the O&G industry knew about climate change in the 60s and 70s and were initially concerned about it's effects on both the planet and their business. i don't know why you think either al gore or spock or whoever are the only choices for understanding the phenomena.

More disproof of the hoax. More people don't believe this crap. Al Gore and is ilk have brainwashed our children for last 20 + years and now they are indoctrinated is this hoax

Your video, The Simpsons' Al Gore Celebrating, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The video is right that pretty much the number one most important question is the weight of the truck (basically tare weight, which is actually the tractor plus empty trailer). When I watched the announcement, I thought Musk was slightly cagey about that, but I thought that he said that it would be in the ballpark of a normal ICE semi. Guess I should watch again.

I think Musk made some semi-optimistic predictions about battery tech improvement and economy of scale. Frankly, I think he's earned the right to be semi-bold with his predictions, given his and Tesla's track record (paying off govt. loan very early, single handedly pushing forward battery tech and production, etc. etc.). His optimistic predictions have a tendency of panning out.

The average American is never going to switch to an electric car purely or even largely for "green conscious" reasons. The switch will happen when the electric car is better than the ICE alternatives in concrete metrics like performance, reliability, and operating cost. Musk is pushing that date forward at an incredible pace. Arguably it is already true for many use-cases at the high price-point range of the Model S, but that price point limits the scope of the impact quite a bit. He knows that to really shake things up, he's got to get that price point down, and he knows that to do that he's got to improve the economy of scale on battery tech. Which he's doing by expanding it into adjacent markets like home batteries, etc.

I think he deserves a lot of credit for "walking the walk" when it comes to working hard to protect/improve the environment, as opposed to Al Gore et al. "talking the talk".

Every group that a has money at stake are trying to influence the people / governments one way or another in their favor.

I do believe that temperatures are changing but to say man is mostly at fault -- I don't buy it. Even those promoting man made warming concede that even the Paris accord will not truly change the doomsday course we are on.

Al Gore's Inconvenient truth movie has the planet basically dead today -- but we are all here. Kind of the boy crying woof.

I think he meant climate change. Everyone indoctrinated by Al Gore crap knows they die from it. So if you eat less meat, you will lower CO2 production indirectly and save them!!!!1111eleven

Al Gore recently bought some beachfront property in Montecito, California, apparently of his own free will. I guess the price was right.

The great scientist Al Gore C02 correlation is is wrong min 22

The Sun is the driving force of global change. min 36

False Co2 correlation was driven by politics min 39

Interplanetary Climate Change NASA's Hottest Secret

The problem is that sets up what reminds me of the 2000 election. It absolutely astounded me half the country thought George W. Bush was a valid candidate, let alone the better candidate than Al Gore, not that I liked Gore, but given the choice between the two, Gore had viable plans for the budget, a cohesive foreign policy, etc.

It shouldn't have been a close election, but not only was it razor close, Gore lost. Countless times there have been in world history leaders who came about who generally wouldn't and shouldn't have, but they did. All it takes is a bad recession or other event to tilt the odds in their favor at the right time. Hitler doesn't come to power without the Great Depression and the Treaty of Versailles leaving Germany dependent on US loans.

And to me, Trump is absolutely frightening. I honestly have absolutely no idea what he would do as President, and not in a good way. I quite honestly don't even know if he's actually in line with the Tea Party or not. It is terrifying to me that he's on a course where potentially a recession at the wrong time could make him president because so many voters are absolutely ignorant or stupid enough to support him.

Screw the entertainment value of it. I keep thinking back to the George W. Bush Iraqi occupation and the crapshow that was Katrina and realize people's lives are literally at stake by botching the selection of the next President, and when you make one option completely invalid before the election even starts, it doesn't help.

This spacecraft is about to start collecting regular data on the energy balance of the whole Earth - an important additional set of data on global warming. Of course the spacecraft was ready about 15 years ago - but Republicans did not want it to fly because (1) they hate Al Gore, and (2) they don't want us to know what they are doing to our planet. ("Close your eyes and vote Republican!")

One more thought that I had:

Before Tesla, electric cars were niche marketed as adequate. In the sense that if you were a person very highly motivated to be "green", you could get one, drive around short distances, and in general enjoy a small subset of the versatility of an internal combustion gas guzzling car. You could get by, but in general life with an electric car was a step back from life with a gas car.

The reason Tesla is amazing is that it flipped that on its head. You're not sacrificing anything, you don't need an attitude of "I can use a bit less and take one for the team" for a Tesla to appeal to you. Everything I watch about the Model S says it is a fast, high-performance, fun to drive, luxurious car -- objectively BETTER than a similarly priced gas-powered car to most users (who can afford one, but that will include more and more people over time).


Same thing goes for home solar and other "green energy". Adoption rates are NEVER going to soar when solar is "adequate". And then only adequate if you make very big lifestyle changes like cutting back on heating and cooling, using low-draw appliances, etc. etc.

