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Gore's Staff Says He Was Misquoted On Hexametric Hurricanes

Posted by timothy on from the what-he-meant-to-say-was dept.

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."

37 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. does he by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    Does he really have a tape recorder?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:does he by edawstwin · · Score: 4, Funny

      He just verified the statement with the NSA.

      --
      I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
  2. Two peas in a pod by jaymzter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --
    If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
    1. Re:Two peas in a pod by oodaloop · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re:Two peas in a pod by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

    3. Re:Two peas in a pod by geekoid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    4. Re:Two peas in a pod by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:Two peas in a pod by Mr.+Firewall · · Score: 2

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

      --
      In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
    6. Re:Two peas in a pod by Rakarra · · Score: 2

      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.

    7. Re:Two peas in a pod by hey! · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    8. Re:Two peas in a pod by Mr.+Firewall · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
    9. Re:Two peas in a pod by Xyrus · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      ~X~
  3. Al Gore... by Capt+James+McCarthy · · Score: 2, Funny

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

    --
    There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
  4. Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. creating the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:creating the internet by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  6. Other Hurricane Scales by squidflakes · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    1. Re: Other Hurricane Scales by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 2

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

      --
      while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
  7. So what about YOUR ridiculous claim? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Let's Not Forget ... by Psion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Let's Not Forget ... by umafuckit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      soylentnews.org
  9. Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! by GoogleShill · · Score: 2

    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.

  10. Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid by elwinc · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    --- Often in error; never in doubt!
  11. Re:The rest of the criticism remains valid by nbauman · · Score: 2

    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?

  12. Re:Rebublicans don't give a shit about truth by RenderSeven · · Score: 2

    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.

  13. cat6 huricanes, spot on. by Fubari · · Score: 2
    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.

  14. Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  15. Re:Gah by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

    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.

  16. Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  17. Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! by Rakarra · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  18. Re:I'm confused... by jeff4747 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  19. Re:So Al Gore is a slimy politician? by Rakarra · · Score: 2

    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.

  20. Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  21. Re:Al Gore the perfect schumtz by BasilBrush · · Score: 2

    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.

  22. Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  23. Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  24. Re:AL GORE CREATED THE INTERNET! by Rakarra · · Score: 2

    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.