It’s hard to know how to respond to the Gore Effect – the “phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming.” On the one hand, it can be used as a satirical device. tim certainly does his best to be funny with it – although he tends to wear it out, as he does with the rest of his small toolkit of ongoing jokes (did you know that, as well as making places cold, Al Gore is fat?).
But then others start to use it as an element in a more serious argument against global warming, conflating it with actual evidence. Like Andrew Bolt:
Cold stops people from protesting against warming. How long before pennies drop about the global temperature, which has failed to rise since at least 2002?
Or, if you want an ever better example of a “journalist” conflating the Gore Effect with actual evidence, there’s this from Politico’s Erika Lovley. And even non-journalists and so-called sceptical scientific types like Jennifer Marohasy make use of it to bolster their arguments.
So, it’s a joke, yet one that’s taken half-seriously. And it’s just another form of cherry-picking weather events as evidence of climate patterns. Whenever global warming protests are held in cold weather (like the lists of events showing up on a number of sites today – amazingly, all happening between October and April, i.e., from the second half of autumn through the first half of spring), it’s the Gore Effect.
But there are a couple of other things that help to explain the Gore Effect, and why it’s taken seriously at all. They’re called the availability heuristic and confirmation bias. Those who treat the Gore Effect as a remotely serious phenomenon are engaging in the same type of flawed reasoning as when people think it usually rains just after they wash the car. They notice evidence that confirms it – say, when it is cold and a global warming event is scheduled – and store it away in their memory. When the same type of event happens on a mild, warm or hot day, it isn’t something that they pay attention to. Then, when reflecting on how often it happens, they overestimate it because it is the remarkably cold events that they can remember most easily.
It’s an everyday bias in the way we think. And if it was genuinely being used just for humour, it wouldn’t be a problem. But when columnists and scientists start tying it into their other commentaries on global warming, it results in argument based on outright dodgy reasoning.
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So, it’s a joke, yet one that’s taken half-seriously. And it’s just another form of cherry-picking weather events as evidence of climate patterns.
Oh you mean the way climate change evangelists like Flannery and Bob Brown are cherry pick the bushfires and melbourne heatwave as evidence of AGW?!
The hypocrisy is astounding.
I think the deeper issue with the gore effect is that the phenomenon allows people with no expertise in scientific matters to continue to place fond belief over logic, fact and reasoning. why bother try to make sense of climate data when you can just fall back on folksy associations that ‘feel right’?
in this regard it is very disappointing to see marohasy sucked in by it, the link to her post seems more about ideology than reason and fact.
Cold stops people from protesting against warming. How long before pennies drop about the global temperature, which has failed to rise since at least 2002?
I thought it was since 1998.
Mighty Matt’s back.
Groan…
why bother try to make sense of climate data when you can just fall back on folksy associations that ‘feel right’?
Oh you mean like when Flannery & Bob Brown tried to use the Melbourne heatwave & bushfires as evidence of AGW?!
Rad,
Here’s Flannery’s column – it talks about climate change and suggests that global warming is creating preconditions for more frequent and severe bushfires, but I don’t think it says what you suggest he says. And Bob Brown also pointed to predictions of the increased frequency of bushfires in the future – again, not what you suggest he said.
…. the “phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming.” …..
Perhaps we could invite Al to Victoria so we can get our reservoirs filled up.
Here’s Flannery’s column – it talks about climate change and suggests that global warming is creating preconditions for more frequent and severe bushfires, but I don’t think it says what you suggest he says. And Bob Brown also pointed to predictions of the increased frequency of bushfires in the future – again, not what you suggest he said.
LOL Oh Tobias both Flannery & Brown are using the fires and Melbourne heatwave to push their belief in AGW. You can try and dress it up all you like but they are clearly creating the link.
This is what Brown states;
Senator Brown said the “dreadful inferno” was a terrible reminder of what climate change could mean for Australians
Global warming is predicted to make this sort of event happen 25 per cent, 50 per cent more,” he told Sky News.
The hypocrisy is astounding.
The bushfires weren’t just any old hot day. They were the worst natural disaster in Australia for over 100 years.
Wait wait wait, back up a sec.
… when columnists and scientists start tying it into their other commentaries on global warming, …
Marohasy is a climate scientist now?
Unbelievable. Seen the cover story in this week’s New Scientist?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126971.700-how-to-survive-the-coming-century.html
Out of Bolt/Blair and New Scientist mag, I know who I’m going to take seriously.
The bushfires weren’t just any old hot day. They were the worst natural disaster in Australia for over 100 years.
That’s not entirely true. They were Australia’s worst natural disaster as far as death toll, but as far as area burnt & property destroyed it was not. The Black Thursday fires of 1851 burnt 25% of the entire state. The Black Friday & Ash Wednesday fires destroyed more property.