But as Tesla is doing to cars, maybe this can do to energy. Musk is saying NO, you don't have to cut back. You don't have to settle for less. You don't have to take one for the team. Install some (currently fairly expensive) solar panels and 1, 2, or however many of our power packs, and you can have a BETTER experience than being on the grid, paying high bills every month and dealing with the occasional outage, etc.

I guarantee that pitch will do more to push the adoption of green energy than 10 years of Al Gore living in a mansion and flying around constantly on a private jet to give $100,000 lectures explaining why everybody else needs to cut back or we're all going to melt...

I understand your discomfort with my phrasing. My beef is with the electoral college system.

While I was getting my degree, I took some really good American History and Government classes at college. The prof in the Govt. class really went into depth explaining the electoral college to us, and to me the shittiness of that system was just shocking. For example: (none of this is news to a truly informed voter or an interested person with an internet connection, but it WAS news to me when I was ~20 years old, and I think it still would be news to a really high percentage of US voters)

* First is the very idea of an electoral college. The only way to become president of the US is to win the most electoral votes. But voters don't cast electoral votes, the people of the electoral college do. OK, the electoral college is supposed to follow the votes/will of their state/constituents (more on that next), but the fact remains that literally/practically, our votes as citizens don't matter. Only the electoral votes count. So yes, in the most literal sense ... NONE of our votes "matter".

* In general, the "electors" (the people on the electoral college) are supposed to cast their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state / district. I think 2 states (Nebraska and Maine?) divide up their suggested electoral votes to be as close as possible to the actual proportions of the popular vote, but that's a whole other issue. Anyway, in general the electors are supposed to cast their vote for the popular vote winner in their state. BUT, that process isn't automatic. The votes that actually matter, the electoral votes, are cast by fallible human beings -- and they might "go rogue" and vote against what they are "supposed to" do. That is called a "faithless elector". That would be bad enough if it was just some weird loophole that technically exists but has never actually happened in practice, but actually faithless electors happen fairly frequently. The only upside is that they haven't ever changed the outcome of an election. Yet.

* When we're young and in civics type classes in school, we're brainwashedtaught about Democracy as a very simple, will of the public, one man one vote system. The electoral college shits all over that. One can win the popular vote but lose on electoral votes, and that actually has happened multiple times (not just to Al Gore). In my opinion, the electoral college creates a laundry list of problems (swing states are the only ones that matter, so campaign there and ignore everybody else, etc. etc. etc.), has very few benefits (any supposed benefits of the system are tenuous at best), and is completely contrary to the core concepts of Democracy.


Without the electoral college, a blue vote in Kansas would matter, as would a red vote in Massachusetts. Or a vote for a 3rd party or independent, anywhere. With the electoral college, edge cases like any of those can be safely and easily ignored by candidates.

I think it is unlikely that Kansas would turn blue, even if all of the democrats voted. That being said, we're not a complete LOCK for red; heck, out of the 10 most recent Governors we've had before we turned into Brownbackistan it is an even split between Democrats and Republicans with 5 each. And actually the Democrats had significantly longer total number of years in the office.

So basically, I don't actually think that a vote cast on a losing candidate is "pointless", I just think that the electoral college system does a really good job of making sure that some votes are more pointless than others. It amazes me that there wasn't a MUCH bigger stink made about it when Gore "lost" in 2000, but I guess voter apathy can overcome any challenge to the system.

I think it's very important to recognize that there is more than 1 camp in this that has completely abandoned science. Sure there are plenty denying that things are warming, or that our activity contributes to warming. Don't spend so much time decrying them that you miss the people demanding the science clearly indicates impending catastrophic disaster that only emission reductions can save us from.

Also take note that we are just beginning to move into the measuring the 'real' part of the issue now by satellite for the last few decades. Previously temperature was the only proxy measure for showing increasing energy trapped in the atmosphere. With satellite records though we have been able to directly measure radiation coming in and going out and observe the real trends. The IPCC that shared Al Gore's nobel prize on climate change has this to say on the satellite measured energy budget:
Satellite records of top of the atmosphere radiation fluxes have
been substantially extended since AR4, and it is unlikely that
significant trends exist in global and tropical radiation budgets
since 2000.

It's important to read that closely and correctly. There has been an overall net influx of radiation, as in more energy coming in than going out. The RATE of that increase is the flux they are referring to. The IPCC is stating that since 2000, it is unlikely that the rate of energy being trapped in our atmosphere has been changing.

All that means is that it's not time to panic. If you look at the latest IPCC temperature projections you'll similarly see that the projections are much less scary for 2100 than the first IPCC projections from 1990. Better news still for us, the instrumental record thus far looks to be tracking the lowend of the IPCC projections.

All that is to say that science is agreed things are warming. It is agreed we are contributing. It also agreed that the severity isn't some doom and gloom we are all gonna die in 2050 scenario either.

"OMG global warming!"