Will the Truth Prevail?

The most astonishing moment of The Great Global Warming Swindle to me is when they show the clip from An Inconvenient Truth when Al Gore puts up a long graph showing the correlation between rising temperatures and CO2 levels throughout Earth’s history. One would have to conclude from Gore’s graph that a rise in CO2 causes a rise in temperature. As Gore is explaining this, he says something to the effect that the evidence is “complicated.”

Yes, it is complicated. Gore does not go into this minor complication of the evidence: the rise in CO2 is consistently several centuries behind the rise in temperature. In other words, the evidence points to the opposite of Gore’s central point – a rise in temperature causes a rise in CO2. Perhaps this is because higher temperatures are good for life. Living fauna and decaying flora both emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

If Gore is at all aware of what he is saying and what “complication” he is evading, then he is dishonest. But he might not really understand what he is talking about. He might just be parroting what environmentalists tell him to say. Either way, if what The Great Global Warming Swindle says is true, we must conclude that Al Gore is either a liar or a fool.

(A young liberal I know asked me to watch An Inconvenient Truth. I said I would not. She said if I watched it, she would read any book I gave her. So I sat through Gore's masterpiece of propaganda, then gave her a copy of Atlas Shrugged. As far as I'm concerned, she got the better end of the deal. Especially since I paid for both my movie ticket and her book.)

We might be watching the climax of environmentalism. If people understand what a huge con job has been put over on them with global warming, I don’t see how environmentalism can recover. But this might be wishful thinking. A widespread understanding of the truth depends on the MSM reporting the truth without liberal bias. Furthermore, clarity depends on a philosophic theory that supports the concept of objective truth. Postmodernism would consider the truth about global warming merely a “narrative” that plays into the hands of greedy capitalist corporations. Since there is no objective truth to postmodernists, the environmentalist narrative is just as valid – more valid to liberals because its intentions are good (altruist), and it results in statism and sacrifice of the individual to the collective.

Imagine you are a young reporter at CBS or the New York Times who has been taught at Columbia University that there is no truth, just competing narratives. Which narrative do you choose to report? The one that helps selfish robber barons who engage in conspicuous consumption and keep the working man oppressed as wage slaves? Or the one that turns us all into “volunteers” for the community and promotes selflessness?

In the end, we still face a philosophic challenge, whether the science of environmentalism is refuted or not.