« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

Pt II: Is Gore’s Accusation of Skeptic Climate Scientists Still a Hoax?

Al Gore is on some kind of roll lately. First, he latched onto the population control thing, and today he has a multi-thousand word article online at Rolling Stone, taking his usual swipe at skeptic scientists for being corrupted by fossil fuel industry money.

In my RedState article just a short while ago, “Forget the Science; Is Al Gore’s Accusation of Skeptic Climate Scientists a Hoax?“, I described how the accusation is based on a memo no one was allowed to see, using an out-of-context sentence, promoted by a person who was not a Pulitzer winner despite accolades to the contrary, who was credited with finding the memo by Al Gore, who had the memo collection in his own possession four years earlier. Considering the way he and many others have praised that so-called “Pulitzer winner”, Ross Gelbspan, the revelation of those memos at his Senate office in 1991 certainly does pose a problem.

In a quick skim though Gore’s article today, I’m struck by one brand-new oddity. On its first page, he says about deniers’ efforts,

Part of the script for this show was leaked to The New York Times as early as 1991. In an internal document, a consortium of the largest global-warming polluters spelled out their principal strategy: “Reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.”

In all the searching I’ve done for the “reposition global warming” phrase, I’ve only found a couple other references to people who cite Matt Wald’s 1991 NY Times article. One was a book co-author who cited the phrase in his 1994 book, a year prior to Gelbspan’s first public mention of it. That particular individual seems also to be inconveniently tied to the IPCC, as I detailed in my American Thinker article, “There is a Cancer Growing on the IPCC and Al Gore“. The other is the lawyer in the Kivalina v Exxon global warming nuisance lawsuit, seen in my November 2010 article at Breitbart’s BigGovernment site. I noted how the lawyer seems to have far too many ties to Gelbspan.

Since it is quite rare to see anyone referring to the ’91 NY Times article, I found it strange for a former Greenpeace researcher to link to it just last month when mentioning the original source for the “reposition global warming” phrase, the Information Council on the Environment (ICE). Gelbspan was associated with the enviro-activist group Ozone Action, which first bragged of ‘obtaining’ the memos in early 1996. It later merged with Greenpeace USA in 2000, and its founder became Greenpeace USA’s new executive director. Kalee Kreider, currently Al Gore’s spokesperson, was a recent transfer to Greenpeace from Ozone Action when she offered high praise of Gelbspan’s work in a 1997 Greenpeace press release. The current Greenpeace USA director, himself a former Ozone Action worker, praised Gelbspan in 2009 for “uncover[ing] the scandalous cover up of global warming by polluting companies“.

Suddenly Gore now links to that old NY Times article in a way that will be widely seen and reproduced. What’s going on here?

Meanwhile, another bit at the end of Gore’s long article isn’t surprising at all.

…contact your local newspapers and television stations when they put out claptrap on climate — and let them know you’re fed up with their stubborn and cowardly resistance to reporting the facts of this issue. One of the main reasons they are so wimpy and irresponsible about global warming is that they’re frightened of the reaction they get from the deniers when they report the science objectively.

Yawn. ‘Blame the media for cowardly resistance, a.k.a. allowing too much equal weight to be given to skeptic scientists who dilute public concern to the point of fatal inactivity’. I showed the enormous problems with that narrative in two different articles, “Will MSM Look into the Global Warming Abyss and Find Their Character?” and ” ‘Media Too Fair to Climate Skeptics’, say reporters who’ve been unfair to skeptics“. Speaking for myself, it’s difficult to count the number of times I sent letters to my local newspaper questioning their Gore-style global warming reports, with only one of the whole bunch ever getting published. That paper has no fear of ‘deniers’, a virtual trash can has long been the final resting place for such emails.

This is a historic time we’re in right now. The entire global warming ideology is falling apart in front of our eyes, with Al Gore gladly guiding it toward complete ruin. Years from now, people will be able to point out which of these current events is the one where global warming went into the irreversible slide toward its total collapse.

Russell Cook’s collection of writings on this issue can be seen at “The ’96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists” or at this backup link  Follow him at Twitter via @questionAGW

Get Alerts

COMMENTS

  • mmulcahy

    It’s interesting how you purposely don’t link to the article. Here it is for those wanting to read it for themselves;

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:D25yL9IdRy8J:www.nytimes.com/1991/07/08/business/pro-coal-ad-campaign-disputes-warming-idea.html+Matt+Wald%E2%80%99s+1991+NY+Times+article&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

    Also, what exactly is it that you can prove wrong about the massive scientific data which 98% of climate scientists say is irrefutable? Is it the satellite photos taken the same time every summer for the past 30 yrs that show the Arctic cap has lost over 35% of its area?