So it is wrong to try & associate the black Saturday fires with AGW given 1851, 1939 & 1983 bushfires.
John: It would be an interesting way to start experimentally testing the evidence for the effect.
William: She has qualifications in science, and she comments on environment and climate issues. Beyond that, I’ll leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions …
Bertus: Great link. But I notice that the author’s first name is ‘Gaia’ – can we really believe this is an objective science story?
…So it is wrong to try & associate the black Saturday fires with AGW given 1851, 1939 & 1983 bushfires.
So how did the highest temperature on record come about then? You don’t think that there might just be some teensy weensy link to AGW?
William: She has qualifications in science, and she comments on environment and climate issues. Beyond that, I’ll leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions …
And Gore, Flannery & Brown’s qualification in Climate Science are what exactly?
So how did the highest temperature on record come about then? You don’t think that there might just be some teensy weensy link to AGW?
Ah ha!!! So are you saying that weather and temperature determine climate change? Well if you are correct, they what about the record cold temperatures in the northern hemisphere over their winter? As I said, the hypocrisy is astounding.
BTW – The temperature that lead to Black Thursday in 1851 saw Melbourne get up to the mid 40’s and during black Friday in 1939 Melbourne got up to nearly 46 C. Now are you also claiming that AGW caused the heat & fires of 1851?
She has qualifications in science, and she comments on environment and climate issues.
whether marohasy is a so-called climate scientist or not isn’t the point. the point is that anyone who has successfully completed a PhD has by definition received training in critical thought and analysis, foundation skills for any scientist. for me her use of the gore effect is particularly disappointing for this reason. scientists of any discipline who try to use folksy feel-good sentiments with no basis in fact or reason to argue against a particular phenomenom (in this case AGW) are lazy and are in fact undermining the very training that sets them aside from your average lay person.
Rad, I didn’t refer to any of those three in my post. Please stop trying to derail discussions by trotting out cliches and irrelevant arguments. If you want to discuss debate the actual topic of the post, you’re welcome to. If not, your posts will be stopped – I am not going to allow overbearing and irrelevant comments to drown out actual debate.
Tobias Z – yes I noticed that too. Unfortunate….
radpipper – Do you own a shop selling Red Herrings? We were talking about the Gore Effect being an example of confirmation bias. You haven’t addressed that once yet.
Malcolm Turnbull also believes in AGW – does he have Climate Science qualifications?
The point is, Bolt uses this confirmation bias trick over and over again. It’s one of his favourites; and the Bolt peanut gallery seem to fall for it every time. It’s DISHONEST.
I only did first year atmospheric science and I know the difference between climate and weather… So Bolt thinks they’re the same? Also he forgets that climate is measured over longer periods of time.
Hi. Just thought I would register so I could point out that astounding though the hypocrisy might be, it pales next to the muddled thinking.
Blair and Bolt cherry pick weather events to make a case?!?? They do so ironically to mock those who do it seriously, like Brown, Flannery, Wong etc. What you don’t seem to understand, is tha….wait a minute, you are all but children. I will go now and leave you to your passions.
Whats in a name? Is it global warming now? It used to be global warming but then the spin boffins changed it to climate change. Seems they are only happy to talk of global warming during a cool weather even. Any other time it is climate change. I almost remember hearing that the changing climate would lead to less predicable weather and more extremes at both ends. As ultrapeach has said though its the weather you fools.
Blair and Bolt cherry pick weather events to make a case?!?? They do so ironically to mock those who do it seriously, like Brown, Flannery, Wong etc.
EXACTLY. This is the point that you have all missed. The whole point of the “Gore effect” is to mock climate change evangelists like Flannery, Gore … ETC who specifically cherry pick themselves. Hence my examples of the bushfires.
It is soooooo tragic that you all have miss this point.
…BTW – The temperature that lead to Black Thursday in 1851 saw Melbourne get up to the mid 40’s and during black Friday in 1939 Melbourne got up to nearly 46 C. Now are you also claiming that AGW caused the heat & fires of 1851?
I don’t believe I was claiming any such thing I was posing a question for you to answer; Which you appear to have ignored.
Good grief. Rad and “ooh honey honey” – read the post, particularly the parts where I distinguish between using it as a satirical device and those columnists and others who attempt to link it to an actual argument about evidence. You both seem to have missed something.
Tobias nobody takes The “Gore effect” seriously except dyed in the wool Warministas who are aghast that anyone would dare mock them and one of their gurus.
It is always a joke in any context.
I should clarify my comment: global warming is real. There is a lot of evidence to suggest this.
Random cold weather days or even streaks mean nothing in the context of climate.
I don’t believe I was claiming any such thing I was posing a question for you to answer; Which you appear to have ignored
I answered your question. My answer is No it does not, as previous history going back to 1851 shows.
radpipper – some people over at Bolt might get the mockery angle. A few. Most of them however straightforwardly believe the claims made that a cold Winter in the UK or the USA disproves AGW.
