Policy Documents

Al Gore Ratchets Up the Namecalling

James M. Taylor –
March 1, 2010

Is Al Gore out of touch with reality, or just plain mean? In an editorial Gore published in yesterday’s New York Times we got a rare peek – now that another long, cold winter has driven the alarmist AWOL for several months – into the mind of the man who for the past 22 years has been crying “the sky is falling!” What we saw yesterday was not pretty.

While calling television commentators who disagree with his alarmism as “showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness,” Gore embodies the very definition of such hatred and divisiveness, perjoratively calling skeptics of his alarmist theories “deniers” who will be remembered as “a criminal generation.”

Throughout his editorial, Gore adheres to his predictable, misleading propaganda points that by now we all know by heart. For example, he again refers to his alarmism as embodying “the overwhelming consensus,” yet even disgraced global warming alarmist Phil Jones – the central figure in the Climategate scandal – has acknowledged there is no overwhelming scientific consensus that “the debate is over.” Indeed, Jones himself, who is among the most prominent and activist scientists pushing Al Gore’s alarmism, admitted he personally does not think the debate is over, either.

After 22 years of Al Gore leading an onslaught of name-calling, labeling, and ridiculing of scientists at the world’s most prestigious institutions of research and higher learning who disagree with the career politician’s Hollywood-embellished alarmism, Gore has the audacity (or dementedness) to excuse the data-destroying activities of the Climategate figures as the result of being “besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics.” In Al Gore’s world, a skeptical scientist who notices apparent flaws in the research of a scientist/advocate and politely requests access to the raw data to verify the hypothesis (i.e., The Scientific Method) is engaging in “hostile, make-work demands.” By contrast, in Al Gore’s world career politicians are engaging in no such hostile, divisive activity when they belittle science professors and research scientists at prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and NASA as "flat earthers" believing in a "staged moon landing" simply because they see compelling scientific reasons why we are not facing the type of global warming crisis advocated by Al Gore.

If Al Gore is interested in objective, truthful scientific discussion, he should cut the shrill demonization of scientists who disagree with him and accept one of the many offers extended by the Heartland Institute and others to publicly debate the science he claims is so settled.