PrintJune 29, 2006
Gore's Grave New World
Imagine, if you can, a modern society in which scientists positing theories contrary to those accepted by agents of the government are declared heretics and swiftly punished. Ray Bradbury imagined one in his novel Fahrenheit 451, as did Pierre Boulle in Planet of the Apes. Unfortunately, Al Gore has also envisioned such a culture -- ours.
Gore first introduced us to his one--time Harvard professor, Dr. Roger Revelle in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, and refers to him again in his new film, An Inconvenient Truth. He credits the professor with being the man who originally influenced his views regarding the dangers of global warming. The implication is, therefore, made that his mentor also blames everything but nature for shifting global weather patterns.
It is true that Dr. Revelle's early research papers exploring the relationship between rising atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperatures are considered by many to be the opening salvo in the global warming debate.
And yet, based on his new movie, Gore would appear to have suffered convenient selective amnesia when telling the story of his guru and erstwhile college professor. You see, when Dr. Revelle co--authored an article entitled 'What to Do About Greenhouse Warming: Look Before you Leap,' which appeared in the April 1991 issue of Cosmos magazine, the student's treatment of the teacher was anything but reverent.
Regrettably, Dr. Revelle died three months after the article was published. It concluded that
'The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time,'
Its contrarian message was that Earth is, in fact, not in the balance. As luck would have it for Gore, the reaction to the original article and its conclusions was quite lukewarm. This was likely due to the limited readership of the magazine at that time.
However, when the piece was cited over a year later in a New Republic article by Gregg Easterbrook, the climate got decidedly warmer. You see, the piece also suggested that Gore,
"the bright light of political environmentalism, seems increasingly to believe that the only correct stance is to press the panic button on every issue."
As described by one of Revelle's coauthors, Dr. S. Fred Singer in his personal account, 'The Revelle--Gore Story:'
'The contradiction between what Senator Gore wrote about what he learned from Dr. Revelle and what Dr. Revelle had written in the Cosmos article embarrassed Senator Gore, who had become the leading candidate for the vice presidential slot of the Democratic Party.'
Dr. Singer recalls a phone call he received from Dr. Justin Lancaster, one of Dr. Revelle's former associates, on July 20, 1992. During that conversation, Lancaster first requested, then demanded that Singer remove Revelle's name from a forthcoming inclusion of their article in a global warming anthology to be edited by Dr. Richard Geyer. Said Dr. Singer:
'When I refused his request, Dr. Lancaster stepped up the pressure on me. First at a memorial symposium for Dr. Revelle at Harvard in the fall of 1992 and in a lengthy footnote to his written remarks at that event, he suggested that Dr. Revelle had not really been a coauthor and made the ludicrous claim that I had put his name on the paper as a coauthor 'over his objections.'
'Subsequently, Dr. Anthony D. Socci, a member of Senator Gore's staff, made similar outrageous accusations in a lengthy letter to the publishers of the Geyer volume, requesting that the Cosmos article be dropped.'
A libel suit was filed in April of 1993, prompted by Lancaster's words, which also included suggestions that Singer's purpose in listing Revelle as a co--author was "to undermine the pro--Revelle stance of [then] Sen. Gore." It was revealed during the suit's discovery period that Gore had called Lancaster shortly after learning of the New Republic article. Numerous links between Gore, Gore's staff, and the actions of Lancaster were also discovered, as were the latter's myriad mistruths, misdeeds, and material misstatements.
But Gore's was not a single--front assault plan. As Jonathan Adler wrote in the Washington Times on July 27, 1994:
'Concurrent with Mr. Lancaster's attack on Mr. Singer, Mr. Gore himself led a similar effort to discredit the respected scientist. Mr. Gore reportedly contacted 60 Minutes and Nightline to do stories on Mr. Singer and other opponents of Mr. Gore's environmental policies. The stories were designed to undermine the opposition by suggesting that only raving ideologues and corporate mouthpieces could challenge Mr. Gore's green gospel. The strategy backfired. When Nightline did the story, it exposed the vice president's machinations and compared his activities to Lysenkoism: The Stalinist politicization of science in the former Soviet Union.'
In fact, the 2/24/94 Nightline edition which Adler refers to included a segment--end wherein the host, Ted Koppel, said (jaw--agape emphasis mine):
'There is some irony in the fact that Vice President Gore, one of the most scientifically literate men to sit in the White House in this century, that he is resorting to political means to achieve what should ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis.'
