Year 2, Month 9, Day 22: He Told You So

The Whittier Daily News reports approvingly on Al Gore’s 24-hour climate reality marathon:

NO one packs more information into a slide show than Al Gore, who won an Oscar for his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006.

Gore, the leading voice on global climate change, was back at it last week with his 24-hour streaming video show “Climate Reality Project” (www.climaterealityproject.org) broadcast from 24 different locations in 13 languages Sept. 14 to Sept. 15.

While one right-wing blogger called it “death by PowerPoint,” I found it informative and worth a watch. If you missed it, you can catch re-runs on his website and on his Current TV channel. Not one fact will move you to act, but perhaps the avalanche of facts, quotes and paraphrases from just the “24th hour” presentation given by Gore himself from New York, will.

The link has an excellent set of bullet points that you would do well to copy and use over and over.

Sent September 18:

The corporate forces aligned to muffle Al Gore’s message are enormous. Through the misleading practice of false equivalency, in which two opposing sides are equated under the guise of journalism, many in our news and opinion media have abdicated their responsibility to the truth.

When the American public sees a one-to-one ratio of worried climate scientists and petro-funded denialists, it’s no wonder that there’s still “debate” on the veracity of climate change. But the correct proportion isn’t one-to-one; it’s more like ninety-seven to one. If ninety-seven heart specialists told you to quit smoking, and three said they wanted more tests…what would you do?

While some candidates explicitly reject science (or pretend to in order to curry the favor of primary voters), climate change’s terrifying consequences should remove this issue from the political arena. The vast majority of climatologists are telling us something important. Will we wake up and pay attention?

Warren Senders