#90) A MOMENT IN CLIMATE HISTORY: When Al Gore tried to brush aside the entire climate skeptic movement
December 2nd, 2010
It was a gamble. Perhaps calculated, perhaps not. It was also a snub. And it failed — helping to sow the seeds of Climategate.
CLIMATE SKEPTICS: NOW YOU SEE ‘EM, NOW YOU DON’T! Gore symbolically dismissed the ENTIRE climate skeptic movement in his movie in this one scene that cited 928 climate papers affirming human-caused global warming, then said zero papers disagree with this “consensus.” It came from Naomi Oreskes Science paper. Certainly the substance of what he said was true. But the style of delivery sent a condescending, dismissive message to the already-enormous climate skeptic movement that “you don’t even deserve to be recognized.” Which might have been fine had they been a trivial group of crackpots. But they weren’t, as they forcefully showed with Climategate. And thus it failed as a tactic.