If you are a nationally or internationally recognized hero / heroine who’s exposing a crisis situation caused by bad operators that not enough of the public is aware of, and you decide to tel the story of what specific event led you onto your current heroic path, that event had better not be something which somebody will say, “wait a minute, that is not the way it actually happened.” Because if someone does, and presents compelling enough evidence which totally undermines your oft-repeated narratives about what inspired you to do what you do, increasing amounts of people who trusted you are going to wonder what else you’ve said are embellishments or outright fabrications designed to make you look heroic.
Such is the major problem presented in Joel Gilbert’s ‘unauthorized bio-pic “The Climate According to A.I. Al Gore.” (available now for DVD or live streaming purchase). The setup is elemental: Al Gore himself does not like questions from anyone he suspects is an unfriendly interviewer, so filmmaker director Gilbert’s opted to ask an A.I. version of Gore to tell his life story and then to answer some tough questions about the climate issue angle of his saga. But that’s not all —this film reveals a huge legacy-crippling problem in Gore’s longtime ‘hero’ story he tells concerning what exactly propelled him into the climate issue. At GelbspanFiles, I’ve detailed the legacy-crippling problems of the others who’ve told heroic tales of how they got into the issue, along with briefly mentioning a key problem with Gore’s outrage against industry entities that allegedly sought to “reposition global warming as theory.” What follows below is how these ‘hero/heroine’ stories all seem to dovetail together in a much more troubling manner now.
I wish I’d known about this movie project before its August 2024 movie release (hat tip to Marc Morano’s ClimateDepot earlier last week about it). I would’ve suggested that director Gilbert could briefly explore Gore’s long time enslavement to the accusation he’s pushed for many years implying ‘leaked industry documents’ prove skeptic climate scientists were paid to ‘deceptively reposition global warming.’ I’ve covered that fault in depth here at GelbspanFiles; the accusation is false. I’m certain director Gilbert would have independently confirmed that, and could have made his fictional ‘A.I. Gore’ squirm more, beyond the other crippling problem revealed in the film about Gore’s ‘hero story.’ Yes – how an artificial intelligence version of Gore answers tough questions is one thing; how the genuine Al Gore would fare on this matter if compelled to appear under oath as a witness at congressional hearings is quite another. Let me explain the overarching problem:
Even with the absence of Gore’s false accusation in the film, the other revelation in the film regarding Gore’s ‘hero story’ derailment, which I will show below, now further emphasizes the fatal problem of three other prominent key figures in the climate issue who apparently tell false ‘hero stories’ about themselves, and who also hurled the identical accusation about skeptic climate scientists participating in industry disinformation campaigns.
First, regarding those others hurling the liars-for-hire accusation – the namesake of my blog Ross Gelbspan along with Naomi Oreskes and Gore, plus Gore’s longtime spokesperson – I used their ‘story-telling’ problems in my Feb 2022 blog post to illustrate the same major problem involving John Passacantando, one more key figure who’s hurled the identical accusation, and who recently factors into behind-the-scenes efforts against Exxon. In a nutshell: all of their narratives are inconsistent.
Worse, for Gelbspan and Oreskes in particular, it appears their stories of what started them on their heroic path of ‘exposing corruption’ may be outright fabrications. From my title for this blog post, readers here may already have guessed where this is leading. I’ll review again, for the benefit of newly arrived readers at my blog here:
• Gelbspan claims that as a retired reporter, he 1), was prompted pretty much out-of-the-blue to co-author an article about global warming aggravating the spread of insect-born disease; but, 2), as he narrates here, criticism from readers sent him into reading what skeptic climate scientists had to say; 3) it prompted him to decide the global warming issue was overblown; however, 4) feeling a sense of duty to other ‘mainstream scientists’ who he had appointments to speak to, this (somehow) led to his ‘discovery’ that skeptic scientists were crooks and were going to be obligated under oath to disclose their industry funding.
