Revisiting Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ 15 Years Later

CCD Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpted chapter from Vítezslav Kremlik’s new book, A Guide to the Climate Apocalypse: Our Journey from the Age of Prosperity to the Era of Environmental Grief.

Al Gore was vice president of the United States under President Bill Clinton (1993–2001). For his election campaign in 1992, he wrote the book Earth in the Balance.[i]

His famous quote comes from the same year: “Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled.”

When he lost the presidential election against George Walker Bush in 2001, he returned to writing. His documentary An Inconvenient Truth about climate change was awarded the 2007 Oscar for Best Documentary.

In the same year, the author received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to raising public awareness of environmental threats.

In 2007, the Czech Minister of the Environment, Martin Bursík, decided to subsidize the Czech edition of the book. He told the media:

“We want to provide teachers with quality materials for lectures on applied ecology… We will subsidize the publication of the book An Inconvenient Truth, in which Al Gore explains very well the impacts of climate change. We are also preparing a DVD film version for schools.”

But there were objections to the plan. Czech journalist Ivan Brezina, in the article Self-Defense Against a Climatic Liar,[ii] described the book as political propaganda that does not belong in schools.

“And if Gore’s book can go to schools, why not the neo-fascist literature on Holocaust denial, the creationist propaganda of militant Catholics, or, let’s say, the teachings about Lizard People from Space?”

The British government also wanted to get Gore’s book into schools as a teaching aid. However, one of the parents, Stewart Dimmock, a truck driver, sued the government, demanding a court ban on showing the film to children.

Dimmock’s lawyer said: “Lots of parents have written to him supporting his application. They do not want our children brainwashed in this way by the New Labor Thought Police.”

In the end, the British High Court did not prohibit film screening in schools because we have freedom of speech. However, he ordered that students be warned in advance that the film contains nine falsehoods.

Since then, whenever a school wants to show An Inconvenient Truth to kids, they must first explain to the students that the film itself is not quite true. These are the nine inconvenient truths:

1. Greenland: Gore’s claim that Greenland will melt and cause a sea-level rise of seven meters “in the near future” is nonsense. The oceans have been rising at the rate of three millimeters a year for the last 150 years. An increase of seven meters would take thousands of years.
2. Pacific Islands: The case where islanders were evacuated because of rising sea levels (caused by warming) was made up by Gore. Coral islands are growing despite rising sea levels, as evidenced by satellite imagery. Corals are living organisms, and so, they can grow and adapt.
3. Gulf Stream: Scientists don’t expect the Gulf Stream to shut down in the foreseeable future due to warming. Its speed fluctuations are natural. They are not a sign that it is going to shut down. The main driver of the Gulf Stream is the rotation of the Earth around its axis, and it certainly will not stop.
4. CO2 controls temperatures: In fact, it’s the opposite of what Gore said. In the ice ages and interglacial periods, which the author speaks about in the film, the temperatures first changed, and only then did the CO2 levels rose, not the other way round. This is evidenced by glacier boreholes such as Vostok.
5. Kilimanjaro: The loss of ice in Kilimanjaro is not attributable to warming but to other local factors such as landscape changes. Gore should have chosen a different example for melting glaciers.
6. Lake Chad: The drying up of Lake Chad cannot be blamed on global warming. It is due to population growth, agriculture, and land-use change. People pump too much water from the lake.
7. Hurricane Katrina: This hurricane cannot be blamed on global warming. There have always been hurricanes. Far more powerful than Katrina was the hurricane in Miami before World War II when CO2 levels were low. Normalized “insured damage” caused by hurricanes has not increased in over a hundred years, as Roger Pielke states in a 2008 study.[iii]
8. Drowning Polar Bears: There is actually one case where bears drowned. But they did not die because of the melting ice. They drowned in a storm. Charles Monnet wrote about it. Polar bear populations have not been decreasing over the last 20 years, and their hunting is, therefore, permitted.
9. Coral Bleaching: Other factors, such as water pollution, may be the cause of dying corals. Millions of years ago, corals survived even many times higher CO2 concentrations than that of today. On the other hand, higher water temperatures help marine organisms with the calcification of their shells.[iv]

Al Gore responded to the criticism quite awkwardly: “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”[v]

But when they repeatedly catch you exaggerating, they will just stop trusting you.

