Gore's Staff Says He Was Misquoted On Hexametric Hurricanes

jamie writes "In a story on Thursday, Slashdot and its readers had a little fun at the expense of Al Gore, who was quoted as saying that the hurricane severity scale was going to go to 6. A correction was made the next day. The author of the piece that Slashdot linked now writes 'I retract the balance of my criticism.' Turns out Gore was misquoted. Luckily for Gore, this is the first time he's been ridiculed for something he didn't actually say. Well, except for Love Story, Love Canal, farm chores, and everyone's favorite, inventing the internet. (The original Slashdot story is here and its central link now includes the Washington Post's correction.)" From Ezra Klein's update on his earlier piece: "I'm out-of-town and so away from my tape recorder. So I asked Gore's staff about the line and they have Gore saying: 'The scientists are now adding category six to the hurricane ... some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5.' That doesn't offend my memory of the discussion and it's entirely possible I missed Gore's qualifying sentence while trying to keep up. If so, that's my fault, and I apologize."

Comments

does he

[phantomfive]

Does he really have a tape recorder?

Re:does he

[edawstwin]

He just verified the statement with the NSA.

Re:does he

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, had Al Gore not invented the Internet, the NSA would never have been able to verify Al Gore's statement, recorded on a conveniently "temporarily unavailable" tape recorder.

So once again, it seems that Al Gore has saved the day, and thus the world, from ManBearPig.

Re:does he

[Anonymous Coward]

AL Gore

"I created the internet" was that another misquote as well? Go on youtube!!! See how many times he as mouthed off and made outrageous claims, only to later claim he was misquoted..

Austin Powers (Dr Evil)
My father would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

Misquoted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gore's lying Staff Says He Was Misquoted On Hexametric Hurricanes.

Re:Misquoted?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's no longer in a position to do much harm to important stuff, give Gore a break, he's funny.
As he said in the past: "Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things."
-- Vice President Al Gore, 11/30/96
and
"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
-- Vice President Al Gore to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/93

Re:Misquoted?

[Nail]

Nah, he's funnier as a rhetorical punching bag, and he asks for it. *shrug*

"There is no controlling legal authority ":

[Hartree]

Or to use the terms of a previous generation: "Those statements are no longer operative."

Slashdot posts bullshit as fact, real news at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

What, no retraction on posting a piece of speculative fiction about Google's self-driving cars as if it was a news article?

I should submit Onion articles to Slashdot and see what ones get through.

Yawn

[idontgno]

Wake me when the National Hurricane Center expands the Saffir-Simpson scale so that it goes to 11.

Two peas in a pod

[jaymzter]

The press nowadays is more a lapdog of the establishment than a watchdog. What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy, or that hurricanes are more extreme now? Klein let those statements pass without a contrary word. Besides, no matter how you spin what he said, it's factually ignorant. There is no top end to a Cat 5 hurricane classification, so no need for a higher rating.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[oodaloop]

There is no top end to a Cat 5 hurricane classification, so no need for a higher rating.

This first part of that statement is factually true; the second part is your opinion. If hurricanes start becoming 4x as powerful, the category 5 is still applicable, but less useful. What Gore said was correct: there are scientists considering adding a category 6 to differentiate amongst the strongest of hurricanes.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

The eye of Jupiter is a category 5 hurricane. It's bigger than Earth.

Perhaps a new category isn't a bad idea.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[rwise2112]

Size has nothing to do with hurricane category. It's based on wind speed.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy in the system or destruction will not be linear with wind speed. And that's a pretty damn good thing, or we'd be having houses falling down every time we had 50-70 mph wind gusts.

Oh, and sentences should begin with a capital letter and end in punctuation. It will help people take you a little more seriously when you're critiquing their sexual habits.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[geekoid]

Actually you are being ignorant.

When talking about the current hurricane rating system, it's about amount of damage that occurs. category 5 is more then twice as damaging then a category 4, but it isn't twice the wind speed.

And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes. well, not humans becasue we will all be dead, the the planet could see it.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no top end to a Cat 5 hurricane classification, so no need for a higher rating.

This first part of that statement is factually true; the second part is your opinion. If hurricanes start becoming 4x as powerful, the category 5 is still applicable, but less useful. What Gore said was correct: there are scientists considering adding a category 6 to differentiate amongst the strongest of hurricanes.

Interesting how you let the meat of the GP post go with nary a comment.

The press nowadays is more a lapdog of the establishment than a watchdog. What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy, or that hurricanes are more extreme now? Klein let those statements pass without a contrary word. Besides, no matter how you spin what he said, it's factually ignorant. There is no top end to a Cat 5 hurricane classification, so no need for a higher rating.

You latched on to a minor opinion while totally ignoring the real substance of the GP post.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[hey!]

a storm four times more powerful means 540mph winds. do you seriously think that we will have storms in the 700mph wind speed category?

This is a willful misreading of the original post. "4x more powerful" is vague, of course, but by no reasonable reading would interpret it as "4x windspeeds". I read it to mean "4x as destructive". That could be a matter of an increase in as little as 10 mph. Damage to manmade structures is what we're interested in.

That by the way, is how the Saffir-Simpson scale was defined. If you look at the speeds involved, it seems to make little sense:
Cat 1: 119-153 kph
Cat 2: 154-157 kph
Cat 3: 158-208 kph
Cat 4: 209-251kph
Cat 5: 252+ kph

Herbert Saffir, who conceived of the scale for Atlantic hurricanes, was a civil engineer, and his scale was calibrated in terms of potential damage to a well-built frame house. Category 1 hurricanes have dangerous winds but pose only minor danger to a well-built frame house. Category 2 hurricanes commonly cause extensive roof and siding damage to well-built frame houses. Category 3 hurricanes commonly cause major damage to roof decking and gable ends of well-built frame houses. Category 4 hurricanes will cause loss of most of the roof structure and some side walls of well-built frame houses. Category 5 hurricanes cam be expected destroy many well-built frame homes in their path.

Now it's clear that in terms of just describing the potential effect of a hurricane on a well-built frame house, you don't need a category that goes above "complete destruction to many well-built structures". But the very success of the scale in terms of its impact on building codes means we probably should recalibrate the scale because of a change in the meaning of "well-built". But that would be confusing when comparing current to past hurricanes, so adding a category 6 representing "widespread destruction of frame structures built to modern building standards" might make sense.

If more powerful hurricanes become more common, we may also wish to have a category that represents potential catastrophic damage to reinforced concrete homes with shallow hipped roofs -- structures you'd expect to survive lower-end Cat 5 hurricanes largely intact.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[nedlohs]

So why don't we just remove the top end from Cat 3, and get rid of 4 and 5 entirely. After all with no top end there would be need for higher ratings, right?

Re:Two peas in a pod

[nedlohs]

You latched on to a minor opinion while totally ignoring the real substance of the GP post.

Because the poster had no argument with that part? Because the poster had no opinion at all on that part? Because the poster had no knowledge of the claims in the first place?

Or do you you require choruses of amens to almost everything before anyone can disagree with the one statement they have an issue with?

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Nail]

Al, is that you?

Re:Two peas in a pod

[alen]

so when are the hurricanes finally going to become more powerful? i've been hearing this for years.
the year of Katrina everyone predicted a horrific season for the next year, and it was a dud.
same with sandy last year. so far the reality is that this year is a slow hurricane year.

asia has been getting hit by typhoons with horrific death tolls as far as i can remember.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[fche]

" there are scientists considering "

A reference to an expert scientist would have been helpful.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Mr. Firewall]

And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes.

You mean, as it did over sixteen years ago?

Funny that Gore hasn't taken credit for THAT. Oh, wait a minute, that wouldn't serve the Greens' real agenda now, would it?

Re:Two peas in a pod

[hey!]

Define *your* criteria for "hurricanes becoming more poweful". Without that definition it's impossible to answer your question.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, you're being ignorant. 700MPH hurricanes? If GW is manmade, which of course it is, because Mother Nature can't pay fines and taxes, and we're dead, then Earth will right itself before this extreme. Now, go back to your computer models and make believe-land. /smirk

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

dadinportland@yahoo.com

It figures. Wild global warming hysteria from North Berkeley.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Rakarra]

You mean, as it did over sixteen years ago?

That's cherry-picking a statistic. Taking a single year with abnormally high temperatures then comparing all the years after to that one year to try and claim that average temperatures have not been rising.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Mr. Firewall]

Taking a two-decade-old trend is not cherry-picking.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Rakarra]

This is a willful misreading of the original post. "4x more powerful" is vague, of course, but by no reasonable reading would interpret it as "4x windspeeds". I read it to mean "4x as destructive". That could be a matter of an increase in as little as 10 mph. Damage to manmade structures is what we're interested in.

