An Inconvenient Truth About Al Gore
By Thomas Lindaman (04/27/06)
The summer movie season starts around Memorial Day, and movie companies are striving to turn around their box office woes of last year by putting out what they feel to be high quality films like “Mission: Impossible III,” “X-Men 3,” and “Debbie Does Everyone and Everything In Sight 26.” (But let me tell you, you almost have to see “Debbie Does Everyone and Everything in Sight 25” to get the full impact of the sequel.)
Among the films vying for your ticket dollar is “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary by Al Gore addressing, surprise surprise, global warming. It hasn’t even come out of the film festival circuit yet, but already it’s getting Oscar buzz. It’s being promoted as a “passionate and inspirational look at one man’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress.”
Wow. Never thought I’d see the word “passionate” used in any context involving Al Gore.
As you might have guessed, I’m more than a little leery of Gore’s film. The main reason is because I don’t want to pay $8 to fall asleep 10 minutes into it. But the other reason is because Gore’s ridden the global warming pony so much he thinks he’s King Arthur when he’s closer to Don Quixote.
If you think I’m being overly mean to the former Vice President, I admit that I may be. But I have a good reason: I read Earth In the Balance cover to cover. It was an interesting book, not because of the scholarship Gore brought to the table, but because of what Gore resorted to in order to make the connection between man and global warming. As with many so-called environmentalists these days, Gore relied on fear and shame to make his point. This may work if you’re Catholic or Jewish, but the rest of us need a little more before we join the crusade.
This will surely get some environmentally-minded people reading this up in arms. How dare I question the intelligence and research skills of a man who has been at the forefront of the global warming crusade for so long? Easy. I paid attention in science class. With little more than a high school science education to my name, I managed to poke holes in the Gore façade. (Fortunately, I did so without poking holes in the ozone layer. See? I’m an environmentalist, too!)
Gore seems to be doing the same sort of eco-hustle in “An Inconvenient Truth.” One of the trailers I saw mentioned that scientists reported that the hottest years on record all happened in the 90s. And as much as it’s supposed to scare us into action (namely, rushing out to watch Gore’s film), it has to be balanced out by a media report in April where two British scientists say the planet has been cooling since 1998. Hmmm…if the British scientists are right, that means the earth is in a cooling trend, which pretty much makes “An Inconvenient Truth” null and void like the arguments that Gore actually won the 2000 Presidential election.
Gore has been on record saying scientists are almost unanimous in their support of the notion that humans are responsible for global warming. Not so fast, kids. Let’s not forget Gore was called on the carpet by several scientists he cited as agreeing with him when he presented a speech at the Kyoto Summit in the 90s. Seems Gore didn’t quite tell the whole truth because the scientists who came out actually said they were unsure if man was causing global warming. As you can see, Gore only gives part of the facts and lets the rest fall away.
I have no doubts as to Gore’s passion on global warming. Anybody who has spent as much time marching to that drumbeat in spite of the contradictory facts has to be a true believer. What I doubt is Gore’s truthfulness. There are too many missing factors, told half-truths, and fearmongering comments on his part to think “An Inconvenient Truth” is anywhere near truthful. For all we know, the warmer temperatures we’ve experience are due to increased solar activity, something scientists haven’t discounted, but Gore seems to have.
But I can’t say I dislike everything about Al Gore’s movie. The title is pretty good and ironically appropriate, considering an inconvenient truth about Al Gore is that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to global warming.
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