    Or that sea levels are rising several millimeters annually? You may find it interesting that the acidity level in the earths’ oceans is 30% greater than it was 30 yrs ago.

    Maybe it’s the trend of rising temperatures worldwide? And yes, since the hottest year on record, 2005, temperatures have cooled, but that is always where right-wingers leave it. They purposely omit the rest of the story, which shows that since 1880, thirteen of the hottest yrs on the planet are in the top 15, including all of the top ten and last year which tied 2005 for first place. If you don’t see that as a trend, then what is it and why is this info always left out of your argument?

    Think about what you are saying when you talk conspiracy. You are trying to sell the preposterous notion that THOUSANDS of scientists around the world, including NASA and every credible science academy on the planet, have somehow come together, for over 30 yrs, to intentionally create the biggest scam in history, despite all physical evidence to the contrary. The odds of pulling that off even if they wanted to, boggles the mind.

    Over decades of trying to cast doubt about global warming, opponents have yet to provide any credible evidence which can prove their ridiculous claims, So I ask you to do just that; prove your argument, with facts, not talking.points.

  • rightwingmom52

    .

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Take your pseudoscience elsewhere.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    98% of climate scientists? Not even the most ardent AGW honks are making that assertion anymore, Get with the program. Unlike the rest of the gullible public, You will find people on this site who know the facts and have been debating this for years.

    The longer time goes on the more that I am convinced that AGW was nothing more than an orchestrated scare hoax from the very beginning.

  • http://climategatecountryclub.com/profiles/blogs/the-96topresent-smear-of russellc

    One thing that fascinates me about AGW believers is their constantly revealed inability to research what they criticize in any depth. Commenter “mmulcahy” proves this using his own words, since I have linked directly to that ’91 NY Times article in my prior RedState piece, along with my numerous other articles and blogs elsewhere. Had “mmulcahy” taken a mere few extra seconds of his time to click on the second link of my article here, he would have seen that.

    That specific article is one of the main points of evidence I use to cast serious doubt about Al Gore’s role in the 15+ year unsupported corruption accusation against skeptic scientists. How embarrassing for “mmulcahy”.

    And of course, careful reading of this and my other articles reveals that I don’t seek to prove anything about the underlying science, I simply ask why the mainstream media does not see the contradictions between the IPCC science assessments and very well detailed skeptic scientist assessments. Those do exist, it isn’t hard to find them. Try searching for the words “NIPCC 2009 Report”, for example.

    “mmulcahy” bizarrely implies that my work is a collection of talking points. From whom? Rush Limbaugh? Pul-lease, it becomes abundantly obvious that my research is solely my own about the accusation against skeptic scientists, supported by dozens of web site urls in my various writings, all of which point to something with myriad red flags concerning the accusers and their narrative sources. Notice how “mmulcahy” is unable to explain away a single one of the problems I mention.

    More bizarre is how “mmulcahy” cries ‘conspiracy’, when AGW believers charge conspiracy about skeptic scientists fabricating false evidence under industry guidance. Two words: prove it. Not by pointing to some book or PowerPoint presentation or article, provide the exact evidence showing an exchange of fossil fuel money resulted in specific fabricated false climate assessments.

    Fail to do so and your entire argument goes ‘poof’, leaving you with no fallback position to say legitimate widespread opposition to IPCC assessments does not exist.

  • mmulcahy

    I am quoting NASA’s satellite photos and research done by thousands of scientists over many decades. But I guess that went over your head (big surprise). This is the problem I am talking about. The only thing you want to do is say some kind of smurky comment about the NYT while totally ignoring the physical evidence mentioned above plus record droughts around the world. Your puppet master, Fox, has trained you well.

    Where is the EXACT evidence that global warming is not happening? Let’s see it. Please offer something more than your NYT opinion which makes you continue to believe that climate change is a hoax. If you really care about this planet, get off your lazy butt and do some research which does not involve only listening to rush and billo.

  • Bill S

    Oh, and… good riddance (thanks, Neil).