That doesn't make much sense. We used to use such a subjective system for measuring earthquakes, the Mercalli scale, but it was mostly abandoned when the Richter Scale was made (and these days, the MMS scale is usually used, even when people say Richter). Building codes and materials change drastically over the decades, and buildings in hurricane country are more likely to be able to survive hurricane-force winds. New York had a lot of damage with Tropical Storm Sandy, but there was so much more -to- damage in 2012 than 80 years ago when a similar storm came through.

A "how much damage did it cause" scale is subjective and makes it difficult or impossible to compare the strengths of storms that hit different areas. I, and I think most people, am far more interested in the relative actual strengths of storms.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[BasilBrush]

What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy, or that hurricanes are more extreme now?

If you want to make accusations about what someone said, you need to start with a direct quote. What have you got? After that we can discuss to what extent what he actually said, is right or wrong.

At the moment it's just coming across as a hater spewing bile.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[luiscolorado]

I disagree with your comment regarding "dud" years, but I'm glad that you posted a comment regarding other events out of the US.

We are oblivious to hurricanes occurring out of our countries. You don't need to get that far from the US: Mexico and Central America have had pretty awful hurricane seasons in the last years.

So, when writing that a year was a "dud", remember to check the hurricanes at other parts of the world.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[luiscolorado]

When measuring "hurricane power", categories can be misleading.

Sandy was only a Category 3 hurricane, and it was Cat 2 when it hit Northeastern US. Wind speed is not the only indicator of the "power" of a hurricane. Sandy had relatively slow winds, but its diameter was around 1,600 Km (1,000 mi).

In contrast, Katrina had Cat 5 winds, but was much smaller in diameter: around 600 Km (400 mi).

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

700mph. as in near supersonic? unless you point to some sort of
scientific evidence for this, i'm going to file this under tall tales.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Red Flayer]

Taking a two-decade-old trend is not cherry-picking.

It can be cherrypicking when there are cyclical trends whose period is longer than 20 years.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[hey!]

Well, I wouldn't say the Saffir-Simpson scale is *subjective*, but it is somewhat *arbitrary*. A lot of the problem is that we talk about hurricane classes as if they were purely descriptive of storms, but really the various classes characterize the potential interaction of a storm with man-made structures. Each hurricane class represents the likely level of damage to a wood frame structure built with construction techniques common in the US in 1971. This could easily have been calibrated using historical insurance statistics, at least for the more common category 1-3 hurricanes. So the scale is not *subjective*, it's *contrived for a particular use*.

The National Hurricane Center originally took Saffir's wind speed scale and factored in potential storm surge, which I think makes sense. A few years ago NHC changed the scale to be a pure wind speed based scale, which might be more useful for some purposes but I think reduces the relevance of the scale to most people. Take Sandy, which was "only" a category 2 hurricane; the damage was caused by storm surge. Another factor that would go into a really useful scale of hurricane power would be geographic extent. Sandy, while not packing intense winds, was *huge*; that meant that it was going to find the right conditions of pressure, wind and tide to cause major damage *somewhere*. Consequently Sandy caused more damage than any other Atlantic hurricane excepting Katrina -- $65 bln. The next hurricane down the list by damage is lest than half that (Ike, at 29.5 bln).

So the issue of whether we need another, higher level category is not a matter of wind strength alone, whether or not that strength is increasing. It's a matter of needing to characterize a potential for damage to things other than wood-frame structures.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

If more powerful hurricanes become more common

There is ZERO evidence hurricanes are becoming more powerful, or more common, or will become more powerful and common in the future.

This is wishful thinking without a shred of evidence. In fact, the opposite is true, and hurricanes are no more powerful now than they were a century ago.

Al Gore is trolling for money. He has become a shill and has no moral objection to taking your money by spreading FUD.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

You cant ave the higher wind speeds in smaller storms. So wind speed is well correlated with size.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Mr. Firewall]

So... let's see...

The sixteen-year period of global warming from 1980 to 1996, which was cause for great alarm, isn't cherrypicking, but --

-- the nearly seventeen-year period since then IS cherrypicking?

Got it. I think.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[khallow]

And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes.

Well, why don't we have 700 MPH hurricanes now? Because global warming has stopped far short of that state for the entirety of Earth's history. It's a pretty easy to satisfy "if".

Re:Two peas in a pod

[mcgrew]

A Category Five hurricane, the strongest class on Earth, has winds raging at more than 155 miles per hour, and they usually max out around 200 miles per hour. Jupiter's Little Red Spot could blow them away with winds of about 384 miles per hour, some of the highest wind speeds ever detected on any planet. Nearly the size of Earth, the Little Red Spot (LRS) could easily consume the largest terrestrial hurricane.

-Goddard Space Center

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Xyrus]

And if global warming doesn't stop, then yes we will have 700 MPH hurricanes. well, not humans becasue we will all be dead, the the planet could see it.

Please stop. There is no conceivable scenario where the Earth could ever support a hurricane with 700 mph winds. All you're doing by spouting off nonsense like this is giving deniers more fuel.

The impacts of climate change are considerable enough without exaggerating them beyond reality. Stick to the science.

Re:Two peas in a pod

[Anonymous Coward]

Frederick Frankenstein is considering it. When asked to comment he shouted "Life! Life! Give [Cat 6] life!"

Al Gore...

[Capt James McCarthy]

Shouldn't he be out fighting the forest fires out west spewing carbon dioxide without paying for it?

The rest of the criticism remains valid

[barlevg]

Namely,

Generally, Gore’s characterization of the links between global warming and hurricane intensity is a bit fast and loose. Whereas Gore tells Klein hurricanes are “stronger now” due to manmade warming, the freshly leaked United Nations climate assessment is much more equivocal. Although the assessment says hurricane activity has become more intense in the Atlantic since 1970, there is “low confidence” of a human contribution.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[iggymanz]

There was a global cooling trend around the 70s, so I'm always amused at people who use that time period as a baseline for what's normal. Ditto for "climatologists" who plug in numbers from lip blown hand crafted thermometers of 1900 and then interpolate to have sample density to compare to todays digital instruments in heat islands.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[geekoid]

According to a leak unfinished reports based on a link that doesn't mention hurricanes.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[elwinc]

I, too, would be amused by folks who used the 1970s as a baseline for global warming data. So, just for the heck of it, I googled images for global warming hockey stick and it seems most of the graphs start at the year 1000 or before. However, among the top four there is one graph that starts at 1970; amusingly, it was created by a global warming sceptic. I suppose you can cite example an example somewhere of someone who bases their global warming theories only on the last 45 years, but it certainly isn't the mainstream.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[nbauman]

I used to have a hand-made mercury laboratory thermometer that was accurate to 0.1 degree. (In fact, fever thermometers have a nominal accuracy of 0.1 degree.) That's accurate enough to measure the difference between a weather station that was painted black or white.

Here's a graph that shows a 0.8 degree rise. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11639/dn11639-2_808.jpg

Are you saying that if in 1900 they had thermometers with greater accuracy, they would have only gotten a 0.7 degree rise?

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[dywolf]

because no one anywhere ever thought of putting thermometers anywhere else othr than cities (heat island) and no one anywhere ever realied that concrete absorbs and re-radiates a lot of energy.

nope.

not one person.

those weather monitoring stations in that NOAA spread around the country, in the middle of nowhere, on mountain tops, at rest areas (nearly every RA has one), on farms....those are all just for show. to disguise how ignorant they are. and all those individual peoples who contribute data over the years from areas with fewer monitors...those are just part of the lie too...

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[dywolf]

also: hand blown vs digital has jack all to do with it. accuracy to the 0.0001 degree isnt that relevant. water boils and freezes at precisely defined and well known and easily obtained temperatures (and pressures, but for the sake of simplicity since im probably the only one in this thread that actually calibrates teh damn things, we'll keep it simple).

TLDR: creating an accurate thermometer isnt difficult.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[Nimey]

Sigh, another denier (not a skeptic, mind) to killfile.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[Anonymous Coward]

And putting an accurate thermometer on top of a building in the middle of a 20 acre blacktop parking lot will return skewed data... Many people tend to ignore the fact that cities have their own bubble of warmer temperatures.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[elwinc]

I just came across this animation of world-wide weather-station measured temperatures from 1880 to the present. I know it's only 130 years, but unless one can prove a bias in early hand-made thermometers, it seems to show a hockey stick.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[Anonymous Coward]

And unlike your brilliant self the scientists are too stupid to realize there is an urban heat island effect and compensate for it. I think not.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[pluther]

And putting an accurate thermometer on top of a building in the middle of a 20 acre blacktop parking lot will return skewed data... Many people tend to ignore the fact that cities have their own bubble of warmer temperatures.

