No of course that’s not true. How does that even sound right to him? Is he really that contemptuous of people who disagree with him, that he thinks headlines about the “worst scientific scandal of our generation” are based on a few emails from 1999? Should the dissonance have engendered at least enough self-doubt to go and actually read the emails? And if he doesn’t the have time – being a celebrity is hard – shouldn’t he at least have enough self-awareness to avoid making easily disproven factual claims?
Apparently not. From the Slate interview they’ve got plastered all over their frontpage:
Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?
[Gore]: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus. But the noise machine built by the climate deniers often seizes on what they can blow out of proportion, so they’ve thought this is a bigger deal than it is.
It’s awful bold of him to deride skeptics for having a “noise machine” when the CRU emailers bragged about the “publicity machine” they use to “shout messages.” It almost has the feel of rank hypocrisy. Not that actual details seem to matter much. Later in the interview, in response to a question about “fair and open debate,” he echoed the scientific conensus talking point. That’s an tactic argument scholars might refer to as “begging the question.” The rest of us would probably call it “being a condescending prick.”
But let’s ignore all that, because argumentative tactics and rhetorical tropes are hard to unpack. Much easier: point out flat out untruths. The emails obviously don’t stop in 1999. They actually go right up to Nov. 12 of this year. The last one is from Peter Thorne, a British government official who wanted advice from Phil Jones about how to push climate legislation. Nov. 6 emails with Tom Wigley dealt with discrepancies in proxy data that needed to be smoothed out. Oct 28 emails with Graham Haughton had Jones berated Haughton for a colleague who publishes climate skeptics in her journal.
Now there are a number of issues in Climategate. There’s the manipulation of the public sphere, where taxpayer funds – which these scientists seem to think are theirs by right – were used to study and target citizens. There’s the specter of flat out bad data hidden by artificial adjustments, something that seems increasingly likely. There’s the anti-scientific bullying of colleagues and politicization of peer review. And these emails deal with all of them. And they’re from the last few weeks.
Can Gore really be so cacooned – and therefore take Climategate so lightly – that he thinks he’s right? It would mean that in addition to ignoring the emails he’s also avoided media coverage, since many of the scandalous emails reference recent controversies. Is it really as simple as “he heard from someone that the emails were 10 years old and that was that,” which in his mind justifies wholly dismissing an international scandal?
Certainly his allies in the scientific community are so tone-deaf that they’re still bullying reporters for not hewing closely enough to the party line. But Gore is supposed to be the High Priest of the reality-based community, no? When he’s not advocating lawbreaking of course.
References:
* Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation [Telegraph]
* "What in the Hell Do They Think Is Causing It?" [Slate]
* Leaked Global Warming Docs: “Publicity Machine” Used To Manipulate Journalists And Intimidate Scientists [MR]
* Morning Joe Guest: ClimateGate Scientists Being ‘Swiftboated’ [Newsbusters]
* The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero [Watts Up With That]
* Climate Scientist to Revkin: "we can no longer trust you" to carry water for us.
* Civil unrest has a role in stopping climate change, says Gore [Guardian]
Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Academia
* Democratic Politics
* Economy
