Here and There

I brushed off your endorsement when I got wind of it early in the day. But damn you, you made me watch your speech.

And now I copy the embed code with wet eyes. Yes we can!

A thought-provoking post at HuffPost from Hooman Majd.

I’m through thinking things like this mean anything. Not that I don’t still love Barack Obama as a president … I’m just sayin’.

From Monday’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

The New York Times top story at the moment covers the trend of big-name Democrats’ refusal to endorse, and speculates that this phenomenon is due to party leaders not wanting mayhem at the convention.

I have to disagree with the premise here.

Now, given how things have played out so far, I put nothing past chance. But I really don’t see people like Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Barbara Boxer (and there are plenty of others) all splitting their votes. Were they to endorse, even now, it may just tip the scales one way or the other, thereby reducing the importance and need for superdelegates.

I’ve posted in recent days growing disgust with Clinton’s campaign tactics, but the truth is I would still prefer her to McCain. The Democrats need a candidate, not a tooth-and-nail, beat ‘em up fight to the finish.

I have to do it. It’s eating away at me. I must now resort to rumormongering.

From the Huffington Post: Talk, in the Clinton camp of all places, of an eminent Al Gore endorsement … of Obama!

Here and There is still upset with people like John Edwards, Al Gore, Bill Richardson, and Barbara Boxer for failing to endorse a candidate. Of course, the way this race has shaped up, they’d probably end up splitting their endorsements down the middle.

But can they truly be torn between the two candidates? Can they all be playing it safe in order to curry favor with whoever the eventual nominee is? Especially for an out-of-office, ex-VP figure like Al Gore, whom some consider the head of the party, what’s the risk in endorsing?

This is the kind of thing I want to just give up on, but at the same time, I wake up every day wondering what the hell is going on. Kinda reminds me of the last seven years …

I have this problem. I work at a newspaper that, handicaps and all, does a pretty job with its limited local coverage, draws state, nation, and world stories almost exclusively from the wire, has a solid sports reputation, ditto business, but, when it comes to its two pages of editorials, well, let’s just say those pages also have a solid reputation.

It happens to be a socially conservative, libertarian reputation, and a deserved one.

More than a few editorials have come across the copy desk that repulsed me to the point of wanting to quit the job in protest. But I suck it up, remember that I need that paycheck to pay rent, and pass the page off to someone who can stomach it.

But the other day, we ran this, about a British program countering Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and going on about why the notion that global warming is caused or accelerated by human activity, and that we must thus take action to counter the effects, is hogwash.

I could let you read this completely unscientific, cherry-picked nonsense for yourself, but that would be like cheating. So here are my main issues:

1. The author, S. Fred Singer, says, “… the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming.” Okay, I’m no scientist, but NASA has shown (and explained) why Antarctica “warmed around the perimeter from 1982 to 2004, where huge icebergs calved and some ice shelves disintegrated, it cooled closer to the pole.” One possible explanation is that “the warmer temperatures in the surrounding ocean have produced more precipitation in the continent’s interior, and this increased snowfall has cooled the high-altitude region around the pole.” Other explanations are more complex. Read what NASA has to say.

2. Singer says, “Observations in ice cores show that temperature increases have preceded — not resulted from — increases in CO2, by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2.” While that may be true, it has never been within a species’ control to limit the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. With humans, obviously, it is. And please don’t dispute the fact that CO2 levels are rising, or that because water vapor is simply more abundant in terms of greenhouse gases, it’s more relevant. NOAA states that greenhouse gases, such as CO2 and other trace gases from human activity, are increasing. And the U.S. government’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center clearly states that “both hemispheres were warming at a rate of 0.5°C/100 yrs.”

3. From such very flimsy bases, Singer then posits that warming is part of a natural trend dating back millions of years. That’s analogous to saying, “Never mind the stock market crash and the evaporation of all your money. Historically, the market trends upward.” It also brushes over the causes of the warming.

4. The point of the op-ed is counter the idea that we have to do something about the warming now. That we must alter our planetary behavior to reduce the damage we’re doing to the atmosphere and the planet and all life on it. If you proceed from the basis that we’re not causing the warming, your conclusion is given. No need to limit or control CO2 releases; no need for “uneconomic” alternative energy sources (aha! the motivations reveal themselves).

One thing I may never understand is the economic argument. If demand shifts to renewable energy, isn’t there money to made there? I mean, can’t the five white guys who own everything now simply sell their stakes in fossil fuels and reinvest in wind, tidal, solar, ethanol, and hydrogen sources (and the like)?

One other thought: It’s a misnomer to say that the warming happening now isn’t natural. Humans are part of nature, too, right? The point is that the evidence is simply overwhelming now that humans are causing the chain reaction causing climate change, and anyone calling themselves a scientist should look at their own paycheck and question the rigorousness of their evaluations.

Related links:
Pew Center on Global Climate Change
Australia’s Uranium Information Centre
NASA’s list of climate change resources
More from NOAA
U.S. Climate Change Science Program
RealClimate
Science magazine
The Environmental Protection Agency

I realize I announced my own candidacy yesterday on Here and There, but dammit, I want a spirited race.

So I’ve decided to seriously give some thought to a potential run by (does he need any qualification) Al Gore, the man who spent his first term as president with a beard in a Tennessee classroom, when he wasn’t sailing the Mediterranean on his yacht.

And where else to turn but to that kingmaker of all kingmaker magazines, Rolling Stone.

The article, written by Tim Dickinson, relies pretty heavily on input from Republican pollster Frank Luntz. Luntz’s insight is mostly positive for Gore, though that may be based on the nature of the questions he was asked. Still, the article, biased though it may be, paints a fairly rosy picture of a Gore run.

In a sense it would be a pretty substantial sacrifice. The man has found his passion, a policy topic where real results can be effected, outside the machinations of bureaucracy.

Of course, as happened in 2000, Gore would be running, at least in the primaries, without his most formidable ally — Bill Clinton. But between August and November 2008, I guarantee you Bill would throw 1,000 percent of his time and energy behind his former VP’s run. And that’s saying a lot. In 2000, Gore did his best to cut the political apron strings, to his own detriment.

He’s Clinton without being “a Clinton.” Without Gore in the race, the election could very well go to Hillary Clinton, despite how it may look now. But a Hillary win would solidify the country’s Shakespearean dynastic rivalry. And ultimately, I don’t Americans want that. They want leaders elected on their own merits, not their last names.

The truth (inconveniently) is that no one but Albert Arnold himself, and possibly Tipper, knows whether he’ll run. He may be honest when he says he doesn’t think so, but hasn’t ruled it out.