I haven't actually looked at the data yet, but I suspect that the last 135 years of recorded temperature data were gathered by more than one guy in one location.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[iggymanz]

you imagine words, there was not a word of denial, only accusations of poor scientific rigor

sigh, another victim of moden education with no reading comprehension.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[iggymanz]

oh, there is a compensation for it but manner in which it is done is not public nor transparent.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[iggymanz]

False, there are omissions in your knowlege.

I have worked with laboratory grade spirit and mercury thermometers with calibration reports in the $200 to $300 range. Those reports can go to more than 0.5 degrees over the range of the instrument. Your claim of accuracy of hand made thermometers is laughable.

So do you imagine that merely taking the freezing and boiling points and making a hundred equal divisions gets you an accurate thermometer? Look at a calibration report and educate yourself.

We won't even go into the issues of purity of spirits or mercury, or boiling point elavation and freezing point depressions due to impurities in water, or of barometers in that era for determining STP.

Creating an accurate thermometer is difficult, you are ignorant.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[iggymanz]

by a bunch of very inaacurate devices for the first 50 years at least

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[dywolf]

define Innaccurate. like i said, its not hard to create an accurate thermometer. we arent dealing with +/- 0.00001 accuracy here, nor do we need to. Even a basic mercury thermometer from 200 years ago can have an accuracy of +/- 0.2 degrees very easily, and that's being generous to yor side of the argument.

you dont know what the hell youre talking about.
you need to just shut up.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[dywolf]

i did mention i was keeping this simple for slashdot right? yep its right there.

i calibrate these and similar ( http://us.flukecal.com/products/temperature-calibration/probessensors/secondary-standard-prts/56265628-secondary-sprt-prt-t?geoip=1 ) for a living. +/-0.006 degree accuracy and similar instruments. read the reports? I MAKE those reports. bugger off you ignorant tool.

Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid

[iggymanz]

wrong, the modern made machine ones have accuracy worse than that. look at the calibration report for one.

you are talking out of your ass

must be said.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ours goes to Eleven!

This name sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who?

I'm being totally cereal right now.

[Anonymous Coward]

He needs to keep looking for ManBearPig.

Initiative reports say

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Gore: "I didn't say I created the Internet. I merely took the initiative in creating the Internet. Similarly I didn't say there would be a new cagegory 6 hurricane. I merely took the initiative in asking if probably scientists were gonna do that."

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[drinkypoo]

Oh, WOW! The story has been SOOOO debunked. Al Gore never said that he invented the Internet! He said that he *created* the Internet which is the total opposite!

I know you're just trolling, but here's your sign.

creating the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Gore authored the legislation that made Darpanet public, which created the internet thus making his comment which was "I practically invented the internet" correct. A lot of people don't remember Darpanet.

Re:creating the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well say that I invented the Canadarm, because I voted for the government, that authorized the agency, that hired the engineers that developed the thing.

Re:creating the internet

[dkleinsc]

Of course he never said "I practically invented the internet". He said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet", which in a political sense was completely true.

Sure, he wasn't writing code for the TCP/IP stack, nor does he have a single RFC to his name, but the people who were doing that work have always been very clear that Al Gore was the first and for a while only politician to really understand the value of what they were doing. After the legislation you just mentioned (called the "Gore Bill") was passed, and Gore became VP, he continued to push the Clinton administration to make the Internet more ubiquitous. He also remains the only VP with a photo-op of him putting Cat-5 cabling into a school.

So yeah, he totally did that.

Re:creating the internet

[MiniMike]

Nicely stated, but we can also refer to an acknowledged expert:

    "He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions," said Vint Cerf.

'Nuff said, far as I'm concerned. Snopes has a nice writeup.

Re:creating the internet

[Rakarra]

Al Gore authored the legislation that made Darpanet public, which created the internet thus making his comment which was "I practically invented the internet" correct

That's bullshit. The people writing the code, the people doing the design, the project managers, and maybe even the guys laying some cable, those are the people I would say created the Internet.

Re:creating the internet

[Rakarra]

Of course he never said "I practically invented the internet". He said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet"

That's the same damned thing.

Sure, he wasn't writing code for the TCP/IP stack, nor does he have a single RFC to his name

And that makes a big difference. He didn't design or implement it. He cannot claim inventor status. Now, I think it would be quite fair to say "I shepherded the Internet from infancy to adulthood." Maybe without his funding it could have been a forgotten experiment. Without his help the Internet may have been delayed for years. But that is a far, far cry from inventing or creating it.

Re:creating the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same damned thing.

No, it's not...which is the point, willful misunderstanding of what he said.

Sure, he wasn't writing code for the TCP/IP stack, nor does he have a single RFC to his name

And that makes a big difference. He didn't design or implement it. He cannot claim inventor status. Now, I think it would be quite fair to say "I shepherded the Internet from infancy to adulthood." Maybe without his funding it could have been a forgotten experiment. Without his help the Internet may have been delayed for years. But that is a far, far cry from inventing or creating it.

What a pity that Al Gore didn't qualify his statements by referring to his service in congress...oh wait, he did.

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Now I suppose somebody MIGHT think that he was talking about wiring up the Capitol Building himself, but who seriously gets that confused?

Yeah, it'd have been nice if he'd added a qualifier or some such, but I don't insist on that degree of precision and exposition, since too many people would just complain about that anyway.

Re:creating the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

He cannot claim inventor status

And he did not claim such status. He said he "took the initiative to create", by which he meant legislatively.

Re:creating the internet

[presspass]

Sure, but I bet he'll deny anything to do with the PMRC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center. Fuckin' Tipper.

Re:creating the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well say that I invented the Canadarm, because I voted for the government, that authorized the agency, that hired the engineers that developed the thing.

If we removed your 1 vote, I doubt it would have had any effect on Canadarm. Not sure we can say the same about Gore and the internet.

Re:creating the internet

[bhiestand]

Al Gore authored the legislation that made Darpanet public, which created the internet thus making his comment which was "I practically invented the internet" correct

That's bullshit. The people writing the code, the people doing the design, the project managers, and maybe even the guys laying some cable, those are the people I would say created the Internet.

Bush didn't start the Iraq war, the soldiers who invaded did!

Goes to six?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine goes to 11

Re:Slashdot posts bullshit as fact, real news at 1

[Anonymous Coward]

they fixed the headline within about 15 minutes on the self driving cars

oh slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I know complaining about slashdot being lame has a long tradition, but.... lately it's been lamer than usual. If slashdot was a horse, somebody would put a mercy bullet through it's head. (sorry, no car analogy). There are plenty of cool things that should appeal to the slashdot demographic (check hacker news or subreddits) and /. is full of shit like this or how to re-open your last browser window. Other stories were reported and discussed weeks ago elsewhere.

Is there a corporate mandate from Dice to suck ass? Is this some sort of passive-aggressive geek rage from the editors? Whatever, slashdot sucks. I won't miss it when Dice pulls the plug and treats it as a tax writeoff.

Re:oh slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

10* Not only that but the lame complaints about people complaining about how lame slashdot is are also getting lamer.

Re:oh slashdot

[RobertLTux]

for a car analogy that would be doing the old Coffee can and Thermite trick on the hood.

part of the problem with reporting now a days is they disect every single word somebody says and then try to find the absolute worst "spin" on it.

personally i would say that having N as the top of the scale is a good idea.

How else are you going to sort out wrecked a county > counties > state > states levels of hurricane??

um, yeah ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... nothing more definitive than some journalist saying "that doesn't offend my memory".

Re:um, yeah ...

[SnarfQuest]

Missing part of reporters quote

... now pleqase return my wife and children

Other Hurricane Scales

[squidflakes]

The Saffir-Simpson scale is pretty antiquated for the exact reasons mentioned. Just measuring wind speed gives a very poor idea of how dangerous or destructive a storm will by, and gives no indication of relative size.

The better scale that the AMS is starting to lean toward is the Hebert-Weinzapfel scale, which has a much easier to spell name as the Hurricane Severity Index, or HSI.

With the HSI model, the speed of wind and the size of the wind field are taken in to account so a storm that is moderate intensity but very large in footprint, like Katrina, has a similar rating to a hurricane with a high intensity and very small footprint like Andrew. Both were similar in the amount of destruction they caused but Katrina was only SS Cat 3 at landfall, where Andrew was SS Cat 5.

But hey, lets just make jokes about Al Gore instead, cause Al Gore. Am I right here people?