Yet, even in the face of Gore's blatant abuse of public office, the suit was, ultimately, settled. On 4/29/1994, Dr. Lancaster issued a statement in which he "fully and unequivocally" retracted his claims against Dr. Singer. Gore's dystopian attempts aside, the Geyer volume did, indeed, include the Revelle, Singer, and Starr piece -- with all attributions present and accounted for.
But this was neither the first nor the last time that Gore would flex his political muscle in order to salvage both his sham science agenda and his similarly questionable credibility.
Shortly after the 1992 release of his book, then--Senator Gore ran hearings reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition. Before his committee, scientists who disagreed with his questionable science beliefs were put to the rack and urged to recant. One scientist forced to face Interrogator Al was Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.
Dr. Lindzen was and is a well known vocal critic of the seriousness of a human--induced global warming threat. That, and his reputation for questioning the motivations of his easily swayed brother scientists, made him a prime candidate for the spectacle of public conversion.
In an interview with Mike Miliard of The Phoenix, he recalled:
'Gore would run star--chamber hearings and invite the heads of funding agencies while he would try to get scientists [who doubted climate change's severity] to recant. . . . Everyone in the п¬Ѓeld knows [that] when the funding went up to $2 billion a year under Bush the elder, that money didn't come because people thought climate was a wonderful thing. It came because of alarm.'
In a piece appearing in the Seattle Times on 10/4/1992 headlined "The Science of Distortion ---- Good, Evil and Sen. Albert Gore ---- Show Trials Used Against Scientists Who Aren't Sure the Apocalypse Is Near," Patrick J. Michaels, Professor of Environmental Sciences University of Virginia, reported:
'Lindzen recently told one of Gore's hearings that the data didn't support one of his many proposed ideas to explain the already obvious failure of the forecasts of climate gloom and doom. 'Lindzen has recanted,' one of Gore's staffers crowed.'
Of course, there had been no such recantation and, Lindzen, reportedly, is still quite angry about the incident, calling the episode "bizarrely dishonest.' In fact, 14 years later, he is still an outspoken critic of those who would stifle scientific knowledge through tools of intimidation. Additionally, as a minority dissenter on the various scientific panels he sits on, he is regularly misrepresented as having 'recanted.' This vote--rigging trick of Gore's MSM accomplices is well examined in Robert W. Tracinski's 'The Scientist Trap.'
Lindzen himself explains how 'global--warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence' in his 4/12/06 article, 'Climate of Fear':
'Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.'
So, effectively, Gore's intimidation tactics over the course of the last decade and a half have achieved his desired goal through a menacing combination of politics, words and financial control. At a glance, it would certainly appear that a significant number of American scientists have been molded into obedient, PC puppets. Unfortunately, as Dr. Lindzen states in his article, 'this is only the tip of a non--melting iceberg.'
'In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn--Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate--research funding for raising questions.'
If Dr. Lindzen is correct in his contentions, and there certainly exists every reason to believe that he is, then, how can we possibly hope to ever learn the truth about Earth's climatology? Or, for that matter, any other science which has been hijacked by the PC police? What are the real dangers of AIDS? What are the long term health risks of abortion for the mother? What do we really know about the evils of DDT? What other junk might our scientists be feeding us as a byproduct of the struggle to remain funded and unbridled?
In his brilliant 1977 essay, 'Asimov's Corollary,' the great author and biochemist Isaac Asimov wrote:
"If a scientific heresy is ignored or denounced by the general public, there is a chance it may be right. If a scientific heresy is emotionally supported by the general public, it is almost certainly wrong."
How many times has that statement proven itself to be correct? Consider Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin when evaluating the first sentence; then UFOs, ghosts, Astrology, ESP and other psychic phenomena for the second.
Fortunately, it has been the customary burden of true men of science to maintain stewardship over these truths. Asimov continues:
"It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong....It is those who support ideas for emotional reasons only who can't change.'
What will become of us in the Orwellian world fashioned by Gore and his PC mercenaries when compromised scientists represent the majority? I shudder to think........
Marc Sheppard is a business owner, software developer and writer, and is a regular contributor to The New Media Journal, Opinion Editorials and Men's News Daily. He welcomes your feedback.
