From The Daily Caller
9:54 AM 05/30/2019 | Energy
Michael Bastasch | Energy Editor
Former Vice President Al Gore said President Donald Trump’s “assault on science” threatens “the capacity of the human species to endure” on Earth.
Gore issued his warning in a speech to Harvard University students and faculty Wednesday, stressing “reason” and “rational debate,” indeed democracy itself, were under threat from the “ideology of authoritarianism.”
Science “is now being slandered as a conspiracy based on a hoax,” Gore said, likely referring to a 2012 Trump tweet where he called man-made global warming a “Chinese hoax.”
WATCH:
“The subordination of the best scientific evidence to the cynical greed of those buttressing the power of a would-be-autocrat is yet another strategy for controlling policy by distorting and suppressing the best available information,” Gore said.
“So the ideology of authoritarianism is not only a threat to democracy in America, now because of the attacks on climate science, it has become a threat to the survival of human civilization as we know it and even potentially to the capacity of the human species to endure,” Gore continued.
“In order to solve the climate crisis, we must solve the democracy crisis,” Gore said.
While Gore, a Harvard alumni and producer of two films of questionable accuracy on global warming, did not refer to Trump by name, the former vice president’s message was clear.
“The system of checks and balances that has protected the integrity of our American system for more than two centuries has already been dangerously eroded,” Gore said.
Gore, however, also went after social media, which he claimed is driven by “surveillance capitalism.” Gore said social media “enhances cynicism and magnifies divisions” that erode society. (RELATED: Supreme Court Asked To Hear Case Involving Leaked ‘Climategate’ Emails)
Former U.S. Vice President and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore speaks this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Forum, in Oslo, Norway December 11, 2018. NTB Scanpix/Heiko Junge via REUTERS.
Gore went on to blame rampant flooding and tornado sightings in the Midwest on man-made global warming, echoing recent attempts by Democratic presidential candidates to do the same in Iowa.
“Speaking of wind, the winds are increasingly destructive in our world,” Gore said. “Yesterday was the thirteenth day in a row when multiple tornadoes touched down in the United States — 500 this month.”
“Hurricanes have become much stronger. Today, the Arkansas River is four feet higher than the all-time record flood stage. The Mississippi River is setting records as the longest flood ever. Thirty-nine million Americans today are at risk from flooding,” Gore said.
Gore also implored Harvard to divest its endowment from fossil fuel holdings, comparing it to the 1980s campaigns to pull investments in South Africa during apartheid. Gore has often compared climate activism to the anti-apartheid, civil rights and abolition movements.
“It was immoral to continue investing in apartheid,” Gore said before going on to accuse fossil fuel companies of using the tobacco industry’s strategy to keep the American public ignorant of climate science — a narrative pushed by some liberal media outlets.
“The American people have been the targets of a massive, well-organized and lavishly-funded campaign of disinformation, designed to spread doubt and confusion and prevent the formation of a political consensus necessary to adopt new policies to save the future of human civilization,” Gore said.
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In the last week we have Al Gore lecturing people to be aware of those assaulting science and Hillary Clinton lecturing people on cyber security. I am speechless.
Al Gore is the Joel Osteen of the Church of Warming.
Well in the spirit of fair and open discussion I started to watch the video. I just couldn’t continue, I had to turn it off, I felt ill.
“Today, the Arkansas River is four feet higher than the all-time record flood stage. ”
I checked NOAA site for the arkansas river. There are 8 gauges along the river in Arkansas. Every one of them is at flood stage but relative to the record they vary widely from 6.4’ below (1933) to 2.6’ above (1945). If you add up all 8 exceedances its actually 3’ lower on average in arkansas than the records.
I actually went upstream all the way to kansas and could not find a gauge showing 4’ above the record.
Where does this soundbite science come from?
Water.weather.gov
From Wikipedia: “Gore attended St. Albans School, [ . . . ] from 1956 to 1965, a prestigious feeder school . . . ”
Al should have studied more and eaten less.
Interesting, here in UK our elites also attend prestigious feeder school called “Eton” – which give its name to an ridiculously over-indulgent dessert called “Eton Mess. It also supplied the world with such well-nourished politicians and David Cameringue and Borish (the Russian) Johnson
Oops sorry! I need new glasses. Now I see that the word was “prestigious”.
I thought it said “prodigious”.
“The American people have been the targets of a massive, well-organized and lavishly-funded campaign of disinformation, designed to spread doubt and confusion and prevent the formation of a political consensus necessary to adopt new policies to save the future of human civilization,” Gore said.
It’s about time he came clean.
The fact that he was not laughed off the stage speaks volumes of about the state of minds in Harvard. Sad that he was able to even show his face in public without ridicule, even sadder to think the students of Harvard swallowed his twisted disinformation without a whimper. The greatest liar in the history of human scientific endeavour still spreading lies, is welcomed as a hero in our Universities. One can only imagine that the apocalypse is near.
“‘Assault On Science’ Threatens Humanity’s Survival. Hmmm.
I find this all somewhat ironic.
In the 1980s and 1990’s, it was Humanities that were assaulting science in what were called the ‘Science Wars’.
On one hand we had the ‘postmodernists’ who rejected scientific objectivity, the scientific method, empiricism, and scientific knowledge – which were dismissed as ‘social constructs’.
The other side included the excellent Alan Sokal with his excellent ‘Sokal Hoax’ and Jean Bricmont with “Intellectual Impostures”.
So, one may wonder why the humanities (and especially the post-modernists) are now coming out so strongly in support of the same ‘science’ they were so keen to dismiss only a few decades ago?
I suspect the reason is that they consider the science wars to have been won – and that science really IS a social construct. And therefore, if society requires science to the ‘constructed’ a certain way, (“for the good of mankind” and all that sort of thing) then it MUST be constructed that way. As for the truth . . . Well, post-modernists don’t believe in it.
> Science “is now being slandered as a conspiracy based on a hoax,” Gore said
That’s indeed a slander.
Harvard-esque “science” is a hoax based on a conspiracy, not the other way around. In that Progressive mimicry is as old as separation of the Church and the State it tries to circumvent, thus much older than the fraud in question. And G.K. Chesterton pointed finger right at it (“What’s Wrong With The World” 1.3) long before there hippies or Richard Dawkins were born.
He is a compelling bullshitter there is no doubt about that but I doubt many at Harvard bought
the climate scare spin .
Isn’t the biggest con -job the notion that humans are somehow going to shape the climate to
some target number ? What scientist will ever seriously make that claim and back it up . Forget whether it warms or cools the proposition that a trace gas , of which humans control a small amount , is somehow
going to be disbursed or limited in order to produce a Goldilocks climate is patently absurd to start with .
Hopefully the Harvard grads are inquisitive enough to form their own conclusions .