Re:Other Hurricane Scales

[AdamHaun]

Both were similar in the amount of destruction they caused but Katrina was only SS Cat 3 at landfall, where Andrew was SS Cat 5.

Hurricane Ike produced a similar situation a few years ago. It hit Texas as a very large Category 2, causing far more damage than one would expect from the wind speed.

Re:Other Hurricane Scales

[H0p313ss]

But hey, lets just make jokes about Al Gore instead, cause Al Gore. Am I right here people?

That never happens.

I wonder how history will judge this generation of leaders.

Re: Other Hurricane Scales

[O('_')O_Bush]

I'm more worried about how history judge this era of the public.

Re:Other Hurricane Scales

[squidflakes]

Yep, I rode that storm out in Houston. It was a Cat 2 but HSI 45 while in the Gulf and low 30s at landfall. Katrina was mid-30s at landfall. Most of those points were, of course, for size.

Re: Other Hurricane Scales

[khallow]

I'm more worried about what happens to this era of people. History is a notoriously feeble judge.

So what about YOUR ridiculous claim?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you ridiculously claim "What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy", where is your evidence for that?

"or that hurricanes are more extreme now?"

Uh, 2-11% increase in the top end. Pretty simple mathematics: hurricanes are powered by the condensation of moisture as it rises above the earth. And the Cassius-Clapeyron formula has been uncontroversial for a century.

PS when they say there is no top end to a Cat5, that is because they decided not to. They can absolutely decide that there needs to be a Cat 6.

Re:So what about YOUR ridiculous claim?

[jaymzter]

When you ridiculously claim "What about Gore's ridiculous claim that his propaganda film predicted the effects of Hurricane Sandy", where is your evidence for that?

I left my "evidence" out of the OP, but if you're too lazy to look up the interview yourself, here is what Gore said:
"You mentioned my movie back in the day. The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that demagogic and absurd and irresponsible. It happened last October 29th, years ahead of schedule, and the impact of that and many, many other similar events here and around the world has really begun to create a profound shift."
That's fine and all, but Gore also claimed large swaths of the earth would be underwater by now.

Uh, 2-11% increase in the top end

Citation needed. Again, if you go back to the interview, you'd see that Gore was referring to hurricanes when he referred to "extreme events being more extreme", but as usual for him, that is hyperbole. The trend for major storms since 1851 is negative. See for yourself.

Re:So what about YOUR ridiculous claim?

[BasilBrush]

I left my "evidence" out of the OP, but if you're too lazy to look up the interview yourself, here is what Gore said:
"You mentioned my movie back in the day. The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that demagogic and absurd and irresponsible. It happened last October 29th, years ahead of schedule, and the impact of that and many, many other similar events here and around the world has really begun to create a profound shift."
That's fine and all, but Gore also claimed large swaths of the earth would be underwater by now.

So you're now giving us a quote. But saying that you don't have a problem with what he said in the quote, but with something else that he said, that you don't quote. So worthless then.

The trend for major storms since 1851 is negative. See for yourself.

Three problems there.
1) You claim the quoted statement is about hurricanes and imply it's only about hurricanes. Without quoting the bit that establishes your claim.
2) You can't simply link to a table of figures and say there's a trend.
3) That table doesn't cover the last 10 years.

Re:So what about YOUR ridiculous claim?

[khallow]

Uh, 2-11% increase in the top end. Pretty simple mathematics

You do realize that we can get that sort of increase by chance from the small number of such storms. And what's with that huge uncertainty in the increase of number of storms? With that much range, 0% is pretty darn close.

Only 6?

[whoever57]

My hurricane scale goes up to 11!

640K MPH should be enough for anybody

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am in control here.' -- Alexander Haig stages a coup, 3/30/1981

Really Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

A would-be retraction is being posted based on the other person's transcription of events that proves that the original statement was actually stated? What is the point of this retraction? Other than someone very powerful got very embarrassed.

After all, Gore's own staff continues to have him saying literally the line that is supposedly being retracted:

The scientists are now adding category six to the hurricane ...

Even if you immediately add that "some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5," then it's just a separate thought--and process for that matter--because he has literally already said that "the scientists" are doing it at this point without correcting that idea. Arbitrary scientists and NHTSA do not have to be doing it together, which I frankly suspect is exactly what he meant; some climate scientists certainly are establishing the definition of a category six hurricane, which will be a proposal to the powers-that-be once they finalize it.

This is just bizarrely stupid that this "retraction" is deserving of a post.

Re:Slashdot posts bullshit as fact, real news at 1

[Anonymous Coward]

oh well that makes it okay then

Avoidance.

[Anonymous Coward]

"OK, yes, it was wrong, but don't consider that, consider SOME OTHER CLAIM about it!"

The link between global warming and hurricane intensity is fine. 2-11% stronger.

Man. Bear. Pig.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Next you'll be telling me that "manbearpig" wasn't really his cause. Yeesh.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Mr. Firewall]

Yeah, Al Gore is basically the Town Joke around Nashville, TN. During the three years I lived there, I never once heard his name mentioned in a respectful manner, and that includes on the local radio stations.

Most of the time you could get a laugh just by dropping his name into a conversation.

Let's Not Forget ...

[Psion]

Al Gore also claimed the temperature of the core of the Earth is "millions of degrees" on Conan O'Brien. Unfortunately, that one went out on national television, so no one on his staff can make the claim that he'd been misquoted.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Seumas]

Let's not forget that Al Gore makes bank off stirring things up to benefit his whole Carbon Credits scam.

It's difficult to take anyone seriously when they've built a goofy market around something and then are constantly pumping up that market with hyperbole.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[umafuckit]

Regardless of how seriously you choose to take Gore's comments, his central message is that humanity changing the climate in ways that will have serious negative implications for ourselves. That is not a message that is easy to dispute. Personally, I find Jared Diamond's approach to communicating these issues to be much more effective (see his book "Collapse"). Diamond is not over the top and frequently tries to be optimistic (which, oddly, makes his message even more hard-hitting). The point is that if you over-use your resources really bad things begin to happen. This has happened many times in the past without fossil fuels. Examples include: Easter Island, the Anasazi, the Maya, and the Sumerians.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[nedlohs]

Sure, and if he didn't then there would be cries of "put your money where your mouth is" to criticize him.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just curious, but is there any reason at all anybody should care about this other than because they hate Al Gore or hope somehow him saying something wrong -- even if completely unrelated -- will get people to stop believing in the science of anthropogenic climate change and join the delusional deniers?

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Nimey]

Because Al Gore.

It's the same fuckwits who screamed hysterically about Nancy Pelosi when she was Speaker. Same technique as Orwell's 2-minute Hate.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Just Some Guy]

Yes, because it harms his credibility. There's no reason for him to have lied about the temperature of Earth's core, so it's clear that he made a mistake and spoke in error. There are three possibilities here: he knew the right answer but misspoke, he knew an answer but it was wrong, or he didn't know the answer but spoke anyway.

The first case is most forgivable. Smart people get tongue-tied all the time. It happens. Still, it's an important reminder that not everything out of someone's mouth - even if they were considered an expert in the field being discussed - can be accepted as fact without verification.

The second case is troubling. If he "knew" that the Earth's core was millions of degrees hot, then we're led to wonder what other incorrect facts he might have stated in other contexts. Maybe some inconveniently incorrect truths helped him in a debate? Maybe some policy speeches on the Senate floor weren't as accurate as we would hope?

But I personally find the third possibility to be the worst option, because it speaks to a mindset rather than a mistake. We believe experts because we trust that they have evidence behind their statements, and that they'll offer a correction if it turns out that they made a mistake. It's impossible to trust someone who says things without evidence, though, as if making up facts out of whole cloth when it suits them.

So those are the reasons why we care that he said something so blatantly wrong. It doesn't mean that his other positions are invalid (and certainly doesn't mean that anthropogenic climate change is invalid), but it does mean that a very prominent climate change supporter has made wildly incorrect statements public settings. I choose to believe that it's for the first reason and that he simply spit out the wrong number. You can bet that a lot of people have come to one of the other conclusions, though, and to those people anything he's said in the past or will say in the future will be suspect.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... so he said a few million instead of a few thousand... at the end of the day, you weren't going to get out a calculator and start plugging in numbers from what he said on Conan, right? He was just saying "it's really friggin' hot down there".

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[shokk]

Gore is trying to be the next Tesla. Excuse me while I use by Gorebook Pro to get on the Gorenet and buy some more of these Gore carbon credits to power up my house before Hurricane Albert hits us at category 28.25.

