Summer of Gore Continues
with Softball Game on Larry King
Host lets Gore slam his talking points
out of the park without raising any skeptical questions on warming.
By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute
June 15, 2006
CNNs Larry King isnt exactly known for playing
hardball, but his June 13 softball interview was the perfect game
for former Vice President Al Gore to cap off his round of TV
appearances on global warming.
King let fly a few statements that more balanced
interviewers might have caught:
We should feel a great sense of urgency because it is
the most dangerous crisis we have ever faced by far, Gore said of
global warming.
So supposedly the prospect of climate change is bigger
than the war on terrorism, the civil rights struggle, the Cold War
against a nuclear-armed Soviet empire and World War II? King
neglected to mention any of those crises.
For a long time the scientists have been telling us
global warming increases the temperature of the top layer in the
ocean and that causes the average hurricane to become a lot
stronger, Gore told King, adding that weve seen a string of
unusually strong hurricanes outside the boundaries of this
multi-decadal cycle that is a real factor. Simply put, Gore
concluded, we're completely outside the range of natural
variability in hurricane strength from natural cycles.
But not all scientists agree with that assessment.
University of Virginias Pat Michaels, for example, has noted that
most global warming adherents rely on computer models which dont
account for historical storm patterns.
In reality, only 10 percent of the behavior of
hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean (where there are the best long-term
records) is related to sea surface temperatures, Michaels wrote in
November 2004. The Cato
Institute scholar was reacting to a study relying on a computer
model which argued that nearly 60 percent of the changes in
hurricane strength would stem from warmer ocean temperatures.
But computers only do what they are told, and they
don't do what they are not told, argued Michael, adding that
global warming is likely to increase winds, several kilometers
aloft, that actually destroy hurricanes. In fact, as the planet has
warmed, maximum winds measured by hurricane-research aircraft in the
Atlantic Basin have declined.
Gore also attacked some global warming critics in part
for lack of scientific training. President Bush, charged Gore, put
in charge of the White House environment office, a fellow named
Philip Cooney, who was empowered to sensor government reports on
global warming even though he had no scientific training.
Gore himself is not a
trained scientist, holding a
government degree from Harvard and a law degree from Vanderbilt.
The Business & Media Institute has documented the
medias love affair with Al Gores
global warming movie and the medias
110-year history
of skewed reporting on climate change.
