Fox News: In light of climate scandals, where’s the Goracle been?

Fox News reports on a question a lot of climate skeptics have been asking in light of the various climate scandals that have rocked the agw world to it’s cold, calculating core: Where’s the Goracle?:

Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore — the public face of global warming — has been silent on the topic.

The former vice president apparently finds it inconvenient even to answer calls to testify before the U.S. Senate. You can call him Al . . . but he won’t call back.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe — a prominent skeptic of global warming theory and the Republican leader of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee — issued a request for Gore to come testify on global warming. In an interview with FoxNews.com, Inhofe said he wants Gore to appear because “it will be interesting to ask him on what science he based his movie,” a film the senator considers “science fiction.”

Gore has yet to respond, but that didn’t prevent him from causing a stir at Apple’s shareholder meeting Thursday. According to CNET, Gore was seated in the first row while several stockholders bashed his high-profile views on climate change. One reportedly said Gore “has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted.”

Gore did not reply, and he has not commented on his blog or Twitter feed.

[…]

Since his appearance at the Copenhagen climate summit in December, Gore has been reluctant to talk to the media, making only a handful of public appearances.

On Jan. 16, he spoke at the American Library Association conference at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, and he signed copies of his newest book, Our Choice: How We Can Solve the Climate Crisis. On Feb. 22, at the IBM Pulse Conference in Las Vegas, Gore commented on how the environment was a fantastic business opportunity.

“We are in the presence of one of the greatest opportunities in the history of business to become much more efficient and eliminate waste, pollution and losses all at the same time,” he said.

The media, meanwhile, have started to ask why the world’s most famous advocate of all things green remains mute on the growing chorus of opposition.

“The godfather of climate hysteria is in hiding as another of his wild claims unravels — this one about global warming causing seas to swallow us up,” the editors of Investors Business Daily wrote on Tuesday. “We’ve not seen or heard much of the former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel Prize recipient recently as the case for disastrous man-made climate change collapses.”

While this is all true, it’s not exactly news because the Goracle, like most agw alarmists, consistently refuses to debate any and all climate skeptics who put themselves out there as being willing to take him on in a one on one on the issue of “man-caused climate change.” What is news, however, is that the Goracle – who typically only takes on his critics from safe distances where he won’t be questioned on his claims – is not addressing the various climate scandals at all at any of his public appearances. He’s not saying yay or nay one way or the other on any of it. For a guy who normally isn’t hesitant to brand anyone who criticizes and casts doubt on the “settled science” behind “man-made” climate change, he’s been surprisingly quiet which, ironically, speaks volumes.

Related to all this, could the agw community be turning over a new leaf – for the better?

World weather agencies agreed this week to enhance data-gathering significantly and allow independent scrutiny of raw figures used in assessing climate change amid charges by critics that global warming scientific data were skewed.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) made the concession after an outcry over e-mails revealing that researchers in Britain had suppressed certain data to bolster claims of global warming. Critics also said some of the manipulated data were included in a 2007 U.N. report on the subject.

Britain’s Met Office formally submitted a proposal that scientists around the world undertake the “grand challenge” of measuring land surface temperatures as often as several times a day, and it was approved in principle by about 150 officials at a WMO meeting in Antalya, Turkey.

“This effort will ensure that the datasets are completely robust and that all methods are transparent,” the Met Office said, though it added that “any such analysis does not undermine the existing independent datasets that all reflect a warming trend.”

It also said that current measurements were “fundamentally ill-conditioned to answer 21st-century questions, such as how extremes are changing, and therefore what adaptation and mitigation decisions should be taken.”

Prominent agw skeptic Steve McIntyre seems optimistic about the WMO proposal. What do you think? I’m especially interested in hearing what those of you who have been on the front lines of this battle for years have to think about it. Does it represent a positive turning point for the scientific community or is it all just more smoke and mirrors?

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