Using Category for hurricanes is as useless that fucking red-orange-yellow-green terror alert from the early-to-mid 00s. Why don't we recognize that having a category 2 to cover range of 3 mph is patently ridiculous.
Just measure the hurricane by how fast the winds are! 250 mph winds? That sounds fucking fast! I'd better get inside!

Also can't we just agree that Al Gore should be wearing white paint on his face, a plastic red nose that honks when you squeeze it, and rainbow hair? Or are we insulting circus performers by calling him a clown? Nothing like live TV to prove what an idiot Al Gore is. He's becoming borderline Dan Quayle!

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, political hack Jared Diamond, writing progressive rants as books for progressives to cite.

Let's not forgot that the two main points of Guns, Germs, and Steel were that (1) all humans are exactly the same (2) except that Whites are uniquely evil. The funniest part was the bit about how Melanesian islanders are the most intelligent people on Earth, after denouncing the very concept of a most intelligent people on Earth.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[khallow]

his central message is that humanity changing the climate in ways that will have serious negative implications for ourselves. That is not a message that is easy to dispute.

It's not easy to support either. It's not easy to deduce anything about climate because of how weak and incomplete our measurements of it are.

The point is that if you over-use your resources really bad things begin to happen. This has happened many times in the past without fossil fuels. Examples include: Easter Island, the Anasazi, the Maya, and the Sumerians.

But it didn't happen in the US which has a history of serially overusing resources.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[umafuckit]

It's not easy to support either. It's not easy to deduce anything about climate because of how weak and incomplete our measurements of it are.

But it didn't happen in the US which has a history of serially overusing resources.

Not yet it hasn't happened to the US, but the symptoms are there. Unless you want to pretend that resources are limitless, then you have to accept there is problem that needs solving. The Anasazi were North American and the source of their collapse is worth looking into. Amongst other things they suffered from water shortages, which is something that the Western US is having to deal with right now. There are farmers in California who've realised they will make more money by keeping their fields fallow and selling their water rights than by growing crops. The water table is falling out there and it's costing more and more to pump the stuff up. This is the point: you can argue about climate and incomplete data, yada, yada, but climate is just one thing that can go wrong. Even you forget totally about climate, we have other equally major issues to solve. That's why I brought up Diamond in my original post: he looks at the whole picture and shows you what can wrong when resources run out. He also discusses cases of success, such as Japan's Tokugawa era forest management. It was deforestation that caused Easter Island to collapse...

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[khallow]

Not yet it hasn't happened to the US, but the symptoms are there.

Of course they are. Such things as using resources more efficiently or going after resources that were harder to get before. Before comparing current human civilization to past ones, keep in mind that there are unique differences to our civilization now.

It's great that you know about Easter Island and the Anasazis. But there are flaws in those analogies. They couldn't fluidly move from one place to another. They didn't have global extent.

They couldn't develop new technologies to get around their dependency on certain critical resources or adapt to changes in their world. They didn't have a huge, extremely rapid disaster warning and response system.

This is the point: you can argue about climate and incomplete data, yada, yada, but climate is just one thing that can go wrong.

So what? Just because you're aware, doesn't mean that you aren't part of the problem. Doing stupid stuff just because climate changes or resources are finite is no better than doing stupid stuff because the Moon is made of green cheese. They are just as much a non sequitur.

I find observations about "finite resources" are typically followed by poorly thought out proposals to create artificial scarcity (because making something even more scarce or requiring even more finite resources to obtain is a great resource management technique). For example, your story about California water issues is an example. They made water artificially cheap for urban areas and now they're paying the price. Observations about "climate change" are a prelude to proposals for huge societal sacrifices for the illusion of maintaining a particular arbitrary climate. California again is a great example of this with near unique fuel blends required in the state which means that people pay a premium for these blends. They could have shaved some cost off and still maintain whatever ecological goals they had just by requiring blends that are used commonly elsewhere in the US.

Thrashing about from imaginary dangers also obscures the more realistic dangers. For example, you'll see a lot more talk in the media about the loss of arable land from AGW even though deforestation and bad farming practices are more dangerous in this regard.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Areyoukiddingme]

I wish I hadn't used up my mod points today. This sort of response to the alarmism needs more visibility. I've been trying to say this kind of thing myself, but I somehow don't manage to phrase it right. This is an excellent embodiment of the argument against the alarmists, describing in concrete terms exactly why their Chicken Little screechings grate on the nerves so much.

It's true that parallels to ancient history are tenuous at best. Worse, observations of recent history are even more damning to the cause of the alarmists. Nobody objects to cleaning up pollution, other than the people who make money creating it. Real pollution, that is. Prior to the creation of the EPA (by Republicans, no less), the US looked like China does today. The fact that a river in the US literally caught fire is famous. Now that doesn't happen any more. Not even close. The continent's rivers are cleaner now than they've been in centuries. Alarmists have effectively been claiming that carbon dioxide is as clear and present a danger as a burning river, and wondering why they are met with skepticism.

We're told sob stories about how polar bears are going to starve, in an effort to shore up the narrative, and nobody bought that either. (Perhaps because people realize that polar bears have feet, are omnivorous, and will eat anything that will hold still long enough, and will bash you with their little beary paws if you don't hold still, then eat you.) Huge societal sacrifices self-inflicted by imposing artificial scarcity in order to save bears that don't need saving? Yeah, I'm skeptical.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[umafuckit]

It's great that you know about Easter Island and the Anasazis. But there are flaws in those analogies. They couldn't fluidly move from one place to another. They didn't have global extent.

They couldn't develop new technologies to get around their dependency on certain critical resources or adapt to changes in their world. They didn't have a huge, extremely rapid disaster warning and response system.

Sure, those are obvious differences, but it's hubris to think that we're immune to serious collapse just because our civilisation is more advanced and extensive. I wouldn't call comparisons to past past civilisations "analogies", I'd call these a "warning." These are not an apples and oranges comparison: these are all apples, they're just different flavours.

Technology allows you stretch your resources (e.g. modern farming) but if you aren't mindful of what you're doing, things can stretch to breaking point. Again, modern farming is a good case in point--we seem to be hitting the limits of what we can produce per acre. Perhaps proposals for for dealing with finite resources are often poorly though through--I don't know--but that doesn't mean that resources aren't finite and that you shouldn't consider what to do about that. Being bigger just means you risk falling harder. Just my two cents...

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[khallow]

Sure, those are obvious differences, but it's hubris to think that we're immune to serious collapse just because our civilisation is more advanced and extensive. I wouldn't call comparisons to past past civilisations "analogies", I'd call these a "warning." These are not an apples and oranges comparison: these are all apples, they're just different flavours.

My point is not that there aren't such dangers, but that the people speaking of such dangers tend to not understand how things work and propose solutions that make our more serious problems worse. For example, someone seriously proposed this in a recent argument over what was creating and distributing wealth in our world today:

Eliminate the trade conditions which seduce the East and Africa into being crippled exporters, and stop propping up their corrupt governments, and they'd start to see the independent flourishing that European nations began to experience last century.

Stop global trade, the primary engine of wealth distribution (and a considerable tool of wealth creation as well) in the world today and somehow all those poor countries would do better.

As I see it, the poster really wanted to protect their developed world economy from labor competition by the rest of the world and just rationalized this fantasy out of thin air. It was what they wanted, therefore it must be good for the rest of the world. I imagine if unpopular rich people had wanted it instead, then it would be automatically bad.

Another classic example is the ongoing decades-old drive to conserve cheap, plentiful electricity. All sorts of bad laws have been passed to control the non-problem of people leaving their lights on or using a less energy efficient clothes washing machine.

Technology allows you stretch your resources (e.g. modern farming) but if you aren't mindful of what you're doing, things can stretch to breaking point. Again, modern farming is a good case in point--we seem to be hitting the limits of what we can produce per acre. Perhaps proposals for for dealing with finite resources are often poorly though through--I don't know--but that doesn't mean that resources aren't finite and that you shouldn't consider what to do about that. Being bigger just means you risk falling harder.

Well, who's doing that? For all the talk of finite resources and using them up, the developed world has come up with some pretty good solutions that will work for a while (far more than long enough to come up with better solutions when the need should arise). They also aren't the ones doing most of the growing.

As I see it, even if we turn out to occasionally do the Easter Island thing, most of the subsequent harm is going to fall on those who mismanage their resources the most and who grew the most. That's what used to be called the Third World.

People like Al Gore try to guilt trip the developed world into doing foolish things. But that's not where the problems truly lie. My take is that it would be better to do nothing than to set up expensive resource and pollution regulating mechanisms in the absence of credible need.

