Steve Milloy
Contributor
Jan. 24 marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Al Gore’s alarmist global warming movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore has surfed the movie and climate alarmism to a net worth estimated at $300 million and a Nobel Peace Prize.
But the rest of us have been saddled with: (1) a hoax that has debased the field of science; (2) an energy scam that has cost the world more than $10-20 trillion dollars and threatens our national security; and (3) a political power grab that has reduced our freedoms. (RELATED: Howard Lutnick Heckled By Al Gore At High-Profile Globalist Soirée)
Gore’s movie was junk from the get-go. I attended a meeting in early January 2006 where Gore presented the slide show that was the basis for the movie to a group of conservatives at a weekly meeting sponsored by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. After the presentation, I approached Gore and asked if he was interested in participating in some sort of debate about his claims. Although he said he was interested, his staff later declined.
The movie premiered weeks later at the Sundance Film Festival, and the rest is history. And here’s what that history is.
The “documentary” was initially a hit, grossing $50 million in theaters. Problematically, though, the film soon became part of many secondary school curriculums. Its credibility took a major hit in 2007 when a British court ruled that the movie could not be shown to school children with a warning label about its factual errors.
As I noted in a FOX news column at the time, the judge ruled that Gore’s claims about global warming drying up Lake Chad, causing polar bears to drown while being forced to swim farther for food; and shutting down the Gulf Stream were false and/or impossible. Based on the judge’s ruling, I estimated that “the footage that ought to be excised adds up to about 25 minutes or so out of the 98-minute film. What’s left is largely Gore personal drama and cinematic fluff that has nothing to do with the science of climate change.”
Despite the embarrassing ruling, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that December. His acceptance speech doubled down on the movie claims and added a few more. None of his predictions came true.
His most well-known prediction was that the Arctic might be ice-free during the summer of 2014. But at its 2025 summer minimum, the Arctic still had more than 5 million square kilometers of sea ice — about the same as in 2007. His lesser known but equally erroneous predictions relate to global temperature, drought and glaciers, agriculture, wildfires, hurricanes, deforestation, and species extinction.
Al Gore inspired former-Marxist-turned-normal-person film director Martin Durkin to produce a counter to “An Inconvenient Truth” called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that I also reviewed in a FOX News column. Though Gore dodged my debate challenge, I was able to make him “debate” by splicing together clips from Gore’s movie with opposing experts from Durkin’s film. Though now blocked for copyright claims, this “debate” can still be found on YouTube.
After all these years, the one thing Gore has been partially correct about is this: At the beginning of the United Nation’s COP-27 meeting in Egypt in 2022, Gore said “We have a credibility problem, all of us: We’re talking and we’re starting to act, but we’re not doing enough.” He’s correct about his credibility problem. It’s never gone away.
Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.com
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” Problematically, though, the film soon became part of many secondary school curriculums.”
__________________________________________________________________________
And caused the most damage.
That was the sole purpose,
why Al Gore suddenly became
a climate expert,
a skilled documentary maker,
a nobel price winner,
an Oscar winner.
The most astroturfed thing in history(until Obama).
to penetrate the education systems.
And no one will ever ask why a thing that got everything wrong is still allowed to indoctrinate children.
The same could be said for Bill Nye, the “Science” Guy
And why Al Gore refused public debate with anyone. The money was too good to risk!
Two other big items in his movie were not true – he set up the first 72 minutes of the film with his ‘the science is settled‘ claims, wrapping up all of that with a reference to Naomi Oreskes’ Science magazine Dec 2004 100% consensus figure, which is not true in the least. Then he used that as a segue to imply a tiny handful of skeptic climate scientists were paid industry money to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” – he spelled out that exact phrase full screen in red letters, comparing it to a tobacco industry memo title. The late Washington Examiner columnist / “Undue Influence” book author writer Ron Arnold proved at his June 2016 LeftExposed piece how the ‘leaked memo directive’ containing that phrase was never implemented by anybody.
