Gore lied. Scientific method died.

In an interview with Slate, Al Gore dismissed the East Anglia emails as "sound and fury signifying nothing."  The problem is, he substantiates his argument with outright lies. Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That? provides the latest due diligence on the global bloviator:

Al Gore apparently has no command of the most basic details of anything related to Earth and climate. His last idiotic gaff in the media was that the temperature of the Earth 2 kilometers or so down was millions of degrees! Apparently, Slate editors who look equally like dufuses for printing this dreck didn’t notice his latest one either. Maybe all those trips around the world in the private jet have damaged his ability to tell the time and date? Too many trip across the International Dateline perhaps?
Here’s an interview question put to him from Slate:




Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?


A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus. But the noise machine built by the climate deniers often seizes on what they can blow out of proportion, so they’ve thought this is a bigger deal than it is.


But wait there’s more…


Q: There is a sense in these e-mails, though, that data was hidden and hoarded, which is the opposite of the case you make [in your book] about having an open and fair debate.


A: I think it’s been taken wildly out of context. The discussion you’re referring to was about two papers that two of these scientists felt shouldn’t be accepted as part of the IPCC report. Both of them, in fact, were included, referenced, and discussed. So an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago including somebody’s opinion that a particular study isn’t any good is one thing, but the fact that the study ended up being included and discussed anyway is a more powerful comment on what the result of the scientific process really is.


These people are examining what they can or should do to deal with the P.R. dimensions of this, but where the scientific consensus is concerned, it’s completely unchanged. What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.


Earth to Al, Earth to Al, come in Al.


Despite the fact that some of the 10 year old emails discussed important issues like the 2001 IPCC report and what made it into it…the most recent emails in Climategate were from November 2009. Last month, this year, earth time.

Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun (AU) disseminates Gore's mendacity "down under" and captures my wonderment perfectly:

How closely did Gore read these emails? Did he actually read any at all? Was he lying or just terribly mistaken? What else has he got wrong?

The real disgrace is that Gore can sit there in the glow of his Nobel Peace Prize and Oscar-winning movie, and lie with impunity.  Adolph Hitler once said, "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."