Al Revere

A conversation with Al Gore about his new movie

Posted by Bricolage at 12:30 PM on 09 May 2006

For the last several years, largely beneath the media spotlight, Al Gore has been schlepping all over the world with a computer slideshow on global warming, attempting to educate and raise alarm one person, one room, one city at a time. Thanks to the intervention of some Hollywood producers, Gore's message -- now packaged in a documentary, An Inconvenient Truth -- will soon be reaching much larger audiences. David Roberts sat down with Gore to discuss the movie's personal tone, the proper balance of fear and hope, and more.

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OK, so hope is out, fear is in?

Good interview, David. You brought out the personal, affable side of Al Gore, which was always there really, and makes him IMHO a truly likable guy, but which got oddly paralysed during the 2000 campaign.

But his answer to the hope vs. fear question could have been deeper, no? We need to scare Americans, to get them to understand that the climate crisis is a real problem -- by perhaps "over-presenting" the evidence? (I forget his exact word, but it was something like that.) But doesn't he see that we get called power-hungry extremists and hoax-mongerers when we do that? He may be right, after all; but then surely we need another tactic or two to repel the attacks of the deniers.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 2:40 PM on 09 May 2006

Gore Evermore

Cannot wait to see the movie, and it is really exciting to see a former mainstream politician give this problem the attention it deserves.
One question though. What does the following sentence mean? Gore said, "I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is."
Does that mean it is OK to over-emphasize how dangerous global warming is? I worry about comments like this affecting the credibility of the message.
Remember when everyone was telling us that all fat was bad? That was because scientists and doctors thought the public would not understand that unsaturated fats can be good while saturated fats are not. Now that message is finally getting out there, but people are leery of the new message because they think nutritionists and doctors keep changing their minds.

by Weeb at 2:46 PM on 09 May 2006

Over-representation

Perhaps it was more clear what Gore meant in person. By "an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is" -- an admittedly inelegant phrase -- I think he meant that at this point, people talking to American audiences need to spend more time convincing them that global warming is dangerous, relative to the amount of time they spend talking about solving the problem.

Americans don't yet understand how dangerous it is. Until they do, that's what needs to be emphasized. Once they do understand, then the emphasis can shift to solutions. That's what he was getting at.

I don't think he would ever suggest that anyone twist or misrepresent the evidence. If there's one impression I got, it is of a guy who cares very much what words mean, and cares very much about being precise. (A fellow nerd!)

grist.org

by David Roberts at 3:04 PM on 09 May 2006

What if...

I know it really is an impossible question...but what if Al Gore won? The US might have signed into Kyoto, but does anybody really think he would have forced emission cuts? Comparing him with other leaders (mostly Tony Blair who sounds quite progressive on this issue as well), nothing would have changed.

by ben at 3:08 PM on 09 May 2006

Right

I got the impression that the "over representation" statement meant, in terms of a slide slow, 100 slides dishing out data that supports your contention of "danger" with 5 slides discussing what we can do about it.

I think he is right when he says that we (well, Americans) are not yet ready for the "hope" message, although I still firmly believe it is a better motivator than fear. I just think that in order to be motivated to change anything you first need to understand that there is a problem.

I've always liked Al, and wondered why he came off as so frumpy and stuffy in his run. However, I still shudder at the thought of Tipper in the White House. Blech.

by kmp at 4:22 PM on 09 May 2006
[ Parent ]

ponderous, consultant-driven bid for president?

That's an over-the-top oversimplification -- if I may put it that way.

His campaign seems to be more and more reasonable in light of what has been done under Bush.

Why do you think that Gore's campaign was more ponderous and consultant-driven than the Bush campaign? Karl Rove used focus-groups and polls as much as anyone and Bush couldn't take a step without Rove telling him what to do.
To name one thing where do you think the phrase "compassionate conservativism" came from? Sure not from Bush's own brain.

Still somehow I don't hear people complaining that Bush ran a consultant-driven campaign.

Or was Clinton's campaign in 1996 less consultant-driven than Gore's? Hardly. If anything Clinton's centrism was far more calculated (and the product of the ultimate political consultant Dick Morris) than Gore's populism.

Still I don't hear people talking about Clinton's consultants.

