Al Gore Responds To Climate Critics: You Can’t Wish It Away

February 28, 2010

Al Gore responded to climate critics on Sunday in a The NewYork Times op-ed piece entitled  “We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change.”

Minor mistakes in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report don't change its conclusions, says Al Gore

The former vice president and climate crusader took aim at naysayers who he said doggedly persist in trying to prove every major National Academy of Sciences report on global warming is hugely wrong.

“Unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” he wrote. Global warming disbelievers say the two mistakes – an incorrect projection for the melting of Himalayan glaciers and an overstatement of the amount of the Netherlands below sea level – undermine the report.

In addition, e-mail message stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain hardly wish away the temperature records the university generates. Instead they show that “scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freed of information law,” he said.

Despite these failings, the scientific consensus on global warming remains unchanged, with the world dumping 90 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere everyday.

January may have seemed unusually cold in the United States, but globally it was the second hottest January in the past 130 years, Gore said.

Congress, instead of moving ahead with regulation, is paralyzed by the disbelievers, supported by businesses that depend on unrestrained pollution and news organization who “present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment,” he wrote.

Gore went on to point out that the United States trails China in the race to develop smart electric grids, fast trains, solar power, wind energy, geothermal plants and therefore sources for new 21st Century jobs.

It is time, he added, to do the right thing.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

A National Smart Grid Will Be Key 21 Century Accomplishment, Gore Says

November 19, 2009

If the construction of the nation’s electrical system was one of the significant achievements of the 20th Century, then its transformation into an intelligent two-way infrastructure will be a top accomplishment of the 21st, climate crusader Al Gore said Thursday.

An intelligent energy grid will give the U.S. economy a competitive advantage, says Al Gore

The transformation of the electrical grid to handle the intermittent, unsteady output of renewable energy and to give consumers more control over energy use will be a milestone in the fight against global warming, the former vice president said.

It also will give the nation’s economy a competitive edge at a time when other countries are rapidly building smart grids of their own, Gore said at a Silicon Valley conference.

“Our current infrastructure is obsolete, outmoded,” he said. “Having a highly developed smart grid is going to be a competitive advantage.”

Gore’s comments come as the world prepares for the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen next month, and as a small bipartisan group of senators make a last ditch effort to reach an agreement on a cap-and-trade bill before the talks begin. Gore, who said he supports Congress’ cap-and-trade legislation, noted that the necessity of global action on greenhouse gases is increasing.

Every day the world spews 90 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, leading to the further melting of polar ice and warming the world.

But he said at the GreenBeat 2009 conference there is reason for hope. A consensus is growing that fixing global warming will help  the economy and enhance national security.

But that consensus is arriving none too soon. In China, the nation has embarked on building a new super 800 kV grid that will connect the entire country. Western Europe also has efforts underway to link its grid with the potential solar-producing regions of the Sahara and to northwest Africa where the winds lend themselves to energy production.

Australia and India, too, are considering links to potential solar-producing regions within their borders.

Putting America on the path to a smart grid will be “one of the most significant achievements of the 21st Century,” Gore said.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Bill Joy Sees Enormous Opportunity In Thin Film Solar Cells

February 13, 2009

Enormous opportunities lie ahead for thin-film solar cells, said Bill Joy, partner at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

But the fall in the price of oil threatens a generation of green-energy entrepreneurs, setting back the nation’s efforts to combat global warming, Joy said this week during an on-stage interview at the Churchill Club.

We take the climate status quo too lightly, say Bill Joy

We take the climate status quo too lightly, say Bill Joy

Joy, a co-founded Sun Microsystems who now invests in clean-tech startups at KP, said the government could bring stability to alternative-fuel markets by demanding a percentage of the country’s energy come from renewable sources.

At the same time, Silicon Valley can play a role in developing thin-film solar cells because of its expertise with semiconductors, he said. But the valley will not be the only center of innovation in green tech, Joy added, suggesting Boston, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Germany have specialties to harness.

At Kleiner, partners have been working with former Vice President and climate crusader Al Gore to find solutions to global warming. – and investment ideas.