Horrifyingly, this utter charlatan almost became President.
He might have done less damage if he had been president.
He would have had to get more practical in a way that would have kept his own political party from wandering so far astray, but those were productive years for me.I wouldn’t sabotage them as a form of investment.
Quite, he obviously lacked the ‘hairy legs’ and ‘ability to catch critters’ plus other essential skills needed to be a Democrat president here in the 21st century……
I miss the reference – AI only gave me “Hairy legs with the ability to catch critters generally refer to specialized arachnid and insect adaptations—specifically trichobothria (sensory hairs) on spiders that detect vibrations/air currents to hunt”
Internet search is useless. Are the phrases associated with Clinton, Obama or Biden?
I think it was a Bidenism.
I hate to admit it, but I was young and voted for that SOB. Today, I execrate him as much or even more than W.
Now is twenty years on and we know how big this scam has been, but imagine a hundred years from now, when the world looks back at us. The name Al Gore will have dissappeared and all that will be left are ‘those stupid 21st century humans’, in the same way as we think about previous flat Earth times, or the period of burning witches. Our times will be laughed about as unintelligent, unscientific, believing in ridiculous ideas, such as trying to control CO2 to cool the Earth. I’m already ashamed of us.
No generation has a monopoly on stupidity. Some are just a little more gullible than others.
Some generations have Mass Media putting lies in their heads.
Others have social media doing the same.
AGW and Covid lockdowns are two giant globalist scams that history will not look on kindly.
I agree with your sentiment, but that’s not how history books have been written (still are? Consult the Ill-Literacy podcast). Actual examples of embarrassing historical episodes are Western-hemisphere colonization (Christopher?), USA slavery (Abe?), and Holocaust WW2 Germany (Adolph?). Historians seem to prefer “pinning it on’ a big personality.
The question of Gore’s place for me is “was he a big enough personality to make the history books?” I was out of school at the time. I’m guessing his movie will be like the Christa Mcauliff Challenger shuttle explosion I was served up in a middle school homeroom on a big square TV on a rolling cart. It’s still remembered, but not in my top 100 life events. As the kids exposed to that propaganda grow up, experience romances, hop jobs, and drown in inherited federal debt, the global warming thing might remain at the bottom of their list of life priorities.
I’m glad we (especially USA) did not have to experience a Gore presidency. However. What a great speaking voice. It would be as familiar to USA “old media” retrospectives booming into the empty living rooms of elderly widows across the nation as MLK’s or Kennedy’s.
“A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded.”
Abraham Lincoln
And like a fashion or religious cult the carbon dioxide hoax spread collecting the gullible and the grifter everywhere.
How odd that the deniers and the heretics have been right all along.
Great quote from Lincoln- hadn’t heard that one. I’m a huge fan of him after reading “Team of Rivals” twice.
Here’s another:
“When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty – to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
Both quotes are in “Battle Cry of Freedom” by James McPherson.
Ever since it reached religious status it has dragged on quite a bit. However, apart from those who can directly make money from this via subsidies the moneylenders are pulling away now. That cashcow is getting old and dry. And that is why more an more articles appear that question the validity of Net Zero policies. While many appear to still belief( and a belief it is) in Climate Change ( capital CC), the Lomborg stance is gaining ground, a vital step in the right direction.
I wouldve called it: an inconvenient truth: part 2, in hindsight.
Calling it a ‘scam’ (which it is) will put people off because those on the possible fence will question the motivation behind the headline and dismiss it just like anything that has the ‘conspiracy theory’ label attached to it. It shuts off people’s brain..
I sort of agree with you but people are so slow to acknowledge they were wrong on some issue or other that showing they were tricked or deliberately misled almost gives them an excuse for being wrong.
I’ve had about 30 years of being the odd one out, the denier or heretic on climate stuff at my sports club. Only recently are a few saying it seems I was right all along.
“so slow to acknowledge they were wrong”
Do humans do that?