For example, markets have natural and very effective mechanisms for regulating the consumption of finite resources. As a resource grows more scarce, the supply of it declines and the price increases. That naturally reduces demand for that resource. So in this case, doing nothing aside from buying resources on a market automatically introduces a regulating mechanism into resource consumption.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[umafuckit]

Thank you, interesting discussion. I think we mostly agree but are concerned about different things. If I read you correctly, it sounds like you're concerned about knee jerk reactions and feel that inaction may be the best policy as it would decrease the chances of the idiots taking charge. I, on the other hand, am more cautious about inaction (although I'm mindful that poorly thought through actions are bad too). Like you, I think we're smart enough to solve many (maybe all) of the technical problems if we're given enough time. I don't believe, however, that we can solve these problems and maintain our current lifestyles. Managing that aspect correctly is going to be the tough thing, and it's the thing which can lead to conflict. I also agree we shouldn't believe we will fall into the traps past civilizations fell, but also we shouldn't let hubris get in the way of learning from those mistakes and ensuring we don't fall into those traps. Finally, I am more wary than you of the market's ability to regulate resource consumption and allocation.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

My point is not that there aren't such dangers, but that the people speaking of such dangers tend to not understand how things work and propose solutions that make our more serious problems worse.

I don't see anything wrong with that. I'll gladly let them be free to think and speak and propose what they want if it means I get to keep my freedom to do the same.

I mean without that, I wouldn't even be able to see you exercise that freedom right now.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[khallow]

Don't confuse freedom of speech with what is said. If we always agreed with each other's speech, there'd be no reason to try to censor speech.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't confuse freedom of speech with what is said

Don't worry about something that didn't happen.

If we always agreed with each other's speech, there'd be no reason to try to censor speech.

If

People do not always agree, so there will always be reasons to try to censor speech. I'm saying freedom of speech is more important than those reasons. In fact as I said, I don't see what's wrong with people proposing solutions that might make things worse. It's a non-problem that the free market will weed out like everything else.

People who doesn't understand how things work coming up with ideas that end up making things worse isn't new. Despite that, humanity for the most part has kept progressing.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[khallow]

My point here was that a number of the sort of arguments discussed in this thread seem reserved for certain poorly thought out belief systems. I didn't at any time advocate censoring expression of these belief systems. I think such attempts would merely lend credibility to the belief systems in question.

Yet every so often I am reminded by others of the principles of free speech. I don't know why since I have yet to put on the jack boots. Merely noting that a dangerous argument (dangerous in a real world implementation of the idea in question can cause considerable harm to others, that is) is dangerous, isn't a call for censorship.

People do not always agree, so there will always be reasons to try to censor speech. I'm saying freedom of speech is more important than those reasons.

I agree. But what's the point of reminding some of free speech principles merely because they happen to disagree with another person? That was my rather oblique point here.

In fact as I said, I don't see what's wrong with people proposing solutions that might make things worse. It's a non-problem that the free market will weed out like everything else.

Except when there isn't a market to weed such things out. Some of these ideas, if implemented, would poison that particular means.

Re:Let's Not Forget ...

[khallow]

I don't believe, however, that we can solve these problems and maintain our current lifestyles.

Well, what is a lifestyle? I see a lot of attempts to equate lifestyle with a certain level of consumption of resources. I see it rather as what I can do or how healthy I am. Those sorts of things don't require a certain level of hydrocarbon consumption or land occupied. I wouldn't mind exchanging my current lifestyle for a better one that happens to more efficiently use resources.

But I wouldn't care to sacrifice my lifestyle for preservation of resources that are rather plentiful (such as energy or air).

Crank it to 11 dude!

[kimgkimg]

"These amps are awesome! You can crank them to 11!"

Wind speed and size matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is Al Gore, therefore NO MATTER WHAT HE SAID, HE MUST MUST ****MUST!!!!!**** BE WRONG, but could you stop being a raging moron for one whole second?

Why do you think they draw the categories where they do?

****Because of the power in the hurricane.***

And size matters.

Re:Wind speed and size matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, I take this post back. I'm on the wrong end of the menstrual cycleand am just trolling you :|

captcha: polarity

Gah

[cascadingstylesheet]

Hmm, maybe if you are constantly having to engage in a lawlerly defense of your claims, then the problem might not lie outside of yourself ...

Re:Gah

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, maybe if you are constantly having to engage in a lawlerly defense of your claims, then the problem might not lie outside of yourself ...

Are you suggesting the climate debate can't be resolved in a steel cage?

Re:Gah

[i kan reed]

In the case of someone who is repeatedly attacked for things he didn't actually say, by idiots with an agenda, it sometimes does. Al Gore isn't a scientist, he isn't always right, but there's a whole cadre of people who feel the need to make things up in order to justify their points.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Nidi62]

I didn't realize Al Gore was also a plumber.

Wonderful Leader

[b4upoo]

Thank God we have a person like Al Gore among us. His efforts to confront the problem of global warming may enable the saving of many lives. This is a man we desperately needed as president who was cheated by the corrupt slime of the right wing. And mentioning hurricanes has public value as well. Wind speed alone does not inform the people at risk to the degree they need to be informed. We also need some sort of local tag that can inform people as to other dangers from a particular storm. For example some hurricanes dump overwhelming amounts of rain and the degree to which a storm is "wet" is urgently important in some areas. Thirty miles from me we have a dyke at Lake Okeechobee and anyone near that dyke needs to know the risk as we have had spill overs in the past that killed thousands of people. I'm near the beach and simply knowing the time of high tide and whether it was to be a strong high tide combined with the time of landfall can tell people whether they need to run at any cost. So if we had a system that said wind level IV with a B rating for area 531 we could convey life saving information to millions of people. As it stands we really only hear about wind speeds.

Re:Wonderful Leader

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree! Why hasn't Al Gore been beatified yet?

How was he misquoted (re: internet)?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the link provided by the submitter:

[Al Gore] "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

That's a quote of his entire sentence, lock stock and barrel.

How are people who then say "Al Gore said he created the internet" misquoting him?

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[interkin3tic]

Haha, that TOTALLY sounds like [insert any other location with elected representatives here].

So he corrected himself. Immediately.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas to correct YOUR error, it takes weeks. Actually, several lifetimes, 'cos it's never been seen to have been done yet. It's always some OTHER reason why he's wrong, never a correction from you. Never a communication.

Really, a retraction because he'd corrected his error in the interview and you'd omitted the correction is YOUR ERROR. Retract it? Damnit, YES YOU DO.

***He*** did.

All you're proving by not retracting your statement is showing you less honest than Al Gore.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[geekoid]

Example? of course not.

Al Gore the perfect schumtz

[ioconnor]

Yes, I know. I saw the misquote myself. And others. Al Gore is the perfect person to misquote because of all his shenanigans. When he puts out mind rot like "an inconvenient truth" who can blame those who misquote him on purpose? I surely can't.

Re:Al Gore the perfect schumtz

[BasilBrush]

The reason Al Gore get's misquoted by right wingers is because they can't find much to argue with amongst what he does actually say.

So it's misquotes, insults and vague handwavey comments like "he puts out mind rot".

who can blame those who misquote him on purpose?

I can. They are liars and cheats. It says something of your lack of integrity that you don't condemn it.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[GoogleShill]

I don't know which is sadder, the fact that you actually believe Gore said anything to that effect or that 5 people modded you up.

Don't understand the farm chores thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that link as:

1. Al Gore said he spent summers in rural Tennessee on his father's farm.

2. Some people say he didn't.

I don't see anything to refute that he did. If that's supposed to be convincing source meterial of Al Gore the liar it's done a crappy shop.

Re:Don't understand the farm chores thing.

[HornWumpus]

Al Gore's father was a senator. He had a 'farm' the way George W. Bush has a 'ranch'. A tax dodge for his summer home.

Re:Don't understand the farm chores thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

But their family had a farm, did they not? Wikipedia says it produced tobacco. I was under the impression the Gores had been in Tenessee for a while, and that they had a farm before any of them entered politics.

Re:Don't understand the farm chores thing.

[HornWumpus]

I'm sure Bush's ranch produces a few head of cattle a year as well. Doesn't change the main point. At the time Gore was a kid, the 'farm' was a tax dodge.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[H0p313ss]

Yeah, Al Gore is basically the Town Joke around Nashville, TN. During the three years I lived there, I never once heard his name mentioned in a respectful manner, and that includes on the local radio stations.

Most of the time you could get a laugh just by dropping his name into a conversation.

I'm sure that's nothing to do with jealousy or partisan politics. It's not like his political opponents had any bias or anything.

I'm sure the political right is so clear, honest and straightforward that they'd never resort to ad hominem attacks.

Do you know what a quote means????

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious here.

Do you ACTUALLY know what a quote means?

