Maggie's Farm

I see. The appropriate thing to do after being unable to parse a sentence of moderate complexity--and failing to notice the mistake after being corrected!--is to say, "Hey look, I'm hot!"

That's a great way to reinforce the stereotype of attractive women as bimbos and airheads.

For the sake of those of us who can handle complex concepts, and are brave enough to admit when we've made a mistake, and are tired of not being taken seriously, can you please at least be more subtle?

Okay, this is better!

Let's look at why Gore's sentence doesn't mean that he's misrepresenting anything--it just means he uses complex sentences. We're going to have to do some parsing here, cause reading is just unconscious parsing, but it's really hard to have a discussion about an unconscious process.

Gore: "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is"

There's a much shorter way to say "I believe it is appropriate to have X". Just say, "Let's have X." There's a slightly different implication, but it's pretty close.

Now let's focus in on the over-representation + factual part.

Try #1: "(Let's have) an over-representation of factual". This isn't grammatical since "factual" is an adjective and we need a noun here.

Try #2: "(Let's have) an over-representation of factual presentations". Presentation is a noun, so this works.

What does this mean? Well, "over-representation" can mean "too many" or "lots". So we can simplify to

Gist #1a: "Let's have lots of factual presentations"
Gist #1b: "Let's have too many factual presentations"

Gore could have said "over-representation of facts", but he didn't. Why not? There's a difference between a fact and a presentation. He said to have too many presentations, not too many facts. What kind of presentations? Factual ones, of course.

What's he presenting?

"...factual presentations on how dangerous global warming is"

If you're going to tell how dangerous global warming *is*, you have to consider all the evidence. You have to describe good science, and complete science, otherwise you can't tell what the danger is. It's a factual presentation, so you can't lie about it or misrepresent the danger.

Therefore, this is a presentation saying how dangerous global warming actually is, as best as we know. Now, you might think that he's failing to do this, that he's instead running a scare campaign with exaggerated risks and minimized uncertainties, but if so, that's a problem with what he's actually doing, not with what he's advocating.

So, putting it together, Gore is saying, "I'm going to tell you over and over how dangerous global warming actually is."

I don't see any misleading going on there. I see him being straightforward but badgering us to the point of being annoying. At least, there wouldn't be any misleading going on if he actually gave factual presentations on how dangerous global warming is.

Now, if you believe that global warming isn't dangerous, and you believe that Gore knows that it isn't that dangerous, and he's giving lots of presentations that say global warming is really dangerous, then Gore is not doing what he thinks is appropriate but instead is misleading people (intentionally). You could criticize him on that, if you could demonstrate that he knows it isn't that dangerous. Or if you could demonstrate that it isn't dangerous, you could criticize him for unintentionally misleading people (it being unintentional may not get him off the hook as he ought to know better).

If anyone can come up with any other interpretations of that sentence that are remotely plausible, fire away!

Unfortunately, JunkScience isn't objective. They're scholarly, but also heavily biased against global warming.

For example, they claim that 3.4% of carbon production is from human sources. That's correct, as far as I know--3.4% sounds trivial, so who cares? On the other hand, humans produce at least ten times as much carbon each year as is put into permanent stores (e.g. sediment on the oceal floor)--possibly more like 30 times more. Sounds alarming. Both numbers are true, but junkscience.com only presents the one that makes it sound like global warming is not an issue. (We have increased CO2 by 35%, so obviously our 3.4%s are adding up; they report "25% increase in greenhouse gases" instead of the raw CO2 number even though they spend most of the rest of the time talking about CO2--then in a later remark, they seem to think they were talking about CO2.)

Anyway, they make some good points, and fail to make some good points. You're doing yourself a disservice to merely read that site and assume you've been objectively informed. You'll have to read a comparable text that is biased towards thinking global warming is a problem in order to really be informed. For example, one could read An Inconvenient Truth as well.

Yes, that's a comforting thought. "Everything will be okay. Humans will adjust." After all, we always have before.

Maybe the Easter Islanders thought the same thing when they cut down the last tree on their island. (They did adjust, but personally, having ~10% of your population manage to survive by eating rats is not what I would call a success.)

Why is it that humans are so adaptable and can survive so many conditions? Its largely because we think ahead to solve problems before they become impossible. Human societies have adapted many times in the past, and they have also failed to adapt many times.

I want to be one of the ones who manages to adapt, not just assuming that everything is going to work out okay and then starving or being killed in rioting or whatever if my assumptions are wrong. I'd rather pay attention and evaluate whether or not things will work out okay, and fix the problems before they're critical.

It may not be clear that this is a critical issue, but it ought to be clear that it could be, and therefore deserves serious attention. For example, if one doesn't want to read Gore's book, one could at least read the Wikipedia entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

to see what the other side (i.e. the overwhelming majority of scientists) is saying.