Refer please to my New Scientist link above. This is exactly what Bolt will never do: address the most recent science findings.
An underlying theme among Bolt/Blair types and their hangers-on is that all the risks are downside risks. A belief that even if mayyyybe there is something in this AGW business, it won’t be as bad as AGW proponents are making out. After all the Club of Rome was wrong, weren’t they? Paul Ehrlich was wrong, wasn’t he? Be the same with this mob. Jonahs and Hanrahans the lot of them. To be honest, up until four or five years ago, that was exactly what I thought.
Yet most of the AGW proponents are scientists, not journalists. Scientists tend to be inherently conservative. The IPCC is widely recognised as being very conservative. The truth is what has been said about AGW so far is ANYTHING BUT alarmist, and it may turn out that all the risks are in fact UPSIDE risks. It may be worse than anybody has dared say, and it might be happening faster. There is some disturbing evidence that this is indeed the case.
I wonder: given that much of this is about hasty opinions versus credible scientific evidence, can anyone cite another example of widespread consensus in the scientific community being ignored in favour of ideological commentary such as the climate change debate inspires from reactionary camps? I doubt it, but am curious; “irritable mental gestures” and all that…
radpipper said “what about the record cold temperatures in the northern hemisphere over their winter?”
In order for readers to decern the credibility of your claims Radpiper, can you link to the data showing “record cold temperatures” that you refer to?
@ enzaii: there are numerous examples of credible scientific information being ignored or tried to be discredited to further ideological or commercial interests. here are 2 that immediately come to mind:
1. the scientific consensus on smoking as a cause of lung cancer was some 40 years old before the tobacco industry and lawmakers in some countries would accept it.
2. despite overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus of evolution and the age of the planet, there are still jurisdictions that legislate ‘intelligent design’ must be taught in schools alongside traditional science.
enzaii – well, the Club of Rome in their day provoked furious debate. They basically argued that we would run out of raw materials like oil, copper, zinc, iron, bauxite etc and we’d all be living in a global rubbish dump, scrabbling around for recycled raw materials.
The Club of Rome’s arguments inspired the Mad Max movies and many other similar works. They also helped Mal Fraser and John Howard win the 1980 Australian election by enabling them to argue that Australian raw materials such as bauxite would become enormously valuable as supplies ran out. The Alcoa Aluminium Smelter near Geelong stands testimony to the mania.
http://www.baddevelopers.green.net.au/Docs/Pointhenry.htm
The principal counter-argument came from a still-going organisation called the Hudson Institute, which argued that it would be many many hundreds of years before supplies of anything ran out.
Turned out they were both partly right and both partly wrong. It has to be said the Club of Rome got their timelines wildly out – they were saying we’d be running out of oil by the ’90s, but as we know, we now live in the age of Peak Oil and pretty much the consensus is the CoR was right, at least about oil.
Paul Ehrlich also inspired furious debate – his book The Population Bomb inspired the film Soylent Green again amongst many other works, and similarly, it has to be said Ehrlich and his detractors were both partly right and partly wrong.
Yet another example would be the ongoing debate about decriminalizing certain drugs such as marijuana.
radpiper – Have you noticed the correlation in the dates you’ve given for the fires? Victoria’s most devastating recorded fires have been in 1851, 1898, 1939, 1983 and 2009 (you could also throw in last year’s fires, too). All occurred at times of extreme heat and high winds, largely in heavily forested areas. And the temperatures etc were in the 40s, within a few degrees of one another.
But the interesting thing is the frequency: 47 years between 1851 and 1898, then 41, 44 and lately 26. Ah hah! Maybe this year’s (and last) are showing the expected increase in frequency predicted from AGW? Not conclusive, but within bounds.
Now, we all know that AGW has not caused any of the fires, but it has perhaps increased the likelihood of them.
And as an illustration, I’ll use a bit of family history. First, I remember my great-Aunt Rose telling me about the 1898 fires that devastated much of Gippsland, where I grew up. Now, you may not think that AGW had anything to do with those (and it may not have) but in 1917 the Korumburra Shire published a history of its early settlement, during the 1870s, called “Land of the Lyrebird”, that incuded reminisces from the settlers. Even then, the earliest settlers remarked on how much drier the district had become, from a time when it would take weeks of hacking through bush to get from Dandenong to Korumburra, to one where, 40 years later, most of the trees had been cut down, ringbarked or burnt and Gippsland’s grazing land created. The history even had rainfall records that showed a dramatic drop from the 1890s to a bit after 1900, from which the “normal” rainfall stabilised at the new, lower, level.
Now, that’s a small part of the picture, not proof, but evidence. And it fits the other evidence from so many other areas that have identified the effects of pumping billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere over the last few hundred years.
