Feature Article

Al Gore Is a Greenhouse Gasbag

By John Marchese

Page 2 of 7

Gieg is situated at a lectern in the pit of an amphitheater classroom. As the seats fill, he fiddles with his Mac laptop, where he has stored a PowerPoint presentation that covers today's lecture. Before that, though, he runs a short clip from a Simpsons episode in which Bart and Lisa argue over whether water drains in different directions in the Southern and Northern hemispheres. Though Gieg has long been known as an entertaining lecturer, he's not The Simpsons. The students laugh out loud at the clip, as does their professor. When the lights come back on, the professor assures them: "Bart will probably not be on the final."

The class is a typical-seeming group, heavy on girls, some of whom wear ripped jeans and do-rags, others of whom are carefully made up and snappily dressed, pulling their notebooks from designer bags. Midway through the class, Gieg says, "Now it's time for us to talk about the number one political/environmental issue of our time." He reads a snippet from a New York Times editorial about the Supreme Court global-warming case.

"What I'm going to try to do the rest of today and also probably on Tuesday is bring you up to date on this. I'll try to avoid editorializing or politicking. I'll just tell you some stuff. Give you information. There's lot's of stuff, and it's very complicated."

Gieg gazes upward toward his young charges. "Every single one of you knows more about this than Al Gore," he tells the undergrads. "And vastly more than anyone in this present administration."


YOU REMEMBER AL GORE. Congressman, then senator from a political dynasty in Tennessee. Vice president for the eight years of the Clinton administration. President-elect of the United States for about 10 minutes, before being waylaid by the dangling chad. Since his bitter, disputed loss to George W. Bush, Gore has gone through some changes. He tried sporting a beard, reinvented himself as a media entrepreneur, hosted Saturday Night Live, gained a lot of weight. Then, last May, he burst back into the public eye as the star of a surprisingly successful documentary on global warming called An Inconvenient Truth. In a way that sometimes happens in America, Al Gore has come to personify an issue that until recently, most of us didn't know we needed to know or care about. Oprah calls him "our Noah." But if she's going to get all ancient on us, Cassandra might be the better comparison.

Gore's film has become the third highest grossing documentary ever, way behind Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 but closing in on number two, the equally surprising March of the Penguins. An Inconvenient Truth is basically the video of a PowerPoint presentation that Gore had been giving for years, jazzed up with animation and film clips, but weighted by some treacly autobiographical segments that seem to have been left over from an Al Gore for President campaign film.

The new Al Gore, visibly more relaxed and likable than during his last campaign, basically says this:

 

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One comment, one correction
Posted by | Oct. 24, 2007 at 5:16 PM
COMMENT:
Correction- Michael Crichton's book is skeptical of global warming, not for it. I met a man two years ago who has taught climatology at University of Virgina and now North Carolina. He is not connected with big oil or big anything. He says that there is absolutely no evidence of man's contribution to global warming. He says just follow the money to those making millions off this hoax. Good reporting. I would like to see an article detailing the incorrectness of each of Gore's points in The Inconvenient Truth for argumentative purposes with my left leaning sister and aunt.
Nonsense
Posted by | Oct. 29, 2007 at 9:50 AM
COMMENT:
No scientist is making millions from Global Warming - follow the real money to the coal and oil companies. They ought to be paying a carbon tax for their pollution instead of funding skeptics. I'm no fan of Gore but the science in his film is accurate according to dozens of climate experts I've talked to.
"accurate science" endorsed by "dozens of climate experts"
Posted by | Nov. 2, 2007 at 10:17 AM
COMMENT:
I would like to see the names of twenty-four (two dozen) people who say they are climate experts and who also say that the "science" in An Inconvenient Truth is "accurate" without qualification. The "science" in that film consists ENTIRELY of two uncontested facts: (1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and (2) CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and global temperatures have fluctuated essentially in lockstep for at least the last 500,000 years. Ergo the changing CO2 concentrations cause the global temperature fluctuations. It is a simple application of the well-known logical truth, "post hoc, ergo propter hoc."
Global Warming
Posted by | Nov. 8, 2007 at 11:54 PM
COMMENT:
Al Gore's film "An Inconvienient Truth" shows an enormous graph which statistically clearly shows temperature increasing first and then this is followed later by an increase in the concentration of C02 in the atmosphere. This proves that Al Gore is a fool and that an increase in C02 does not lead to any significant global warming. C02 at only 380 parts per million is much to small to cause any significant global warming.
air and climate
Posted by | Jan. 8, 2008 at 1:36 PM
COMMENT:
i am doing a project on air and climate polution and i need to interveiw someone i was wondering if i could get anyone to give me their input on global warming air pollution and green house gases if anyone could get back to me at ggsteiger@aol.com
have any of you read the IPCC reports?
Posted by | Feb. 4, 2008 at 10:55 AM
COMMENT:
first of all, "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" is a logical *fallacy* not a logical truth. second of all, al gore is someone who is just bringing about awareness. he's not a scientist nor claims to be leading the research in climate change, so arguing against him is like shooting the messenger. if you're going to follow the lazy, money motivated psuedo-science of big oil cronies at least address the real challenges to it.
Okay
Posted by | Feb. 26, 2008 at 6:07 PM
COMMENT:
yeah, burn!
kqiapcndms
Posted by | Mar. 22, 2008 at 12:31 PM
COMMENT:
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