime soon), the average sea level would rise, you guessed it... 67 meters (230 feet).

So more confusion here, but more likely on the part of Maktoob than Mr. Gore.

Think About It

Some Gore bashing gone wrong:

Stanley Lewandowski, the general manager of the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, is one of the few utility officials willing to suggest that the prophet of global warming is strutting about like an emperor without his clothes. 'Al Gore's statement of obtaining 100 percent of our power from renewables in 10 years has as much a chance of happening as the sun shining 24 hours a day,' Lewandowski quipped. 'It's nonsense.'"

Firstly, the sun does shine 24 hours a day.

Secondly, there is actually a difference between the emperor having no clothes and the emperor strutting about without his clothes. The latter is called exhibitionism.

Thirdly, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association is best known for funding AGW Deniers. Consider the source.

h/t Crooked Timber.

Colby Cosh: Harper Covering For The Warmists!

Some freaky-deaky logic today from Colby Cosh on the release of From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate 2007. This document is a major study re the effects of climate change on Canada involving 140 respected scientists. And, basically, the $64,000 question is: why did the Feds pay Hill and Knowlton $50,000 to flog the thing and then dump it on the GofC website without fanfare after some of the more disturbing results got leaked?

Colby thinks he has the answer:

We know the Conservative government is reluctant to make the large, immediate economic tradeoffs that professional environmentalists want. Could this be why the report was dropped quietly onto the internet like a Victorian flirt's handkerchief hitting a parqueted floor?

It's possible, but I don't think it's true. The report we're talking about is called From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate 2007. It's not a document about what we can do now to save Mother Earth: it's about what we can do to ready ourselves if some planetary warming, irrespective of the cause, is inevitable. In that sense it does not suit the environmentalist agenda to have the report widely publicized. Adaptation measures are competing for the same reserve of attention and funding as the Kyoto-type hair-shirt efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas output. The more we talk about living with a warmer Earth, the more we may come to see it as acceptable.

Now that's CHHHHHHutzzzPahhhh! According to CC, Harper has had the report stuffed, not because it makes alarming reading and raises question like what the hell do you plan to do about it?, but because Harper is down with the environmentalist agenda and wants to run cover for them. The report is, in a sense, too anti-Kyoto for the Tory government.

That's the most logical reading of the above passage. Alternatively, maybe Cosh is arguing that somehow Environmentalists have managed to reach inside the Ministry of Natural Resources and influence government policy. A photo of an angry Al Gore heads today's column. Maybe Al made a nasty phone-call to Gary Lunn and gave him heck for blowing the whole scam wide open.

In any case, the fact that the Federal Tories are ignoring a study they commissioned is somehow, some way, the fault of the Environmental movement.

How Mr. Cosh manages to write this stuff without busting out in giggles is beyond me.

Meet Al Gore In Montreal

Al Gore will be personally training 200 Canadians from April April 4 to 6, 2008 in Montreal to present the live version of the slide show that is featured in the movie [An Incovenient Truth].

The Climate Project Canada is taking applications until March 7 through the site linked above if you want to be a presenter. Meals are provided and accomodations can be got at a reduced rate.

And I hear they got the best hookers in Canada out in Montreal. There's a girl there that'll take out her glass eye and wink you off for $1.00.

Steve McIntyre Awarded Nobel Peace Prize!

...for his work as part of the IPCC's team of "expert reviewers". Congratulations, Steve! One day your work confirming the basic accuracy of GISSTEMP data will cop you a prize that you don't have to share with anyone.

Kudos are also in order for:

Richard Courtney of British Coal, who also served as an expert reviewer on the IPCC team, and who has some startling views on carbon sequestration.

Dr. Vincent Gray who in the same role functioned as a one man army of dissent.

David Wojick, another representative of Big Coal.

Once again, congratulations! Al Gore couldn't have saved the planet without you!