A Bolt reader not getting the hilarious “satirical joke”.
Soooooo tragic.
But the interesting thing is the frequency: 47 years between 1851 and 1898, then 41, 44 and lately 26. Ah hah! Maybe this year’s (and last) are showing the expected increase in frequency predicted from AGW? Not conclusive, but within bounds
LOL you can’t be serious. I didn’t mention the other devastating fires of 1909, 1919 & 1926. So there was a bigger frequency of fires in the first half of the 20th Century when you also take into account 1939.
Even then, the earliest settlers remarked on how much drier the district had become, from a time when it would take weeks of hacking through bush to get from Dandenong to Korumburra, to one where, 40 years later, most of the trees had been cut down, ringbarked or burnt and Gippsland’s grazing land created.
Maybe because they were going through a drought. Once again, a normal part of the climate in south Easter Australia. Remember the poem? A land of drought & flooding rain.
Radpiper – don’t forget 2003 and 2006, which were extensive fires over long periods of time (this one has only eclipsed them because it involved deaths).
Also take into account that there has been increasing sophistocation in fire control, detection and fighting since 1939 and the Stretton report. Prior to 1939, there were no controls on fire lighting, no controlled burns, no such thing as a fire ban, no attempts to fight fires once they were established in any systematic way, etc.
When I first moved to this very fire susceptible area, I was told by more than one CFA volunteer that fires of the extent of 1983 COULD NOT happen again, due to the early detection of fires after storms (planes go up almost immediately, identify spot fires and crews are sent in to put them out). 2003 and 2006 were started by multiple (in the hundreds) lightning strikes, which were totally unknown previously (Monash Uni is studying this), making it impossible to get to all of them in time.
So, after 1939, with the introduction of fire bans, fire detection, early response to fires regardless of location, more sophistocated and coordinated fire fighting etc, one would predict a DECREASE in the number of fires and in their severity.
Prior to 1939, many fires were not reported officially, despite having severe impacts on local areas – there was no obligation to and no central body to report them to anyway.
So your statement that there was ‘a bigger frequency of fires in the first half of the 20th century’ is (i) difficult to prove or disprove, due to the holes in the data; (ii) what one would expect, given the reaction to the 1939 fires; (iii) irrelevant when one is considering whether or not increased likeliness of fire is linked to climate change.
BTW, the CFA’s fire index rating is set at 100 as the maximum, presumably based on their experiences since 1939. ALL of the State yesterday was rated at over 300.
In other words, the CFA, with all their experience, have never before encountered conditions like these.
We’ll al be ruunned said Andrew bolt
By the global warming mobs
They’ll wreck our lives and steal our fun
They’ll even take our jobs
Scientists the world around
Have got the story wrong
I alone in this whole world
Knows what’s going on
The world is getting colder folks
Anyone can see
That’s why the ice is melting
Please listen to me
So your statement that there was ‘a bigger frequency of fires in the first half of the 20th century’ is (i) difficult to prove or disprove, due to the holes in the data; (ii) what one would expect, given the reaction to the 1939 fires; (iii) irrelevant when one is considering whether or not increased likeliness of fire is linked to climate change.
BTW, the CFA’s fire index rating is set at 100 as the maximum, presumably based on their experiences since 1939. ALL of the State yesterday was rated at over 300.
In other words, the CFA, with all their experience, have never before encountered conditions like these.
You missed my point. I was disputing the notion that the current bushfires are an indication of AGW. Bushfires have always been a natural problem in South Eastern Australia so it is wrong for Climate Change evangelists to be desperately trying to use the recent bushfires to push their agenda & belief in AGW.
And with that, Rad Pipper has taken the argument in a full circle. I would appreciate it if we can avoid going around for another lap – let’s find some new issues on the topic to discuss instead.
Radpiper – you missed mine. As the last sentence of mine you quoted shows, I was pointing out that the recent fires defy what one would hypothesise, given no change in circumstances.
that is: better fire prevention techniques, better fire prediction techniques, better fire fighting techniques should (all other factors being equal) = smaller fires, of lower intensity, which are controlled fairly quickly.
If this isn’t happening, and in fact the severity of fires are increasing (try coming to NE Victoria, which has had major fires in 2003, 2006 and 2009, with a gap since 1983 since the previous major fire and telling them it’s situation normal), then one has to ask what else has changed.
If there is a theory which fits the observed facts, then one has to at least take the theory into account. That’s how science works.
Now, climate change theory has been predicting for a considerable number of years now that the incidence of bushfires will increase, as a result of global warming. It is therefore quite reasonable to link the recent increases in fire activity with global warming.
This explains why, despite better fire prevention techniques, better fire prediction techniques, better fire fighting techniques, the incidence of catastrophic fire events have become more frequent (1983…2003,2006,2009) than one would predict.