In terms of turnout for a speech of this nature, this is incredible in Idaho.
Inconvenient in Boise. Ridenbaugh Press. Randy Stapilus.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
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what is the Taco Bell Arena?
The parking lot to the arena should be closed, forcing attendees to either walk, use public transportation, or ride their bicycles. That would be a real display about how seriously Gore’s appearance and message is to be taken.
Here is info on the Taco Bell Area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taco_Bell_Arena
if it makes you feel any better the parking will be such a mess that it’d be a good idea to go with public transit anyway. – or at least get a pool together… wish i woulda picked up a ticket earlier
I live in PA so I won’t be going and from living in Boise I remember the BSU campus being pretty small with little parking available. I just think that would be a pretty good gimmick for a global warming speech.
Timing for this is a little off. A global warming speech when the west is in a deep freeze?
The timing on this isn’t off at all. Don’t be tempted to blame weather events on global warming or find weather events to discredit global warming. Weather is NOT climate.
Here’s an interesting article in the New York Times on new discoveries in Greenland that do not bode well for folks who live by the ocean: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/earth/16gree.html?8dpc
No, but climate is weather. My comments were made tongue-in-cheek anyway. In any case my views on global warming are going to come from scientists not a lawyer/politician.
Which scientists? That’s the important question here! The problem is that, like endangered species recovery, we look to scientists to give us the answers, but the solutions aren’t necessarily scientific, rather they are political. I find it refreshing and timely that we have a political leader in Al Gore who is uniting both science and policy much more effectively than scientists have been able to do alone. Certainly he’s providing much needed leadership on this issue – leadership that is clearly never going to come from the current administration.
The scientific community is far from agreement on what is causing global warming. Until the cause (or causes) are proven neither science nor politics can pose a solution. If Al Gore is uniting both science and policy how come I have never heard him present science or arguments by those who disagree with him? IMHO it is akin to listening to Butch Otter uniting science and policy when it comes to wolf recovery.
I don’t even know where to start in responding to Tim Z apart from to say that there is nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that global warming is caused and influenced by human processes (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=80). I’m not sure we are ever going to get proof, Tim, as anyone who’s read a weather report knows that probability plays a pretty big role in the weather, so if, as you say, the climate is weather, then you’d expect probabilities to play a pretty big picture in climate predictions as well.
And why should Al Gore present the contrarians’s point of view? Especially when the scientific consensus has already moved beyond that part of the “debate”? There are some who believe the press is doing a disservice to journalistic principles when they report on contrary science for the sole purpose of having some degree of “balance” in their reporting, considering that consensus on the topic, according to scientists, tells us that anthropogenic global warming is real.
unanimous consenses? I have read and still read as many “contrary” articles as for. We’ll have to agree to disagree as I did not intend to turn my distrust and distain for politicians into a debate about global warming.
Fair enough, then. I urge you to read some of the stuff on http://realclimate.org if you want to get some scientists’ views on what’s happening. I’d also like to read some of the contrarian science if you’d post it…
Here is one of the more interesting ones.
My mind is not closed on this issue I just havn’t made it up yet.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html
The realclimate.org people have a response to some of Lindzen’s work here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=222