It is fascinating to watch a master demagogue in action. In Al Gore's movie, there's a point where he claims that there are NO scientists who disagree with his views on global warming (including causes). NONE! And he gives you the proof!
I'll give you the exact, word for word, transcript, right here, right now. You can decide what to call it: snow job, misrepresentation, spin, or outright lying. I figure, if a guy graduated from Harvard, and he's studied this subject matter for decades, as he claims, then the nonsense statements below are as close to lying as damn is to swearing. But you be the judge.
Al Gore: "There are three misconceptions in particular that bedevil our thinking.
"First, isn't there disagreement among scientists about whether the problem is real or not? Actually, not really!
"There was a massive study of every scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal written on global warming for the last ten years, and they took a big sample of ten percent--928 articles, and you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we're causing global warming [my emphasis] and that it's a serious problem--out of the 928, zero!
"The misconception that there's disagreement about the science has been deliberately created by a relatively small group of people. One of their internal memos leaked, and here's what it said according to the press:
Their objective is to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.
"This has happened before...."
And now Al Gore goes into the tobacco company propaganda of the mid 1900s. He shows a poster "More doctors smoke Camels". He quotes from 40 years ago: Doubt is our best product since it is the best means of creating controversy in the public's mind.
Anyway, the monologue above has enough material to fertilize ten tobacco farms. For now, I'll pick the one item that definitely should be included in the next edition of The Demagogue's Handbook of Bullshit Techniques.
He talks of a relatively small group of people, but who are they? Libertarians? New Yorkers? Weight-watchers? Who? He doesn't say. Not even a hint.
One of "their" memos got leaked. Oooooo, this sounds like hot stuff.
Who wrote the memo? He doesn't say.
What actually is in the memo? He doesn't say. The best we get is Al saying what a member of the press says it said.
Which member of the press? He doesn't say.
Ok, he does tell us what the member of the press (who also doesn't quote the actual memo) reports. With all the facts that Al has to pick from, here's what he chose as the most terrible, evil, ugly, words, to share with us:
Their objective is to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.
And he puts that right up there on the big screen!
Wow, doesn't that shake you right to the bones!? Somebody ("they") out there thinks that we should discuss the global warming theory, rather than accept every detail as fact. Shocking. Sounds dangerously scientific; collect data, develop hypotheses, formulate theory, discuss and test... We need to find "they" and burn them at the stake!
To actually THINK?! To challenge ideas? To discuss? WHO ARE THESE EVIL PEOPLE?! We know they aren't scientists, because Al has already told us there aren't any who disagree with him.
Watch the movie carefully and see the demagogue massage the audience with this total crap. They eat it up, and snicker on cue.
Watch him start with one (evil) concept: discussion of theory. Then he smoothly links that to the tobacco companies trying to convince people that smoking was ok, 40 years ago.
Right, discussing climate change is the same as killing people with tobacco smoke.
And this all proves that there are no scientists who disagree with Al about global warming.
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