Gore: Scientists Wouldn’t Lie for Money to Advance Global Warming Theory – But Skeptics Would
Nobel laureate Al Gore claimed on Friday that scientists involved in advancing the theory of global warming wouldn't do it just for the money. Without recognizing the hypocrisy, he also told FearLess Cottage consumer advocate Alex Bogusky that scientists espousing a skeptical view of his money-making theory are exclusively doing so for their own financial benefit (video follows with transcript and commentary): ALEX BOGUSKY , CONSUMER ADVOCATE, FEARLESS COTTAGE: Well, they also funded and created some think tanks that would release reports, and there were scientists that worked there, but they were funded by the tobacco industry. AL GORE: Yeah, yeah. BOGUSKY : And some of those are, are now, have gone to work for oil and gas, or oil and coal. GORE: What a lot of people don’t realize, this is so astonishing, some of the same people… BOGUSKY : Yeah. GORE: …who took money from the tobacco companies to put out lies about the science of smoking and health are now taking money from the coal and oil companies to put out lies about the science of global warming. BOGUSKY : Yeah. GORE: And those lies in this new communications environment gain a much larger audience on a regular basis than what the real scientists are actually saying. BOGUSKY : Well, and, and, and you talk about the special interests, but there’s more and more special interest in government. GORE: Yeah. BOGUSKY : At least that’s, you know, my analysis. GORE: For sure. For sure? Was Gore actually agreeing that there’s more special interests in government? I think Bogusky caught him off-guard with that, and the Nobel laureate didn’t realize what he was saying “for sure” to. But in this instance, he was right. As Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-Ok.) former communications director Marc Morano reported in 2007: Newsweek reporter Eve Conant was given the documentation showing that proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so, but the Magazine chose instead to focus on how skeptics have reportedly received a paltry $19 MILLION from ExxonMobil over the last two decades. Two years later, the Science and Public Policy Institute updated and confirmed these numbers: The US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in. Despite the overwhelming majority of funds concerning this matter going to climate alarmists, Gore claimed it's skeptics that are willing to lie for money. Moments later, he ironically said the folks on his side would never do this: BOGUSKY : Governor Perry suggests that scientists have gotten together to foil the American public, or the global public. GORE: Yeah. BOGUSKY : There aren’t even movie scripts like that, where every, it’s, it’s, it’s, it seems difficult for me to understand how people would believe that. Yet there are actual incidents – tobacco being the most recent – of industries that have set out to continue to perpetrate a lie. GORE: Yeah. BOGUSKY : Scientists in general don’t really like to agree. That’s not what science does. Right? GORE: Right, right, right. Yeah, and, and, and sometimes contrarians in science have become famous by overturning an accepted view. BOGUSKY : That’s how you get reputations. GORE: Yeah, there’s a natural respect for that impulse, absolutely. Okay, so there are incidents when industries “have set out to continue to perpetrate a lie.” But Bogusky doesn't consider that since Gore has huge investments in companies that benefit from global warming activism, he himself might be less than honest with his assertions. As is typical, the motivation of liberals is never questioned. As for the Nobel laureate, he admitted a “natural respect” for ” contrarians in science [who] have become famous by overturning an accepted view.” But not when they go against his view: GORE: But this is different. This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money. Look, first of all, these scientists don’t make a lot of money. They’re comfortable, and as they should be, but they don’t make a lot of money. That’s not their motivation for doing what they do.
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on August 27, 2011. Filed under