Brezina`s comments on the whole case: “Let me be frank: I do not call for a ban on An Inconvenient Truth in Czech schools. On the contrary: given the huge global impact of Gore’s book, children should know it as well as Hitler’s Mein Kampf or Marx’s Capital… A detailed analysis, including an analysis of all manipulations, lies, and subliminal manipulative practices, can become an important part of critical thinking education.”

Ironically, at the same time, the court decided that the film was untrue, Mr. Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (2007) together with the IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. Strangely, the UN Climate Panel did not consider it inappropriate to accept a prize alongside a convicted manipulator.

Sadly, it has a tragic subtext too. Originally, this Nobel Peace Prize was to be given to Irena Sendler, a Catholic nurse who saved 2,500 Jewish children in World War II. She helped smuggle them out of the ghetto. Gestapo finally caught her.

She was tortured and was lucky to escape execution. She was hiding fake documents until the end of the war. According to the Nobel Committee, Gore’s PowerPoint presentation full of misinformation is somehow more worthy than someone who risked her life.

Gore preaches that mankind should live more modestly and lower its carbon footprint. Do as I say, not as I do. According to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research in 2006, his 20-room villa with a swimming pool consumed 221,000-kilowatt hours of electricity, roughly 20 times the US average.[vi]

This is actually true about most environmentally aware progressives. A 2017 scientific study called Good Intents, but Low Impacts documented that “individuals with high pro-environmental self-identity intend to behave in an ecologically responsible way, but they typically emphasize actions that have relatively small ecological benefits.”[vii]

Your ecological footprint is dictated by your income, not by virtue of signaling gestures. Ironically, the wealthy middle-class people who lecture the world about green awareness usually have the worst ecological footprint.

But this progressive awareness pays. Al Gore was one of the major shareholders of the Chicago Climate Exchange.[viii] He was in a conflict of interest because, as a politician, he promoted regulations that benefited his business.

For example, he worked for Kleiner Perkins (KPMB), which provided capital to Silver Spring Networks energy company. The companies that Silver Spring works for then received $500 million government subventions for smart grids.

These subsidies were approved thanks to politicians like Gore. When oil companies lobby for their business, environmental activists denounce it as greedy misdeeds. But if the same is done by the companies dealing in “green energy,” suddenly it is fine.

[i] GORE, A. Earth in the Balance, Boston 1992, Houghton Mifflin.

[ii] BREZINA, I. Sebeobrana proti klimatickému lháři, Neviditelnypes.cz, 1. 11. 2007, http://neviditelnypes.lidovky.cz/ekologie-kurz-sebeobrany-proti-klimatickemu-lhari-f81-/p_spolecnost.aspx?c=A071031_120815_p_spolecnost_wag [cit. 18. 2. 2014].

[iii] PIELKE, R. et al. Normalized hurricane damages in the United States 1900—2005, Natural Hazards Review, 2008, Vol. 9, No. 1.

[iv] LOUGH, J.M., BARNES, D.J. Environmental controls on growth of the massive coral Porites, Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 2000, Vol 245, Issue 2.

[v] ROBERTS, D. An interview with an accidental movie star, Grist.org, 9. 5. 2006, http://grist.org/article/roberts2/ [cit. 21. 3. 2014].

[vi] TAPPER, J. Al Gore’s inconvenient truth—a $30,000 USD utility bill, ABC News, 26. 2. 2007, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=2906888 [cit. 12. 8. 2014].

[vii] MOSER, S. Kleinhückelkotten, S. Good Intents, but Low Impacts: Diverging Importance of Motivational and Socioeconomic Determinants Explaining Pro-Environmental Behavior, Energy Use, and Carbon Footprint. Environment and Behavior, 2018, Vol. 50, Issue 6.

[viii] BRODER, J. M. Gore’s dual role: Advocate and investor, New York Times, 2. 11. 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energybn-environment/03gore.html?_r=0 [cit. 17. 2. 2014].

Vítězslav Kremlík is the author of A Guide to the Climate Apocalypse: Our Journey from the Age of Prosperity to the Era of Environmental Grief. While studying in university in the Czech Republic, he became fascinated by how climate change has affected human history and how it has usually been the coldest periods that have caused the most trouble for living ecosystems. As a Ph.D. student at Charles University, he studies Sociology of Post-Normal Science, a postmodern mix of science and politics. He is a frequent guest on Czech radio and television programs dealing with climate change.