Is Al Gore Responsible for Destroying the Planet?

Among the many depressing aspects of our current political discourse is the proudly anti-science stance adopted by one of our major political parties. When it comes to climate change, in particular, Republicans are increasingly united against the scientific consensus. What’s interesting is that this is not simply an example of a conservative/liberal split; elsewhere in the world, conservatives are not so willing to ignore the findings of scientists.

Republicans are alone among major parties in Western democracies in denying the reality of climate change, a phenomenon that even puzzles many American conservatives. Denialism is growing among the rank and file, and the phenomenon is especially strong among those with college degrees. So it doesn’t seem to be a matter of lack of information, so much as active disinformation. Republican politicians are going along willingly, as they increasingly promote anti-scientific views on the environment. After the recent elections, GOP leaders are disbanding the House Select Committee on Global Warming.

What makes American conservatives different from other right-wing parties around the world? Note that it wasn’t always this way — there was a time when Republicans wouldn’t have attacked science so openly. I have a theory: it’s Al Gore’s fault.

Actually it’s not my theory, it comes from Randy Olson. For a while now Randy has been vocally skeptical about An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s critically-acclaimed documentary about global warming. I was initially unconvinced. Surely the positive effects of informing so many people about the dangers of climate change outweigh the political damage of annoying some conservatives? But Randy’s point, which I’m coming around to, was that for all the good the movie did at spreading information about climate change, it did equal or greater harm by politicizing it.

By most measures, Al Gore has had a pretty successful career. Vice-President during an administration characterized by peace and prosperity, winner of the popular vote total during his Presidential run, co-founder of Current TV, winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Nobel Prize. But to Republicans, he’s a punchline. It’s an inevitable outcome of the current system: Al Gore was the Democratic nominee for President; therefore, he must be demonized. It’s not enough that their candidate is preferable; the other candidate must be humiliated, made into a laughingstock. (Ask John Kerry, whose service in Vietnam was somehow used as evidence of his cowardice.) The conclusion is inevitable: if Al Gore becomes attached to some cause, that cause must be fought against.

Here is some evidence. You may think of Jay Leno as a completely vanilla and inoffensive late-night talk-show host. But he’s a savvy guy, and he knows his audience. Which is mostly older, white, suburban middle-class folks. Which political party does that sound like? Between January and September of 2010, Jay Leno made more jokes about Al Gore than about Sarah Palin. You read that right. This is while Palin was promoting books, making TV specials, stumping for candidates, and basically in the news every day, while Gore was — doing what exactly?

Once Al Gore became the unofficial spokesperson for concern about climate change, it was increasingly inevitable that Republicans would deny it on principle. This isn’t the only reason, not by a long shot (there’s something in there about vested interests willing to pour money into resisting energy policies that are unfriendly to fossil fuels), but it’s a big part. Too many Republicans have reached a point where devotion to “the truth” takes a distant back seat to a devotion to “pissing off liberals.” With often nasty implications.

What the United States does about climate change will be very important to the world. And what the U.S. does will be heavily affected by what Republicans permit. And Republicans’ views on climate change are largely colored by its association with Al Gore. As much as I hate to admit it, the net real impact of An Inconvenient Truth could turn out to be very negative.

Gore himself doesn’t deserve blame here. Using one’s celebrity to bring attention to an issue of pressing concern, and running for office in order to implement good policies, are two legitimate ways a person can help try to make the world a better place. In a healthy culture of discussion, they shouldn’t necessarily interfere; if any issue qualifies as “bipartisan,” saving the planet should be it. But in our current climate, no discussion of political import can take place without first passing through the lens of partisan advantage. Too bad for us.

163 Comments

163 thoughts on “Is Al Gore Responsible for Destroying the Planet?”

  1. Matthew#146, spot on.

    Over the last 30 years the USA has been sleepwalking into a form of Fascism. Call it an oligarchy or plutocracy but however you label it, call it for what it is. Kakistocracy.

    I’m sure most of you still think Patriotism is a good thing. Me I’m just hoping there are some people in a position to weld the silo lids down tight. Just in case this President or the probably much worse next one has fidgety fingers.

    Global warming- probably a problem. Maybe even worse than the climatologists fear. Right now however there are more immediate and pressing concerns for Americans to deal with.

  2. I’m coming in very late to this discussion – just found your site via Andrew – and I’ve only read about half the comments. Pretty good all around, though some rather wildly wrong claims by the alarmists.

    To answer Bobito’s question, I’m one of those rare liberal skeptics. My politics is pretty much to the left of Obama on most issues other than climate. Long ago I once assumed the science behind the climate alarmism was solid. Once I started looking into it, I find it’s more like swiss cheese on moldly wonder bread. I guess I’d be called a skeptic because I seriously doubt the overall climate science consensus on net warming from CO2. I think the actual data and evidence indicates that CO2 greenhouse effects will be quite modest and not much more than 1C of warming for a doubling of CO2. Nor is that hazardous to the planet or to humans. In general, it’s fairly positive. There are always winners and losers whenever anything changes, but in this case I think there’s more winners than losers. Past a certain level of warming that would reverse, but I don’t see that as in the cards.

