Speaking of Presidential candidates! Can you imagine an Al Gore run? What kind of scare tactics and lies would he use to convince us that he is the best man for the job? I shudder to think of this. I found this article by George Landrith in Frontiers for Freedom called "Climate Change Hysteria and Al Gore’s “Chicken Little” Scare Tactics". It is only a small section of a much longer and well written article describing this man and his tactics of exaggeration (I'm being kind).
Al Gore’s Credibility
Let’s look specifically at Al Gore’s credibility – after all An Inconvenient Truth is his movie. Al Gore has exaggerated and prevaricated his way through his political career. There are many, many examples. His claim that “during [his] service in the United States Congress, [he] took the initiative in creating the Internet” is just one amusing example. Another humorous case in point was when Gore was campaigning for president in 2000 and told a union group that his parents sung him to sleep with lullabies like “Look for the Union Label” – a jingle that was written for a union advertisement in 1975, when Al Gore was 27 years old.
But perhaps the most illustrative example of Al Gore’s problem with truth is when he stood before the entire nation during the 1996 televised Democratic National Convention and emotionally told of how in 1984 he held his sister’s hand as she died of lung cancer due to smoking. With a lump in his throat and a hoarse voice, Al Gore explained that this emotional moment caused him to “pour [his] heart and soul into the [anti-tobacco] cause.” It was a moving moment and he won accolades for his speech.
Only one problem, the story was not true. For the next four years after his sister’s death, Al Gore and his family continued to grow tobacco on the family farm. For the next six years, Gore maintained political relationships with the tobacco industry and accepted their large political contributions. In 1988 (four years after his sister’s death), when Gore hoped to win the Democratic nomination for President, he campaigned in the South as a pro-tobacco candidate, saying, “Throughout most of my life, I’ve raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve chopped it. I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.”
It is clear that Al Gore doesn’t have a track record for candor or truthfulness.
When experts have questioned the basis for Al Gore’s dire climate predictions and scary stories and asked whether it is ethical to make such claims without sound evidence, Gore says that exaggerated claims are justified because this issue is so important. To Grist Magazine, Al Gore said, “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.” To “over-represent” is to exaggerate or embellish or misstate. To “open up the audience” is to scare them with misrepresented scenarios. That sums up the problem that Al Gore has – he is so emotionally committed to his pet theories, he believes he is justified to do just about anything to get you to accept his views – even misrepresent the facts.
One of Gore’s primary global warming allies, Dr. Steven Schneider, a climate researcher, shares Gore’s belief that it is okay to exaggerate some things and ignore inconvenient facts – an interesting theory for a scientist. Schneider said, “[Scientists] need to get broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” Al Gore and his friends have chosen to be effective at the expense of honesty.
Incidentally, Dr. Schneider was once an advocate of the global cooling scare. In 1978, he warned of a coming Ice Age. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences adopted this view, “There is a finite possibility that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the Earth within the next 100 years.” My how times have changed. The bottom line is that global warming isn’t the first time we’ve been warned of a coming climate apocalypse, but it certainly is the most loudly proclaimed.
Al Gore’s ally at the U.S. Conservation Foundation, Richard Benedict, went so far as to say, “A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.”
Yet, Gore tells us the science is certain, the debate is over, and all serious, reputable scientists agree with him. But Gore is not telling the truth. He didn’t create the Internet. He didn’t devote his life to defeating big tobacco in 1984. The science isn’t certain. The debate is far from over. And many serious and acclaimed scientists do not agree with Gore.
Gore dismisses those who don’t agree with him as “pawns of big oil.” This is both an unfair and inaccurate characterization. Many acclaimed scientists cast serious doubt on Gore’s theories and they have solid evidence on their side. What Gore doesn’t admit is that the scientists he relies upon have their own financial motivations to trump up scary “facts.” As Professor Petr Chylek explains, grant funding is a big motivator. Chylek, a professor of atmospheric science at Dalhousie University, says, “Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to [find a] way to scare the public ... and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.”
It is particularly disingenuous for Gore to pretend that climate scientists who agree with him have no financial incentives because the Clinton/Gore administration worked diligently to cut government funding to scientists who questioned Gore’s theories. I know of climate scientists who lost funding as the result of Gore’s efforts. I know of other scientists who kept a “low profile” because they feared Gore would cut their funding.
Yet, Gore says he is concerned that scientists who support his theories “were persecuted, ridiculed, deprived of income.” The exact opposite is what occurred – scientists who questioned Gore’s theories have been defamed and de-funded. Gore has been a major player in this smear campaign.
How can a man be trusted to tell the truth and fairly present the facts when he has admitted he believes he is justified in fabricating and exaggerating the facts?
Al Gore has no reservoir of trust to draw upon to tell us that we should simply trust him. Gore has proven over and over that he is more inclined to exaggerate and distort than tell the truth. The first thing to keep in mind when listening to Al Gore go on and on about global warming is that the truth doesn’t matter to him. (Read the whole article here).
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