(insert here some quote like Dawkins saying if he repents on his deathbed you’ll know he’s gone mad. I don’t like that one but it exemplifies the stubbornness of sentiment.)
‘Calling it a ‘scam’ (which it is) will put people off because those on the possible fence will question the motivation behind the headline and dismiss it just like anything that has the ‘conspiracy theory’ label attached to it. It shuts off people’s brain.’
Well, we wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings now, would we?
Apologies for being snarky, but let’s look at the damage that’s been done by climate alarmism; destroyed careers, politicization of science, massive misallocations of resources, de-industrialization of the West in favor of China, just to name a few impacts before we even get into the many other government incursions that have taken place under its aegis. All of which has occurred because the Left realized decades ago that it could ride the phenomenological science of radiant transfer theory to dominate our economic and political institutions.
The ‘Lomborg stance’ is doomed to fail unless the junk science behind climate alarmism is first fully exposed to the point where it can no longer be used to demonize fossil fuels, or any other facet of modernity. Subsequently, there needs to be economic and political retribution against those individuals and institutions who have initiated coercive force against us, not only to right previous wrongs, but to reverse the advances of the Left in all areas of human endeavor.
I champion an analogy to “witch trials” and hysteria of elities.
Witch trials in the early modern period – Wikipedia
CO2 now is analogous to women with habits some people didn’t like, and the weather was bad. Get rid of the baddies and the weather will improve.
This is a relevant quote from a novel I am reading, it’s a crime novel, hence the first line, but it’s the second line that I picked up on
”We dealt in reasonable doubt. And we lived in a time of unreasonable certainty.”
This is what we’re seeing, unreasonable certainty.
Sorry to be pedantic, but the plural of curriculum is not curriculums but curricula, compare with datum and data or forum and fora.
You are being pedantic, these are borrowed words from Latin an extintic language. If they are modified by usage in everyday speech that’s what happens to borrowed words they change to meet the stsndards of the borrowing language. There are a lot of French false friends in English where a word has changed its meaning completely.
Although curriculums is a recognised plural, which I have never used, curricula is used more commonly according to https://writingexplained.org/curricula-vs-curriculum. However, just to point out that data is used as a plural not datums.
Whats the plural of vertebra? Appendix (as in a publication)?
Are you picking up erratums?
I’m just pointing out that once a word is borrowed the rules are not borrowed from the source language. Linguist purists and Language Prescriptivists don’t acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with taking a word and making it do what you want and obey the rules of the borrowing language, which will have oddities anyway. Plurals normally have an s or es added, but not always for example sheep, deer, salmon and trout. But words like Chef, panache, bully, fiasco and villain changed meanings completely.
Using the source language rules is never going to work because they non-standard for the borrower population.
The same thing applies to spelling.
The misuse, but now accepted use, of the word ‘decimate’ always annoyed me. It had a meaningful history attached to it, and meant destroying one-tenth of something. Now it is used to mean complete and total devastation. Now we have a second word for devastation, and no word to say a small percent was destroyed.
Bless the few pedants who keep fighting the losing battle against the host that keep saying, even in scripted lines, stuff like “Me and Johnnie went to get milk for Sally and I.” My gorge keeps rising!
Long long ago, I was taught that is “subject/object confusion”, and one of the best ways to flaunt your ignorance. That latter part may have come right from my mother’s mouth.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll – My favorite literary quote of all time. Thanks.
Despite the embarrassing ruling,
The narrative remained on track. For a time…
Blood And Gore: Making A Killing On Anti-Carbon Investment Hypehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/11/03/blood-and-gore-making-a-killing-on-anti-carbon-investment-hype/
20 Years After ‘An Inconvenient Truth’…
still persist a globalist asshole.
Al Gore is mentioned hundreds of times in the Epstein files. Yes this is relevant because apart from the horrific things most of the files are about profiting from pandemic, ukraine war and climate lies.
They are all in on it !!
Even Putin- saw a report said he’s mentioned hundreds of times.
Al Gore: An Intolerable Gasbag.