I sense a double-standard here and it's seems to me the only reason why it exists is that Gore is not in the White House. If he was president noone would talk about his consultants.
But it's hard to make the case -- in light of how that election turned out -- that Gore is not in the White House because of he was the puppet of some paid political hacks.

by gringo at 7:55 PM on 09 May 2006

Re: Gore Evermore

"I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is."
Does that mean it is OK to over-emphasize how dangerous global warming is? I worry about comments like this affecting the credibility of the message.
---

I think what he meant was that if you talk about global warming today in the US do it this way:
80%: explain the problem
20%: explain the solution.

by gringo at 8:00 PM on 09 May 2006
[ Parent ]

Carbon Lies

I saw Gore and his film here in San Francisco last week, and since we're talking about the 2000 campaign, something he said in response to the question of what happened to the climate as a campaign issue bears repeating...

(now i'm paraphrasing)

He said that early in the campaign, Bush announced that, as President, he would impose a carbon tax to address climate change.

The media consensus, it seems, was that there was no debate: the candidates agreed on the issue so it was moot.

(end of paraphrase)

Never mind that one candidate wrote a book about it called "Earth in the Balance" and the other was presiding over the state with the worst air standards.

It sounds like Gore's consultants were outmaneuvered by Bush's consultants on Gore's strongest point early on. Nice work all around; great job, media.

Of course, now that I'm working in the media, that could never happen again, so this anecdote is just a historical curiosity...

my books: The Coffee Book | Window Seat

by Gregory Dicum at 9:56 PM on 09 May 2006
[ Parent ]

Re: Over-representation

Thanks for the clarification. I agree that more emphasis on the problem needs to be made, but I also think solutions are being driven by energy security concerns, high gas prices, and increasingly aggressive and autocratic regimes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela. So while I agree that we need to make sure that Americans get the problem, we also need to be concentrating on the solutions so that the momentum created by these other issues does not lead to "solutions" that do not respect the environment like coal, nuclear, and fossil fuel-based hydrogen.

by Weeb at 8:19 AM on 10 May 2006
[ Parent ]

Coal

The solutions will be least cost, not environmental. As we become ever more poor we will consider burning the furniture to stay warm. As Gore mentioned, coal is the problem. Look at coal cost closely and we will see that coal power for heat is not least cost. Power for heat is not least cost. Try waste biomass, like burning corn cobs and wood chips. Oil, 30% of our CO2 emissions, used for transportation and heat is a self extinguishing problem. Coal is our common enemy. My fear is coal.

My hope is in the economics of coal displacement.

by sunflower at 9:08 AM on 10 May 2006

Green Prius

We bought a Prius Hybrid this week, not an easy thing to do. If you are considering the same then do not delay, the $3100 tax credit is soon to expire. Do not be picky on color and options, get whatever is allocated and still available. Then wait a few weeks for delivery, and good luck!

by sunflower at 9:22 AM on 10 May 2006

Gore's campaign in 2000

None of the commentators who have criticized Gore for a poor job of campaigning when Bush prevailed mentions the fact that that alleged victory was achieved by fraud, stealing, and outright bullying tactics. After the fact, we know that if Gore had played his cards right and had insisted on a total recount in FL, he would have won (assuming that the kind of brassknuckles tactics that
DeLay used wasn't even more widespread). And that doesn't take into account the many successful dirty tricks used to to keep the Democratic vote down.

No, not only did he undeniably win the popular vote despite all the cheating, fraud, and hardball, but if the Republicans had behaved like decent citizens, he would have been president. And despite the fact that there did not SEEM to be a lot of difference between him & W, the whole world would be in an incomparably better place now. Spoken by one who actually voted for Nader!

(Sources: Palast, Best Democracy Money Can Buy; and Miller, Fooled Again.)

by Bob Holt at 10:32 AM on 11 May 2006
[ Parent ]

A fundamental misunderstanding of nuclear choices

ALGORE> We still have other issues.
ALGORE> For eight years in the White House,
ALGORE> every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with
ALGORE> was connected to a civilian reactor program.
ALGORE> And if we ever got to the point where we wanted
ALGORE> to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal --
ALGORE> which is the real issue: coal --
ALGORE> then we'd have to put them in so many places
ALGORE> we'd run that proliferation risk right off
ALGORE> the reasonability scale. And we'd run short of uranium,
ALGORE> unless they went to a breeder cycle or something like it,
ALGORE> which would increase the risk of
ALGORE> weapons-grade material being available.

Ahem.

Here lies a fundamental misunderstanding of nuclear power choices.

ALL power stations now in service are breeders.

What have been named as "breeder" reactors are optimized for making Pu-239 from U-238, Pu-239 being the best variety of Pu for reactors (and bombs). Some kinds (isotopes) of Pu are bad for bombs because they fission too fast, and breeders are designed to minimize other Pu isotopes.

