Smearing Gore (yet again)

The non-stop smearing of Al Gore never ceases to amaze. Once again, Gore is “unmasked” as a hypocrite.

Just one week after Live Earth, his global musical spectacular to raise awareness of environmental issues, the former vice-president attended a rehearsal dinner for his daughter’s marriage that featured Chilean sea bass. … The reaction was swift: writing in in the Australian Daily Telegraph, Rebecca Keeble of Humane Society International, a conservation pressure group, complained of the danger to the species from “from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities”.

Of course, as Sheril Kirshenbaum pointed out, Gore isn’t aiming for sainthood, he’s trying to raise awareness. Of course, Gore has been smeared a hundred times before, and most if not all of these smears have proven to be just that, smears, which either bear little resemblance to the truth, or which twist facts. Maybe a responsible person would check the facts before writing a piece condemning Gore for being a hypocrite. But these were part of a sustainably manged population:

But the fish enjoyed by the Gores were not endangered or illegally caught.

Rather, the restaurant later confirmed, they had come from one of the world’s few well-managed, sustainable populations of toothfish, and caught and documented in compliance with Marine Stewardship Council regulations. The Gores’ spokesman, Kalee Kreider, admitted that the fish has been on the menu, but said: “The Gores absolutely agree with this humane society and the rest of the environmental community about illegally caught Chilean sea bass.

“The problem is huge. This is unfortunate, we have been in touch with the society today. The really important thing is that people become more aware of this issue.”

But since when does fact-checking matter?

H/T Jon Winsor in the comments at the Sheril Kirshenbaum post.

Update: Tim Lambert connects the dots on this story. It’s worse than it looks on the surface – I figured that the article by Rebecca Keeble of the Australian Humane Society was just an example of someone cluelessly running their mouths. Turns out there’s more to it than that – the article was run in the Daily Telegraph (interesting interesting venue for the Australian Humane Society). According to Tim Lambert, while Keeble didn’t want to say who had commissioned her article:

You see, the opinion editor of the Daily Telegraph is Gore-hater Tim Blair. He first blogged about the story here. Then he contacted Keeble and put her opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph. Next he put up a post linking to Keeble’s piece. Then it was picked by Glenn Reynolds and Matt Drudge who can be relied upon to run with any anti-Gore story they come across. Once Drudge had linked it, Tapper knew it was OK for him to run with the story. And that’s how it’s done.

Update II: Seems this post drew the attention of a blogger out to demonstrate “liberal hypocrisy”. (Surprise, surprise, it’s Jason “Jinx” McHue, consigned to Pharyngula’s “Dungeon” for “Slagging, Stupidity, Trolling”; see link for definitions of terms). As is common with these guys, they mostly show that they don’t have a clue what they are talking about. (For more on this, see my next post).

Can organic agriculture feed the world?

I have always loved the idea of organic agriculture but I have struggled with one big question: can we afford the decline in production? Of course, as long as we are feeding huge amounts of grain to cattle, the option to divert that grain to feeding people always exists. Reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma I began to wonder if it wasn’t possible to sustain production on organic or “post-organic” production systems. So I was thrilled to come across this report suggesting that organic agriculture could feed the world.

Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food as conventional farming on the same amount of land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing assumption that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.

Now I have to go and track down the original article.

H/T Meteor Blades at dKos.

Update: The original article was published in Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. There’s a more detailed review at New Scientist and a two-part story(part 1, part 2) at OrganicAuthority.com.