Dissecting the UN Debacle in Kosovo

George:

Fooey?

AP – Al Gore has for a long time been full of hot air. He has a vivid imagination about the world around him. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. Al’s basic mistrust of the seasons may stem from an episode of the Twilight Zone, in which the Earth gets too close to the Sun. Summers are by nature hot & sticky, and Gore is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures needed to create a more effective global antiperspirant, thereby save the planet.

If former college roommate, Tommy Lee Jones, could save the City of Los Angeles from an errant volcano, and the world from a giant cockroach in Men In Black, then certainly big Al Gore deserves a prize for his Global Warming Deodorant Initiative to control perspiration, thus prevent the meltdown of Earth. Now, use the same effective ingredients and trusted formula that kept our leaders dry during the Cold War. As the planet heats up, you don’t have to! Clinton tested: guaranteed to leave no trace.

Truth is, nobody games the system like the Clintons: http://theseedsof9-11.com

Unless you’re “stuck on stupid.”

(Taken from somewhere else): Gore never claimed that he “invented” the Internet, which implies that he engineered the technology. The invention occurred in the seventies and allowed scientists in the Defense Department to communicate with each other. In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gore said, “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

Taken in context, the sentence, despite some initial ambiguity, means that as a congressman Gore promoted the system we enjoy today, not that he could patent the science, though that’s how the quotation has been manipulated. Hence the disingenuous substitution of “inventing” for the actual language.

But this can go even further…see Snopes on the mythology.

And going a little further…from Wikipedia:

Al Gore was involved in the development and mainstreaming of the Internet as both Senator and Vice-President. Campbell-Kelly and Aspray note in Chapter 12 of their 1996 text, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, that up until the early 1990s public usage of the Internet was limited. They continue to state that the “problem of giving ordinary Americans network access had exercised Senator Al Gore since the late 1970s” leading him to develop legislation which would alleviate this problem. Gore thus began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as “The Gore Bill”) after hearing the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet).

In 1999, various media outlets suggested that Gore claimed that he “invented the internet”, in reference to a CNN interview in which he said, “During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.”

In response to this controversy, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn wrote a 2000-09-29 article (originally sent via email) which described Gore’s contributions to the Internet since the 1970s, including his work on the Gore Bill:

“ [A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time. Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: “During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he “invented” the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective. As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept.

The truth is really out there. It takes very little to actually see it, read it, and understand it…well, maybe not.

Here’s this from the Telegraph:

“Climate change is a threat to the environment, not to “peace” and international order. The prize has gone to some sleazy recipients in the past, but at least you can make a case that their actions staved off bloodshed.”

Funny. I stray way to the right on most issues and yet laugh at the inability of many people to avoid name calling and making every effort to minimize the opinions of those contrary to one’s own.

It is clearly a justified entitlement. Its a blog afterall.

Now I don’t know much more about GW other than the fact that scientifically its been proven by scientists with whom I have worked that certain gases (manmade and otherwise) do have what is referred to as global warming potential. That of couse leaves this comment open to ridicule, and the accusation that the science is “junk science.” That, though, reflects the poetic moment, “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” or a “rose, by any other name, is still a rose.” Think about it.