The alternative is letting the planet become inhospitable. “We take the status quo too lightly,” said Joy.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Gore Gives Senate A Lesson On Global Warming

January 29, 2009

Former vice president and climate crusader Al Gore appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and recommended a carbon cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The roller coaster is headed toward a crash, Al Gore said

The roller coaster is headed toward a crash, Al Gore said

The creator of the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” said that even if greenhouse gas emissions were stopped today, temperatures would rise 2.5 to 7.5 degrees by 2100, with catastrophic consequences.

He showed how the Arctic’s permanent ice sheet has melted during the summer in recent decades. As it disappears, more of the sun’s rays are absorbed by the ocean, heating the planet all the more.

Gore said the challenge in Washington is to find a way to combat climate warming while boosting the economy and ending the war in Iraq.

“It is increasingly obvious this roller coaster is headed toward a crash and we are in the front car,” he said, urging the adoption of renewable energy sources.

Here is a clip from his appearance.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

New Urgency Needed To Tackle Global Warming, Al Gore Urges

November 7, 2008
$400 billion smart electric grid needed, Gore says

$400 billion smart electric grid needed, Gore says

America and the world are not moving rapidly enough to combat the potentially catastrophic impact of global warming, former Vice President Al Gore warned Friday.

“I feel as though I’ve failed,” he told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Gore’s widely acclaimed film “An Inconvenient Truth” raised awareness of the climate menace and its threat to disrupt life on earth and raise sea levels.

But “there is not yet anything close to a sense of urgency,” he said.

This may change in January with the swearing in of President elect Barack Obama, and Gore urged Obama to create a 10-year nationwide goal of adopting renewable energy, much as President John Kennedy inspired the nation with the goal of going to the moon.

But the challenge is daunting, Gore said. In five years, the North Pole ice cap could melt entirely during the summer months, hastening the earth’s absorption of warming solar rays.

“This is an apocalyptic signal from the planet itself,” he said. “We are now poised to completely disrupt (the climate) and in the process disrupt the basis for human civilization.”

Gore said the nation needs to build infrastructure to transport energy from the deserts in the southwest, where large solar farms will most likely be located.

It also needs a “smart gird” for the more efficient distribution of electricity, which could cost $400 billion over 10 years, but which will pay for itself in 3.5 years.

“We are at or near the peak of global oil production” just as demand in India and China grows, he said.

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Obama’s Election Historic For Another Reason; Internet Inspired Social Activism Soared, Al Gore Says

November 7, 2008
Internet social activism taking off, Al Gore says

Internet social activism taking off, Al Gore says

This Tuesday’s presidential election was historic for the powerful role the Internet and Web 2.0 played in inspiring Barack Obama supporters, former Vice President Al Gore said Friday.

Democrat Obama, of course, became the first black man elected president of the United States, breaking long-held racial barriers to the nation’s highest office.

But it is unlikely he would have defeated Republican John McCain without the collaborative nature of social networking and Web 2.0 sites – a groundbreaking revelation in its own right.

“The social activism made possible by these new tools is just beginning to take off,” Gore told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. “The Internet comes in and democratizes information again, and it’s so thrilling.”

Perhaps the Internet’s greatest accomplishment was to counter the “deadening influence of television,” where the distribution of information is left to a handful of large networks, he said. Web 2.0, in contrast, lets people interact on social networks and to create their own content or video, which they post on sites such as YouTube.

“Not that many years off television sinks into the digital and becomes part of it,” Gore predicted.

Web 2.0 needs to spread

Web 2.0 needs to spread

It is time for the political power of Web 2.0 to be unleashed for causes other than campaigns, he added, singling out the fight against global warming.

“We need to move past that as fast as possible to a time when all those features are taken for granted,” he said, and use to “raise the consciousness of the planet.”

And we could rename it “World 2.0,” he suggested.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Al Gore’s Advice To President Elect Barack Obama: Create A JFK Moon-Walk Goal For Renewable Energy

November 7, 2008
Young people need to be inspired, Al Gore says

Young people need to be inspired, Al Gore says

President Barack Obama should set a 10-year national goal of weaning the U.S. off fossil fuels and onto renewable sources of electricity, former Presidential candidate Al Gore said Friday.

“We can do that,” Gore said during an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

When President John Kennedy decided an American should walk on the moon in a decade, many thought such a rapid timeframe would be impossible to keep. But it inspired people and the flight was made.

Young people and other who were inspired by the Obama campaign want a purpose, Gore said. Battling global warming would be a noble one.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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