Does anyone get it, that even Al Gore were right about global warming, he hurt his cause by lying?

Question

Does anyone see that when you puff up your case, you lose credibility? Does anyone understand that that's a character flaw? That's what Al Gore did in An Inconvenient Truth, whether he's accurate about global warming, or not.

Personally, I think he's wrong, so have at me, environmentalists.

Answer 1

Unfortunately the people who run the popular media seem to have gotten the idea that the best way to attract readers and viewers is to exaggerate facts or make up facts to create a startling story.

Al Gore's movie is part of the popular media and suffers from many of the defects of the popular media.

Unfortunately many people who see this get the idea that they are being lied to and they are right.

I suspect that is one of the major reasons that we have so many skeptics and "deniers" when it comes to the issue of Global Warming.

Although there is very good science, for example in the IPCC reports which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore, the peer reviewed scientific reports, including the IPCC reports are generally only available at University libraries.

The general public does not have access to the scientific reports.

In most cases members of the general public only see what is in the popular media on this issue.

Unfortunately most of the reports in the popular media contain exaggerated and fabricated material.

The result is that we have a large portion of the population that thinks they are being lied to with respect to the issue of Global Warming.

Since there are so many false stories in the popular media members of the general public do not know what to believe even when they are presented with factual peer reviewed scientific material that is accurate.

The true believers may love the exagerration and the hype, but people who must be persuaded by solid factual material become very skeptical and they become much harder to convince when they see so much material that is clearly exagerrated or has no factual basis at all.

If more members of the general public are going to be persuaded that Global Warming is a real probelm, we first must make certain that the popular media does a better job of presenting accurate, factual material and not the exaggerated and fabricated material that has dominated the content in the popular media in the past.

Answer 2

Public opinion is a strange thing, I do not think anyone expected Gore's movie to be 100% point on about the science and possible current events associated with global warming, but when Gore received the Nobel peace prize that will probably significantly back fire on his cause. The vast majority of the public are incapable of comprehending the science behind the global warming theory, so they will be more easily swayed by an emotional response than scientific evidence. A lot of people probably felt some sympathy for the amount of critcism about the movie, but now with the peace prize being awarded, much of that sympathy will turn to resentment and suspicion.

Answer 3

Paul Krugman has already "had at you" in today's New York Times:

"now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job — to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for — the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

... dealing with climate change not only requires new taxes or their equivalent; it also requires international negotiations in which the United States will have to give as well as get.

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial — but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t be solved with tax cuts or bombs — well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?hp

Answer 4

because of the fact he's not a scientist. He extra mutually a team of suggestions and made a record out of it, kinda like I used to do in grade college. My cousin basically have been given her masters in psychology; she did no longer circulate out and expiriment on human beings while you evaluate that doesn't be ethical, yet she did circulate by 1000's of pages of learn individuals did and write a paper on it after 8 or so years of faculty. you're complicated green residing house gasses and warming. Water vapor could be an quite effective green residing house gas, yet once you could't tutor there is greater interior the ambience now than there became into a hundred years in the past, then it potential no longer something. If we did no longer have green residing house gasses, the temperature on the sunny area could be around 4 hundred ranges, and on the darkish area it could be -2 hundred. i does not have faith a component that the economists say- After applying the rustic into the hollow, why do you think of they have any credibility?

Answer 5

Gore's credibility is pretty good right now. Is everything he said 100% accurrate? No. Did he lie? Not likely, although there are exagerations. Is he wrong? No, not overall.

Just so you know, there's little serious debate anymore about whether human-caused climate change does exist. We're past that, and trying to key in on who contributes what and what effects can be reversed, what technologies need to be modified, etc.

Gore has been on this for quite the while. If it helps you to accept the issue by leaving him out of the equation, do so. Gore has become a lightning rod for the issue because he came out early and hard. Kudos to the man for not disappearing quietly into the night. I for one am glad he embraced the cause, and I suspect history will judge him well on this.

Answer 6

Thank you for that enlightening statement. I'm sorry that you only zeroed in on Al Gore. He has been a wonderful spokesman for global warming. In order to get the public attention it takes someone in the public eye to take a stand. I admire Mr. Gore for doing that.
Everything we do impacts the environment, whether you believe it or not.
Let's see, no trees or plants = no oxygen (you know the stuff you breath)
Pollution of lakes, rivers, oceans, etc. = no drinkable water,(you know the stuff you must have to live)
All the contaminants going into the atmosphere damage the ozone layer that protects the earth. Without the buffer around the earth we burn up.
So whether you believe in global warming or not, it does exist and no you probably won't suffer for it, but future generations will.(if there is a future generation)
We are guardians of our planet and as such we should be trying to protect it and all of its inhabitants.

Answer 7

Im not an Al Gore Basher but he is after all only another Politician, i would much prefer to hear what the scientists themselves have to say as they are the full time professionals, who study this fulltime.I as a complete amateur have learnt much by keeping my mind open, as you will find that peoples opinions will change over the next few decades just as surely as the changng climate will force them to change their minds.

Answer 8

Al Gore makes around 1000 claims in the documentary. You claim that 2 of his claims are not 100 percent accurate. I think that your admission that 998 of his claims are 100 percent accurate kind of proves all you Republicans are full of it.

Thank you for admitting that you guys were incorrect and wrong. It takes a big man to admit his mistakes. I hope that this is a sign of things to come. Should we look forward to a few more moments of honesty from the right wing? Or was this a one time thing?

Answer 9

A documentary is meant to be objective and balanced. 'An Inconvenient Truth' was neither and pushed the man-made global warming angle relentlessly.
Unfortunately, it is littered with factual errors and dodgy projections far in excess of even the IPCC worst case estimates.
The major errors are that C02 drives temperature and that our world has never been hotter. Add to that the patently false claim that the amount of ice mass of Antarctica is diminishing.
There's far more and people have made very strong cases against the 'documentary'.
Lets call it for what it is. A propaganda piece designed to appeal to credulous dupes who will believe whatever they're spoon fed without a critical thought in their mind.
But hey, it worked. He's never been more beloved or wealthier. And a Nobel prize to boot! He must be pinching himself every morning. He probably can't believe people actually fell for it.

P.S I just had to chuckle at Trevor's invented statistics. 9 errors and it now has an 'accuracy rating' of 98%?
Does Gore come out and correct his errors?
Do you realize how many claims the movie would have needed to make to make that statistic even remotely true?
Especially since those disputed points basically covered the entire gist of the movie.
Observe everyone. What cheap tactics the global warming alarmists will take to push their case.

Also, give me what Samantha Stickers is smoking. I want.

Answer 10

One of the big mistakes that Al Gore made was to take lots of scientific facts, jumble them together, seemingly get confused and to focus more on the extremes rather than the probables.

Perhaps his biggest mistake was to not run the script by the experts before producing his documentary. Had he done so they would have been able to point out the errors he had made and to make suggestions about moderating some of his claims. I think any expert watching hios movie has cringed at some of the things he said.

That said, the movie is by and large accurate and founded on solid, credible scientific fact.

The movie was 'on trial' so to speak, the other day when a High Court Judge in the UK presided over a case in which the defendant was seeking to have the movie banned from being shown in schools. The Judge refused to ban the movie and pointed out that it was essentially accurate, he did accept that 9 of the hundreds of points raised in the movie were inaccurate or suspect. After being but on trial the movie has passed with an accuracy rate of 98%.

But, as I've always said, if someone wants the facts about global warming they should ignore the movies, the media, Al Gore and other 'celebrities', websites etc and instead concentrate on the first-hand science - get the facts before they've been diluted, distorted etc.