Two Decades Of Inconvenient Inaccuracies

As most know by now, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” global warming propaganda film turned 20 a few days ago. It won a couple of Oscars in 2007, one for best documentary. The latter should be returned. The movie was filled with errors.

Exalting the celluloid screed with an Academy Award for best documentary is the equivalent of handing the Nobel Peace Prize to a terrorist, an incompetent, a fraud, an unaccomplished charlatan, and, yes, Gore himself, because it was far more a faux-umentary than an honest account of the facts.

In the same year that Gore was given his participation trophy, a British judge ruled that there were so many errors in the movie that it couldn’t be shown in schools unless it was supplemented by warnings pointing out its errors. Those inaccuracies included:

• The claim the sea level would rise by 20 feet
• Another that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro was directly caused by global warming
• A further bogus assertion that polar bears were drowning due to global warming

After the judge’s decision, the British government required teachers to tell students that “in parts of the film, Gore presents evidence and arguments which do not accord with mainstream scientific opinion.”

The guidance distributed to teachers “points out, on a scene by scene basis, the areas where further input will be required from teaching staff.” It was “designed to help teaching staff encourage their pupils to assess the validity and credibility of different information sources and explore different points of view so as to form their own opinions.”

Gore, now so irrelevant that he has been “reduced to heckling speakers” at the World Economic Forum bash in Davos, was also wrong about increased hurricane activity, melting glaciers, rainfall and snow. The uncertainties and nuance of climate science were merely inconveniences to be avoided.

Forgetting the first rule of holes, Gore was wrong again in 2017, following up with “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” a box office flop. It, too, was misleading, inconsistent with even the United Nations’ forecasts. It bombed in part because Gore was “past his expiration date when it comes to climate.”

“Both ‘Inconvenient Truth’ movies have a lawyer’s bias, a one-sided approach with a goal of making people see the proponent’s way instead of the scientists’ ‘question everything’ approach to learning the truth about how our universe works,” says Ric Werme, a contributor to Anthony Watts’ widely followed climate science site, who attended a special screening of the second film.

Don’t expect the media, which celebrated the movie as if it were an impartial and honorable enterprise in truth-telling, to admit that it was riddled with lies and exaggerations. For them, it was just another opportunity to get behind progressive policies that lay the foundation for socialism, agitate for international climate pacts designed to choke prosperity in the West and replace cheap, reliable energy sources with unreliable and costly renewables.

If legacy journalism were anything but a narrative servant for the left, the media would lead a charge to force Gore to return the Oscar. They won’t because in their world the truth is whatever they want it to be.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board