Not to mention A Monumental Hypocrite.
“Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that December”
Dam, even if he was right, and of course he wasn’t- that has nothing to do with peace so why did they debase the Nobel Prize by giving him that? Of course they’ll say saving the planet is all about peace- but that’s lame.
All Nobel prizes are awarded based solely on the private opinion of the committee members no matter how insane they may be. They is no objective proof of any kind to determine a winner,
That’s how Obama received a Nobel prize for doing nothing but being Obama…
Why there is so much attention for the insane opinions of a small club of out-of-touch people is beyond me.
He received the prize not just just for “being Obama” but rather for being black.
Go back even further and ask why a 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the known and currenty active (at the time of the award) terrorist Yasser Arafat.
One might also question why the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”, when in fact he had been US president for for less than eight months, and previous to that he had no significant claims to being involved with world peace efforts during his term as a US Senator from from 2005 to 2008. Barack’s legacy of contributions to world peace . . . not to be found anywhere.
Bottom line answer to your question: don’t mistake the Nobel Peace Prize committee(s) for now making awards based more on their own virtue signalling as opposed to objective facts.
“a British court ruled that the movie could not be shown to school children with a warning label” (bold mine)
I think you meant without a warning label?
Yes, these were the specific disclaimers to be presented:
So, Gore was wrong on everything.
How many times have these bogus claims been made since that movie was first shown? It must be thousands of times. Climate Alarmists have repeated these lies over and over and over again.
As a meteorologist now for 40+yrs, it’s been quite a ride trying to convince the warmers that this is all much ado about nothing and out of our control. But I believe I have convinced many or reaffirmed their skepticism anyway. Yes, temps have trended up some and living here in the Upper Midwest, I am grateful! More please!
“out of our control”
Correct, but that is too easily turned into “out of control.”
Perhaps, and yes I am a member of the pedantic club, it would improve as “not within our means to control or even influence.”
I think I got shadowbanned on YouTube for calling Gore a con artist who managed to cash out.
Gore is a President of the useful idiots club and proud of it.
We had a big snowfall about 10 days ago.
We had a smaller snow fall days before that.
In both cases, all of the rooftop solar voltaic systems in the neighborhood are producing exactly 0 Amps. They have been covered with snow for 2 weeks, perhaps longer.
To use a political phrase, “the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.”
Great article in demonstrating that Al Gore is no honorable climate scientist, let alone being even a scientist, amateur or professional.
I am also reminded of the strong evidence that Al Gore intentionally presented manufactured “experimental data” and willingly presented such to the public in his “Climate 101” video:
see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/video-analysis-and-scene-replication-suggests-that-al-gores-climate-reality-project-fabricated-their-climate-101-video-simple-experiment/
The Nobel Peace Prize committee must now be Oh so proud of his “accomplishments”. /sarc
The real inconvenient truth is that the vast majority of youth in that era grew up. The task remains in teaching to be skeptical when a second generation politico preaches climate science and makes unfounded predictions. But the deadenders and self dealers are not approachable.
Can we sue him for damages?
It figured that Gore would qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize for thjs drivel since its committee considers only leftist-leaning propaganda worthy of consideration. Whether it’s scientifically or factually accurate is strictly secondary. This was the same reason many public school divisions and education departments adopted it: it sent the type of message that they considered politically correct and accuracy be damned.
Has anyone seen this?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-026-03242-3
Might be a story in there????
Very nice Steve although I appreciate reading about how wrong Gore is it is painful for you to include a picture of him.
Oh, that’s Al Gore! . . . gee, I thought is was just a picture of a man-pig snorting, to provide emphasis to the story’s message about a hoax and scam.
Steve, In this sentence: major hit in 2007 when a British court ruled that the movie could not be shown to school children with a warning label about its factual errors. It should say without, correct?
Algore, the Joel Osteen of the Church of Warming, actually makes Greta look intellgent. “Pass the plate I needa new jet.”
I had gone back to college at this time and watched the film in one of my classes. I found it very self-serving