    As for the politicizing, yes, it sucks, and the exaggerations on the left and from the scientific community are truly eggregious. Science is going to have a serious reckoning from this issue in the next few decades, and the lesson will be not to make scientists into authority figures, and not to assume one knows the answer based on what is simply a partially educated hunch. But the right is also guilty of serious exagerations and misleading arguments as well. In fact, the general impression that the right in America has become anti-science is fairly accurate on a lot of issues, such as evolution. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and in this case I’m sorry to say that even the broken minds of Limbaugh, Palin, and their followers is right on this issue. I don’t revel in that. To the contrary, as a liberal I’m quite sad that so many on my side of the aisle have fallen for this very seductive narrative. We see some of them arguing here on this thread, and it’s really too bad they’ve painted themselves into a corner and can’t find a way out of it. Progressive are going to have a serious reckoning to come on this issue as well, just as the neocons have on the Iraq war. I just hope they can find a graceful exit, rather than stay in the trenches for decades as the neocons would have us do in the middle east.

  3. ConradG wrote: “Progressive are going to have a serious reckoning to come on this issue as well, just as the neocons have on the Iraq war. I just hope they can find a graceful exit, rather than stay in the trenches for decades as the neocons would have us do in the middle east.”

    I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I see valid evidence that I’m wrong to believe AGW is an impending disaster I’ll scratch it off my list of problems quicker than you can say chronosynclastic enfundibulum.

  4. I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I see valid evidence that I’m wrong to believe AGW is an impending disaster I’ll scratch it off my list of problems quicker than you can say chronosynclastic enfundibulum.

    And, therein, lies the fundamental asymmetry of this “debate.”

  5. Is it such a surprise that the republicans are denying climate change,when evolution is still such a “hot-button” topic ?

  6. Pingback: Blame Al Gore for inaction on climate change? - Verities and Vagaries

  7. Part of the problem is that most people cannot grasp the scale of the numbers, and hence that mankind is geological force. So I pulled a couple of references:

    http://bit.ly/hzeY59
    http://bit.ly/crUpsa

    If you grind through the numbers you reach this startling conclusion:

    Since the dawn of industrialization, in 1751, our accumulated to present day industrial CO2 production is equivalent to 1 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in every nation in every year since 1751, and accelerating.

    This number is statistically far and beyond the background geological CO2 production rate, and likely beyond the rapid sequestering capacity of the planet, though obviously within the millions of years sequestering time scale. I think this is on the same order of magnitude as the volcanic activity during the Permian–Triassic extinction but without the cooling aerosols and SO2, that provided a short term, and catastrophic to life, buffer against CO2 greenhouse warming.

  8. #157,

    A good calculation!

    Can you calculate for me, on the same basis, how much CO2 the tropical oceans have emitted in total since 1751? And what the ratio of that to man’s contribution is? Thanks.

  9. The calculation is for emissions that are above and beyond the background CO2 cycling. Oceanic cycling is on the order of months to years (you seem to have conveniently avoided mentioning that higher latitude oceans absorb CO2, the transfer has been confirmed through carbon isotope ratio measurements), while geological cycling is on the order of millions of years. The CO2 stores that have been released are geological stores.

    It will take a while to find both the total CO2 moles cycling, rate of cycling, and variance in cycling, which is what is need to estimate the oceanic capacity to sequester impulses.

    But we can do a quick observational reality check: it is certainly plausible that the oceanic cycling has capacity to sequester one extra Mt. Pinatubo a century over background, and probably 10, and even remotely one extra every year. But +100 extra a year for a quarter millennium? That is stretching the range of plausibility, and is far, far above the statistical background. Furthermore if the oceans were far enough out of equilibrium to rapidly sequester that CO2 impulse, they would have done so before the CO2 stores were released, and the planet would have never left the last ice age. Besides would you really want to see the oceanic acidity raised that much?

    Look, the some odd ~30000 equivalent Mt. Pinatubos that have been released would have taken around 3 million years to add the CO2 to the atmosphere, and some 3 million years to sequester through biological sedimentation. We have cut the whole thing down to a quarter of a millennium.

    If you really believe that oceans can buffer the CO2 impulse then can you explain how deep current turn over will increase, and surface temperatures will decrease, so as to dissolve more CO2?

  10. #159,

    I wasn’t trying to make any point. It’s just a comparison of magnitudes, for people who have difficulty grasping the scale of numbers.

    The absorption of CO2 by polar oceans not being mentioned isn’t out of convenience. You can do the comparison with either – I don’t mind. If I had mentioned only the scale of absorption of CO2 by the polar oceans, would that have been ‘convenient’ too?

    I presume the point is that one shouldn’t ever post scientific facts and comparisons that only tell one side of the story – that lean entirely in one direction. You are swift to correct the perceived inclination of my question with some counterbalancing observations. Would you say this is a general principle? Does it apply to all sides of the debate?

  11. Sorry, didn’t mean to bring baggage to the table.

    I’ll find a good example of a carbon isotope ratio article that was used to calibrate oceanic CO2 cycling, volumes and rates.

  12. in 150. Alan D McIntire Says:

    > In reply to Mitch. You’ve ignored my post regarding the “faint young sun” paradox (do a web search)
    > and the fact that the feedback in the past has been NEGATIVE.

    I don’t think this is much of a paradox — remember we have a twin planet Venus and likely our atmosphere initially was much like Venus’s. So when the sun was young we would expect the earths atmosphere to be about 2,500 times as much CO2. It certainly seems this greenhouse effect would be large enough to keep the earth warm enough for liquid oceans, and these liquid oceans are required for converting the CO2 into limestone.

  13. Sean, it’s not about the climate, nor even the science, but money. No matter what I believe about climate change, I’m pretty sure 99% of the money involved doesn’t get invested in anything scientifically related. With all the billions collected any number of crude technological solutions could have been already implemented to show that the global temperature is not beyond our control. But there’s more profit in just talking.

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