Al Gore Can't Get A Break
When things turn, they turn quickly. Just read this on the Freakonomics blog (and yes, SuperFreakonomics is an even better read). Apparently Gore was lecturing on The Tonight Show about how hot the core of the earth was an how it serves as a valuable geothermal energy source. However, like most pseudo-scientists, his numbers weren't even close to reality. He was off by several million degrees.
As he told Conan O’Brien in this recent Tonight Show interview, while discussing geothermal energy, “the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees.”
It turns out it is like 500-900 degrees Celsius. Maybe he was thinking Fahrenheit? Even there it is only like 900-1800 degrees. Is there a way to politely ask him to retire to his estate with his pile of gold from cooking up a fake problem and getting us all falsely alarmed?
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3 comments:
NBC sure has been gobbling him up these days, haven't they? He's showin ga good sense of humor about himself at least.
Oooooh. Just fact-checked Dubner. Turns out what he linked to as the temperature of the core is actually the temperature of the mantle. The core is about 7000 degrees. A smidge closer to millions, I guess. :)
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/PhillipChan.shtml
HE PLAYED ON OUR FEARS!
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