Gore getting gored by conservatives on global warming

Stan Beer
Monday, 26 March 2007 12:31

Science - Climate

It's a pity that the climate change issue has descended to the level of politicisation. However, should we expect otherwise when the most vocal proponent of the human induced global warming argument is a political figure who has ascended to the level of pop star status among his adoring legion of fans?

Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" was certainly an entertaining movie. It was well constructed; it featured plenty of footage of the genteel, likeable, pleasant looking Gore; and, above all, it painted a scenario of doom and destruction for our planet if humankind doesn't mend its wicked ways. This was real nail biting stuff - a must see for all high school students and their parents.

Scientific accuracy, however, that's another question. Don't get me wrong. Much, if not most, of the data presented in Gore's movie has already been presented in open scientific forums. Many climatologists agree that global warming is mostly human induced although some don't. It's really a question of degree of severity.

In order to get his message across, Gore needed to be entertaining. Thus, like all good politicians with a sense of the dramatic, he painted the doomsday scenario of sea levels rising 20 feet, even though 20 inches over the next century is the outside estimate of climatologists and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

One got the sense throughout the movie that Gore was preparing himself for another run at the US Presidency. There was the imagery of his "unjust" defeat by Dubya and his now claimed single cause agenda - a crusade to save the planet. Of course, the feeling among Gore's gang is that now more than ever the world needs this man to become the next US President.

For conservatives, all of this was like waving a blood soaked rag in front of a crazed bull. The New York Post, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard and other well known conservative media titles have all laid into Gore in a massive feeding frenzy. They have pulled apart "An Inconvenient Truth", laid bare what they consider to be Gore's hypocrisy and, in short, have once again started to treat him like a liberal politician.

The pity is that because Gore is a political figure, despite his protestations to the contrary, human induced climate change and global warming are being treated as political issues by both sides of the political spectrum. Thus, any hope of rational debate, devoid of "I'm right and you're wrong" has been lost.

An even bigger pity is that Gore himself could have avoided the politics and still made his Academy Award winning movie. All he needed to do was focus a little more on the solutions and little less on the doomsday hype.

People from both sides of the political balance beam want to put an end to the oil industry and a lessening of polluting agents. Most of us, unless we happen to be sociopaths, want renewable clean energy, cleaner cities, free flowing rivers, seas teeming with fish, clean air and an abundance of flora and fauna.

While we all want these things, too few voices, including Gore, are presenting cogent arguments suggesting how we can achieve them.