But, all PWRs, BWRs and gas-cooled designs make Pu faster than they burn it.

The only design which burns Pu as fast as it makes it is the IFR, aka the "fast-flux".

IFRs burn everything and are very tolerant of isotopes other than the very best.

Using IFRs decreases the risk of weapons-grade material being available.

IFRs can run for years with the same fuel, unlike other designs that constantly require removing fuel for reprocessing. IFR fuel runs very hot (thermally), safely, for they're solid metal, unlike the fragile ceramic fuel elements of BWRs, GCRs and PWRs. They run so 'hot' (radioactively) that stealing the fuel to make a bomb is impractical; the thieves could not survive long enough to make it out the front gate.

IFRs 'poison' the fuel rods very quickly with the Pu-240 and other isotopes you can't make a bomb with. And, they will run for years without removing those fuel elements because the sodium moderator lets fast neutrons create fission.. so the fuel keeps going long after they'd stop in other types of reactors from the aforementioned "poisoning" by daughter products.

We can even use thorium (yes, the same thorium you take camping in Coleman lantern mantles) as fuel in an IFR, extending further our natural resources.

Much more heat (200x conventional designs) is extracted over time from the same amount of atomic fuel, and much less waste is left over after the fuel rods are eventually removed.

That greater efficiency means the fuel isn't dangerous for many millenia, too.

Reprocessing is on site, BTW, since reprocessing is chemically much simpler and reuses so much more of the fuel. It results in what little waste there is, being no more 'hot' than the ore it came from, after only 200-300 years of cooldown, instead of millenia.

The IFRs are also passively safe; if everyone walked away, the plant would shut itself down (Doppler broadening). That's been tested and proven at the EFR-II site in Idaho.

Hmm...

Can't use the spent fuel for bombs (solves Mr. Gore's objection) AND
Burns up our excess plutonium from decommissioned bombs AND
Burns up high-level 'waste' from other reactors which would otherwise need to be stored for millenia AND
Much more efficient at providing power for the fuel we have (we have 500 years' U-238 fuel on hand, untold amounds of Pu convertible to fuel, and 100,000 years using proven reserves and high-level waste) AND
Much less nuclear waste AND
A much safer plant that shuts itself down by its very design AND
What little waste there is is less dangerous and 'hot' for much less time.

Looks like a solution to me. After all, there are no hydrogen wells, and we have to get power to make that H2 from somewhere.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/anlw.html
http://yarchive.net/nuke/ifr.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99xx7.htm
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/environ/ENV056.HTM
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
http://www.iaea.org/inis/ws/fnss/fr.html

by K7AAY at 6:40 PM on 22 May 2006

hybrid, now beat EPA mpg

Hybrids are great. Now can you drive careful and beat the EPA mpg ? I have an 03 Honda civic hybrid rated at 49/48 and get 60+ most of the time. I drive smart, watch for lights ahead slow down and start up gradual. It all adds up.

Jim Stack

by Jstack6 at 7:06 PM on 24 May 2006
[ Parent ]

How Does Al Gore Make Money?

He's head of a "Green" Investment firm.

What better way to make money then going on a media scare campaign to con people into funding his IPOs for "Positive Ion Emitters" or whatever quackery he's going to try an use to skim people's 401k funds.

How come the Lib press doesn't get down on the hypocrascy of a guy who spent 8 years as the ultimate insider, and did nothing except wait around to be annointed President, and now claims that we should all be "doing something" about Global Warming.

Geeze Louise!!!

by jabailo at 3:27 PM on 28 Sep 2006

Base Load

Why are nukes always off the table when it comes to fixing air pollution?

They are the only current technology that can

Run base load electric generation
Change the greenhouse gas per person from a volumes the size of freight trains to that the size of a Jones Cane Cola can.

Great discussion here:

http://fora.tv/2007/09/13/More_Nuclear_Energy_Why_America ...

by jabailo at 9:22 AM on 13 Oct 2007

Thanks for the clarification.

Thanks for the clarification. I agree that more emphasis on the problem needs to be made, but I also think solutions are being driven by energy security concerns, high gas prices, and increasingly aggressive and autocratic regimes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela.

"À °°°®OeöŽi- °°°^--AOeöŽi-|<Õ"À °°°^-"À °°°®-"À °°°®-"À °°°^OeöŽi-"À °/°°^|<Õ

by micky at 3:45 AM on 02 Jul 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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