It means you quote the words THEY ACTUALLY SAID.

Now look again at the words. Each one, his then yours, side by side:

[I] took the initiative in creating the internet

[Al Gore said he] created the internet.

The only two words that are the same there are "the internet".

So how, in gods good name, can the latter be QUOTING WHAT AL GORE SAID?????

More right wing arm-waving at bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know why you're a GOP supporter? Because you can't get past daddy's emotions. Enjoy your slid into oblivion, GOP. Right, right I know: Impeach Obama now.

Re:Rebublicans don't give a shit about truth

[RenderSeven]

Goldman Sachs is behind carbon trading - Article Here. Billions to be made trading a trillion dollars of carbon credits with Goldman setting themselves up to be the broker. Millions and millions in lobbying and campaign contributions. Gore is a tool, but Goldman is truly evil.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[nbauman]

Where can I go to get paid to work for the Daily Kos downmodding your posts?

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[fahrbot-bot]

Yeah, Al Gore is basically the Town Joke around Nashville, TN. During the three years I lived there, I never once heard his name mentioned in a respectful manner, ...

I think that says more about the people around Nashville than Al Gore.

Misquoted On Hexametric Hurricanes

[Phizzle]

He wanted it to go to ELEVEN, not 6 :P Spinal Tap FTW!

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmmmmm, this is Al Gore trying to take credit for the existence of the Internet. I, too, CREATED THE INTERNET BECAUSE I PAID TAXES.
 
Someone, please, get this man a lobotomy.

cat6 huricanes, spot on.

[Fubari]

Gore seems better than most politicians to me; he is smarter than the average, or at least more well read than average. In the popular media it seems a bit like the nerdy kid that everyone enjoys picking on back in school

As for the hurricanes: consider this 2006 article from abcnews: Category 6 Hurricanes? They've Happened
Excerpt:

In fact, say scientists, there have already been hurricanes strong enough to qualify as Category 6s. They'd define those as having sustained winds over 175 or 180 mph. A couple told me they'd measured close to 200 mph on a few occasions.

Re:cat6 huricanes, spot on.

[Anonymous Coward]

This link works.

Re:cat6 huricanes, spot on.

[Fubari]

This link works.

DOH! Thanks

I have seen some nasty Cat 5 hurricanes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some wiring closets should apply for disaster relief.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[drinkypoo]

I didn't realize Al Gore was also a plumber.

Works better than "Land Shark".

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yeah, Al Gore is basically the Town Joke around Nashville, TN. During the three years I lived there, I never once heard his name mentioned in a respectful manner, and that includes on the local radio stations.

Most of the time you could get a laugh just by dropping his name into a conversation.

In the 2000 election, in Davidson County, which shares its boundaries with the city of Nashville, Gore received 120508 votes to Bush's 84117. (Source; scroll down to get the Tennessee data set.) So I suspect your observations say a lot more about the kind of people you choose to associate with than they do about Gore or anyone else.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[davester666]

No, you're thinking of Bill Clinton.

I'm confused...

[jammer170]

I must be missing something here. The Washington Post originally claimed Al Gore said, "The hurricane scale used to be 1-5 and now they’re adding a 6." A correction was issues that claims he actually said, "The scientists are now adding category six to the hurricane....some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale that used to be 1-5." OK, but so what? Don't both statements essentially mean the same thing, even if the quote wasn't correct? Even worse, aren't both still false, as Chris Vaccaro, director of the National Weather Service’s office of public affairs, said in response, "No, we’re not pursuing any such change. I’m also not sure who VP Gore means by 'they.'"? So regardless of whether Al Gore was misquote, the result is the same - a false claim of adding a category six to the hurricane chart.

Re:I'm confused...

[jeff4747]

You're trying very, very hard to be confused.

The original quote said they were adding a 6. Full stop. 6 is coming. There's no debate.

The amended quote says some scientists are proposing to add a 6. There is a debate over whether or not to do so.

If you can't see the difference between those two concepts, you are deliberately trying to be confused.

Further, your third quote only refutes the first - It is only relevant if Gore says they are absolutely adding a 6. But he didn't.

Re:I'm confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the correction, Al Gore does mis-speak first ("scientists are now adding category six to the hurricane"), but immediately corrects himself ("some are proposing we add category 6 to the hurricane scale").

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Mr. Firewall]

I think that says more about the people around Nashville than Al Gore.

Right. Because if anyone knows anything about a man's character and values, it couldn't possibly be his hometown neighbors...

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Mr. Firewall]

Yes, the city-county of Nashville/Davidson County is one the two blue spots in a red state. But the people I knew and worked with, and the people who staff the radio stations, and the people you talk to on the street, don't all live in the Blue Hole known as Davidson County.

I see that you're not from there, and have probably never set foot on the ground there, so I'll give you a hint: check the "doughnut" counties.

Happens all the time.

[argStyopa]

Attention-whores are attention-whores. They get mocked all the time for things they didn't say, but which fits their 'meme'.

cf: Palin's "I can see Russia from my house."

Re:Happens all the time.

[BasilBrush]

cf: Palin's "I can see Russia from my house."

People are accurately quoting Tina Fey in a SNL sketch. Unlike the Gore misquotes, this wasn't a misquote concocted for political purposes.

Re:Happens all the time.

[bhiestand]

TBF, a lot of people do believe she actually said it... although tbf to that, Tina Fey's parodies did not change all that many of Palin's words.

Re:Happens all the time.

[BasilBrush]

TBF, a lot of people do believe she actually said it...

Oh, absolutely. People misunderstand all sorts of things and get details wrong. But my point stands that that's the result of a mistake - people attributing an actual quote to the real person rather than the impersonator.

But the Gore misquotes were clearly deliberately manufactured as misquotes.

Re:Happens all the time.

[argStyopa]

And you don't think Tina Fey's parody was politically motivated?
Yes, SNL parodies both sides of the fence, but only barely and much of the mockery of Democrats seems motivated more by the Fairness Doctrine than by humor.

In honesty, not much in the last decade of SNL could be claimed to be about humor anyway....stick a fork in it, Lorne.

Re:Happens all the time.

[BasilBrush]

No I think it was motivated by the writers and performers having to generate humorous material once a week for their job.

Had Palin been the Democratic running mate, and said the same things, there is no doubt that Tina Fey would have still parodied her, in much the same way. Palin was far too much of a gift for comedians to ignore. She'd have been a ridiculous candidate on either side of the fence.

Re:Rebublicans don't give a shit about truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause making money is evil?

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that's nothing to do with jealousy or partisan politics. It's not like his political opponents had any

I'm sure the political right is so clear, honest and straightforward that they'd never resort to ad hominem attacks.

I'm sure Reverend Gore has received lots of awards for his AGW Theology. And I'm sure each and every one is at least as valid as this: Adolf Hitler: Man of the Year, 1938

Feel free to Godwin me...

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yes, the city-county of Nashville/Davidson County is one the two blue spots in a red state. But the people I knew and worked with, and the people who staff the radio stations, and the people you talk to on the street, don't all live in the Blue Hole known as Davidson County.

You must be getting tired from moving those goalposts. Sit down, take a rest.

I see that you're not from there, and have probably never set foot on the ground there, so I'll give you a hint: check the "doughnut" counties.

Never said I was. I'm familiar with that kind of political geography, though. Let me introduce you to these fascinating concepts known as "data" and "logic" that allow us to ... oh, wait, I'm talking to a right-winger. Never mind.

He just forgot the (hyperbole) tag

[DutchUncle]

... and there's already enough discussion of 11 . . .

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Mr. Firewall]

oh, wait, I'm talking to a right-winger. Never mind.

Thank you for that little ad hominem pejorative directed against someone you don't know, have never met, and know nothing about. At least now I know what kind of person I'm dealing with here.

Thanks for playing, and have a good day ... oh, wait, your kind never has a good day. Never mind.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Rakarra]

I have a lot of respect for Cerf's contributions to Internet protocols we take for granted, but he was way off base there in that letter. Not his finest moment, and I particularly disagree with his assertion that Gore was not trying to take more credit than was due. He has a history of self-promotion before then and especially since then.

Re:Rebublicans don't give a shit about truth

[Rakarra]

Cause making money is evil?

It can be if the methods and results are evil.

Ahaa?

[Pino Grigio]

I smell bullshit.

Not his central message

[SuperKendall]

his central message is that humanity changing the climate in ways that will have serious negative implications for ourselves.

No, his central message is that there is no concern. Otherwise he would not have a house that uses as much energy as a small town, nor fly constantly on a private jet... his actions are saying more than words ever can.

If he really thought there were negative consequences he would act in ways that helped.

