Huff Post: On Hurricanes (And Much Else), Gore Did Better Than His Congressional Critics

On Hurricanes (And Much Else), Gore Did Better Than His Congressional Critics

Chris Mooney (Huffington Post)

When it comes to Al Gore's high-profile advocacy on the subject of global warming, those seeking to undermine the former Vice-President have seized upon a familiar tactic: They attack his depiction of the science. This even though most climate scientists would probably agree with the view expressed on the leading global warming blog, RealClimate.org, that Gore's depiction of the information has been mostly accurate (albeit perhaps with some "small errors").

Nevertheless, this down-in-the-weeds strategy for assaulting Gore's credibility recently bubbled up to the pages of New York Times, where science reporter William Broad--in an article that RealClimate.org found just as misleading as it found Gore's movie accurate (see also the Times letters section)--sought to inflate those minor errors into a major scandal.

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Nevertheless, when it comes to the science of global warming and its impacts, there's a very significant difference between Gore and his would-be detractors. Gore takes the conclusions of the mainstream scientific community on global warming seriously and for the most part describes them very accurately, albeit with perhaps a few small errors of presentation (which are likely inadvertent) and of omission (some of which may arise from the fact that he has a ton of ground to cover). It's certainly fair to argue that Gore ought to include more nuances and caveats. But for comparison, let's bear in mind that Gore's scientific critics (and especially Inhofe) tend to disregard the large body of accepted science entirely--except when they find something they think they can use to make Gore look bad. And even in these cases, they're usually much more off base, and much more selective, than Gore himself is.

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Most of all, let's not lose sight of the big picture. If you look beyond the scientific details for a moment--something Gore's technical critics don't want us to do--you can quickly see where Gore's message is both the most accurate and the most urgent: We have got to do something on global warming, before it's too late.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-mooney/on-hurricanes-and-much-e_b_44093.html