Gore is angry at the doubt traders - pseudo-scientists who he claims are disrupting the public discourse on the climate issue with the funding of interested parties
Al Gore is pissed. The former vice president spoke in August 2011 at the Aspen Institute in Colorado, at a forum titled "Networks as Citizens," and in his remarks he expressed outrage at evil corporations that put profit before society.
Gore referred to the book "Merchants of Doubt: How a Small Number of Scientists Obfuscated the Truth on Issues Ranging from Tobacco Smoking to Global Warming" by Naomi Arskes and Eric Conway in which they recounted how the oil, steel, infrastructure and other industries employed lobbyists to cloud the climate debate.
The former vice president recalled how not long ago the tobacco companies "succeeded in delaying the assimilation of the Surgeon General's report for 40 years - 40 years~ in each of those forty years, the number of Americans who died from smoking each year exceeded the number of American deaths In all of World War II: 450 thousand. My sister was one of them.
The same model of manipulation, Gore added, "has been carried over into the climate field. And in some cases by the very same people—I can provide a list of names—involved in the affair. And what are they doing? They are paying pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists and spread the message, 'The whole climate issue is bullshit. The carbon dioxide that man emits is not used as a heat trap. These are probably the sunspots. Nonsense again. 'The climate is not warming' nonsense.
"When you go and talk in front of an audience about the climate, you hear them repeat the same nonsense over and over again," he continued. "There is no longer a shared reality on issues like climate, even though this is a threat to the very existence of our civilization. People have no idea. It is no longer acceptable in mixed audiences (that is, those that contain both Republicans and Democrats) to say the word climate. They have contaminated the This word to the point where you can't even claim anything about the climate."
Gore accepted the limited role that reason and fact-based analysis have in modern American politics.
"During the debate on the debt ceiling, an American group called "Americans for Prosperity(which we recently revealed is funded by the oil tycoons Koch family) and coalitions of smaller groups have followed the tobacco companies' pattern and filled the media with their own messages, he said.
While Congress was discussing the debt ceiling, nine out of ten advertising broadcasts were along the lines of: "Don't raise the debt, spending is the problem", and because of this we are about to put the country into recession. This thing is insane. We were the best nation on earth because of our ability to make better decisions than other nations, and we made better decisions because we shared the rules of reason and worked according to facts. Since we adopted the new system (which each party has a different truth, AB) we started making bad decisions."
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Thanks. I learned another piece of information that I didn't know before. Too bad I didn't notice this comment until today.
"Succeeded in delaying the assimilation of Sorjon's general report for 40 years - 40 years~..."
The Surgeon General's Report is not the Surgeon General's Report!
The Surgeon General is the highest medical authority in the USA. Kind of like the Governor of the Central Bank but for health matters.
Ignorant people don't hang out on the science website, but they definitely come to Google and it is important that a website that has visibility on Google will write the truth and provide an alternative to the lies that appear on most other websites. Only facts and studies are not enough because without the right background, there will always be someone who will doubt them without the public understanding the CATCH. The political background is very important for understanding the context. Otherwise it might be perceived as the deniers want - as a struggle within science in which they can choose their side.
Yes, a lot of dealing with the deniers of global warming, the deniers of science and evolution, the astrologers, (opposing women's singing and separatists), etc. Unfortunately, they are hard to convince. The ignorance that results from ignoring and belittling bodies of knowledge and intellectual laziness is very difficult to eradicate. And so what remains is to turn on the light on the truth and stop wasting energy on trying to explain to the ignorant that they are ignorant. Ignorant people usually don't get involved. Give facts and studies and leave the ignorant to their own devices.
I believe that the science website is the last one that can be accused of ignoring the climate crisis. After all, there isn't a week without 2-3 news reports about the bad impact of the global warming deniers.
Try complaining to NRG. There are writers there who unequivocally oppose any investment that causes an expense to the capitalists.
Why is the article famous now? If the lecture was six months ago. What is new here that is not known?
The world is sleepwalking into climate suicide and energy suicide. Nobody really cares. Even here on the science site, people are more busy with monkey sentences for their own sake. It is true that the struggle is basically the same struggle. But today we are already talking about the sea level rising by five meters by the end of the century and not two meters as predicted a few years ago.
The writing is on the wall. The USA has long since ceased to be a democracy when the capitalists took over the bodies of knowledge and politics in a neuter way.
In Israel we are not far from the same situation.