In the end, that's how you can tell when someone is really a scammer - when nothing they do matches up with what they claim are problems. Works for hypocritical politicians or other religious leaders besides Gore.

Re:Not his central message

[umafuckit]

Otherwise he would not have a house that uses as much energy as a small town, nor fly constantly on a private jet... his actions are saying more than words ever can.

If he really thought there were negative consequences he would act in ways that helped.

Whilst it's hard to argue that he's not a hypocrite, it's also true that if he stopped doing those things it would have sod all impact on humanity's footprint. The actions of individuals are just too small. What matters now is how governments (and I use the plural pointedly) deal with this. How governments set up energy policies. How governments reconcile capitalism's thirst for limitless growth with the obvious problem that such growth isn't possible. Whether Gore is a hypocrite or not has no bearing on this.

Re:Not his central message

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. If you realise that doing something is wrong, you stop doing that thing even if the rest of the world is still doing it. Since he is still doing those things which he claims are wrong, it's clear he doesn't actually believe it.

Gore not a tool, in on the scam

[SuperKendall]

Gore is a tool, but Goldman is truly evil.

In case you had not noticed Gore has gotten quite rich off the AGW scam he and others run. It's absurd to think he believes what he says when nothing he does indicates he thinks there is really a problem.

Otherwise he would appear to speak only over video links...

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Rakarra]

I wouldn't Godwin it. Adolph Hitler absolutely deserved Time's Man of the Year for 1938. Absolutely no one else on Earth shaped events like he did. They were horrible, cruel events, but no one cast a longer shadow. Not Stalin, not Roosevelt.

Your mistake is treating "Man of the Year" like it's some sort of award or honor. IT WAS NOT.
Sure, after Time's fall from grace, they lost their balls and Person of the Year became an award to honor people we like (Re: Rudy Giuliani instead of Osama Bin Laden in 2001) but decades earlier they weren't scared to make controversial (and right) choices.

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

This woman speaks the truth! Bravo! BRAVISSIMO!!!

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[BasilBrush]

You're suffering from confirmation bias. You dislike Gore, possibly because of his politics, and thus will tend to believe the worst of him in any situation, regardless of the evidence.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL the line is "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." which still sounds like he's an idiot. Almost as bad as his marketing of carbon credits while he burns kittens to power his flights around the world to market them.

His actions do have a huge effect

[SuperKendall]

it's also true that if he stopped doing those things it would have sod all impact on humanity's footprint.

Just as if I stop doing anything it will have "sod all" impact also. So why should I change at all? Why should anyone?

Leaders of causes are there to present an example. His actually acting as if there is a problem will not cause a huge impact by itself, but could cause millions to act similarly. Lots of people point to his own inaction as a reason to not act, therefore his actions are in fact having a "sod some" level of impact already.

Ghandi didn't do much either all by himself. When millions did the same thing it had an impact.

Re:His actions do have a huge effect

[umafuckit]

Leaders of causes are there to present an example. His actually acting as if there is a problem will not cause a huge impact by itself, but could cause millions to act similarly. Lots of people point to his own inaction as a reason to not act, therefore his actions are in fact having a "sod some" level of impact already.

Ghandi didn't do much either all by himself. When millions did the same thing it had an impact.

I don't disagree with you: setting an example is important. Gore should do better. What I'm getting at is that dealing with our environmental impact requires rapid and sweeping changes, and some of these changes aren't palatable. A few greenies being eco-friendly isn't going to cut it. Similarly, people aren't going to make sacrifices just because some rich bloke built an eco-house and stopped flying. Ghandi isn't a great example, since he was promoting a message his countrymen wanted to hear. Nobody wants to hear the climate change message.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you did move the goalposts:

[quote]Right. Because if anyone knows anything about a man's character and values, it couldn't possibly be his hometown neighbors...[/quote]

[quote]
In the 2000 election, in Davidson County, which shares its boundaries with the city of Nashville, Gore received 120508 votes to Bush's 84117. (Source [american.edu]; scroll down to get the Tennessee data set.) So I suspect your observations say a lot more about the kind of people you choose to associate with than they do about Gore or anyone else.
[/quote]

[quote]
Yes, the city-county of Nashville/Davidson County is one the two blue spots in a red state. But the people I knew and worked with, and the people who staff the radio stations, and the people you talk to on the street, don't all live in the Blue Hole known as Davidson County.
[/quote]

So, folks from Nashville, Al Gore's closest neighbors, don't know him as well as folks from the donut counties around Nashville, Al Gore's sort of neighbors, who know more about Al Gore than the rest of the country because *they're Al Gore's neighbors*.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for that little ad hominem pejorative directed against someone you don't know, have never met, and know nothing about.

Playing dumb doesn't work when you pejorative language like "Blue Hole". You already revealed yourself by choice of language, try again.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, no. He said he *took the initiative* in creating the Internet. So he was the first one to go ahead and create it, while all those computer nerds were just playing with their bits.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's a good thing that the opposite effect never occurs: defending a scumbag politician who takes credit for the work of others, merely because you agree with his politics. Nope, the concept doesn't exist.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[drinkypoo]

Guess what? I don't give a shit about Al Gore, I just want to put this stupid notion that he really thinks he invented the internet to rest. I think he's another self-serving politician and it's not him I care about.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if anybody could be a bunch of twits, it'd be the folks of Nashville.

Though to be fair, almost any city in the South would be glad to compete for the honor of Dishonest lying bigotry-ridden corruption-filled city of the year.

All while wildly dissing say, the President for being a Chicago politician, as if their own houses were squeaky clean.

Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up nobama cunt.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Anonymous Coward]

Martin, then why don't you accept the truth that this isn't much of a fallacy? Creation and invention aren't that much different. I'm super duper cereal.
 
WOW! captcha luncheon

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[volpe]

Last week, I created a meatloaf in my kitchen. I did not, however, "invent" meatloaf.

Misquoted? my favorite Goreism

[JBaustian]

He did not violate the Hatch Act, because "'My counsel advises me that there is no controlling legal authority."

Nevertheless, Gore admitted making fundraising phone calls from his White House office, and that he was "proud of what I did",

On the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Before legislation promoted by Al Gore was passed by Congress, very few institutions (let alone home users) had easy access to the Internet... and absolutely everything available on the Internet was available for FREE. In fact, it was virtually a sin to sell or charge a fee for anything on the Internet. By funding the build-out of the Internet and driving Internet commerce, the Internet became available to the majority of the public.

oh no

[gzuckier]

Because if we can't ridicule Al Gore that means that AGW will win!

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[BasilBrush]

It's a good thing that the opposite effect never occurs: defending a scumbag politician who takes credit for the work of others, merely because you agree with his politics. Nope, the concept doesn't exist.

When the evidence is on your side it isn't confirmation bias. And the evidence of Gore being repeatedly misquoted is entirely on my side. As you well know.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Rakarra]

You're suffering from confirmation bias. You dislike Gore, possibly because of his politics, and thus will tend to believe the worst of him in any situation, regardless of the evidence.

You're assuming a lot. I actually like Al Gore as vice president, thought he would have made a much better President than Bush during and after the 2000 election, and agree with many of his positions. However, I am not happy with his hypocritical environmental record (carbon trading is a scam that will not effect climate change either way, he takes incredibly polluting private jets, and his own home is extremely energy inefficient). He likes to promote, but half the time, he is promoting himself as the leader of a movement rather than solutions that would work.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[bhiestand]

I agree completely. It's almost as annoying as the public's recollection of the McDonald's "hot coffee" incident or people constantly talking about "ones and zeros" and smugly believing they are informed.

As to the troll above, there is a pretty clear distinction between inventing something and implementing policies that help it develop. You couldn't say Eisenhower invented highways, but he is widely credited with creating America's interstate highway system.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[bhiestand]

I just read the Snopes article for the first time... I did not know they made the same comparison to Eisenhower and the highway system. I'll give credit where it's due, even though I had not read it before. Maybe that'll prevent the public from insisting I claimed to "invent the analogy".

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[drinkypoo]

Martin, then why don't you accept the truth that this isn't much of a fallacy? Creation and invention aren't that much different. I'm super duper cereal.

You know what? You're starting to make me like Gore more. I know it's a fallacy that the enemy of an idiot is intelligent, but you're such a massive idiot that I think I'll send Al Gore five bucks right now.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[BasilBrush]

You're assuming a lot.

I'm assuming remarkably little. I even said it was only a possibility that your dislike of him is political. However your dislike is self evident, both in this post and the original one I replied to. So my one assumption is correct.

Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go on. Do it. DO IT, Martin. You filthy little troll. GO ON. DO IT!!!!
 
You're a douche.