Problem is, as I mapped out here, his timeline for all of this appears to be virtually impossible. Far worse, an associate of Al Gore said Gelbspan embarked on that ‘effort’ to expose the corruption of skeptics (explained here) well over a year earlier than what Gelbspan claims was the start time of his ‘investigation.’ This contradiction is seemingly, albeit inadvertently, corroborated by an unrelated environmental figure. Nothing in Gelbspan’s story, designed to make himself look like a hero, line up right. Not helping him at all is the “Pulitzer winner” accolade is always falsely attributed to him.
• Oreskes tells the tale of how she 1) was invited in 2003 to present a lecture at a February 2004 AAAS “George Sarton Memorial” symposium; 2) she put a single slide in it quantifying a 100% science consensus result for man-caused global warming; 3) was inspired so much by the positive reaction to that single slide that she, 4), wrote a study on that quantification for publication in Science magazine; 5) it was published in December 2004; 6) her study was subsequently attacked by scientist(s) she did not know; 7) at a subsequent conference in Germany, she was alerted by Erik Conway that the person / people – plural – attacking her was / were also the attacker(s) of a someone else who had offered a controversial assessment of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
The crippling problem there is that for the event at #6 to happen the way she describes it multiple various ways, Erik Conway’s alert of who the ‘attackers’ were of her December 2004 study would’ve required a time machine to happen. The German conference she speaks of happened in July 2004. There is no doubt on this fact; she shows only one German conference in her CV where Conway also appeared, and Conway additionally confirmed the summer date in a video interview, but then he actually flat contradicted her story. I’ve detailed this in a series of blog posts; On top of that, her other mutually exclusive tale about this same situation is inconsistent among the variations she tells. Nothing in Oreskes’ stories, designed to make her look like a heroine, line up right.
Regarding to Al Gore, I’d previously noted that he was at least minimally inconsistent on attributing the (never implemented anywhere) “reposition global warming” memos to a source; he’d said 1) at a 2008 Davos conference off-camera appearance the the memos were the product of Exxon; 2) while his companion book for his 2006 movie noted Ross Gelbspan had discovered the memo; 3) Gelbspan noted how the “reposition” directive for a public relations campaign additionally included targeting the messaging of the campaign at “older less-educated men” and “young, low-income women”; however, 4) Gore quoted the PR campaign targeting phrases in his 1992 “Earth in the Balance” book years before Gelbspan had ever spoke of them, saying the documents were leaked to his Senate office from a coal association. Not Exxon.
Now, here’s the detail from “Earth in the Balance” that I’d overlooked, along with practically everyone else, which film director Joel Gilbert has brought to light: Let’s first set up what the problem is: On page 4 of his introduction in the book, Gore says,
I was introduced to the idea of a global environmental threat as a young student when one of my college professors was the first person in the world to monitor carbon dioxide (C02) in the atmosphere. Roger Revelle had …
The tale continues on page 5:
In the middle 1960s Revelle shared with the students in his undergraduate course on population the dramatic results of the first eight years of measurements: the concentrations of CO2 were increasing rapidly …
And on page 6, Gore doubled down on this tale:
… Twelve years later, as a young congressman, I invited Professor Revelle to be the lead-off witness at the first congressional hearing on global warming. Remembering the power of his warning, I assumed that if he just laid out the facts as clearly as he had back in that college class …
There is no mistaking Al Gore’s intent there. He learned about CO2 from his college class. But as film director Joel Gilbert lays out starting at the 25 minute point of his “A.I. Gore” documentary film, the University of California San Diego Geisel Library’s “Special Collections & Archives” collection on Dr Revelle gives no indication whatsoever that Revelle’s course offered any content at all about CO2. It was entirely about population concerns, as Gilbert further explains in that film segment, showing the actual library archive course outline, lecture notes, and the reading list for the course, and the course’s final exam.
Al Gore’s heroic clarion call about the global warming issue stems from his claim of learning about from Roger Revelle in a college class. It appears Gore’s story is a fabrication.
It’s bothersome that the head of Ozone Action, where the “reposition global warming” memos started receiving growing and lasting media traction, may have fabricated his claim about being at the 1992 startup of the Ozone Action organization. Evidence suggests he was not, contrary to the widespread inconsistent story he tells.
It’s an increment more bothersome – albeit arguably purely coincidental if this was only one more example – that Ross Gelbspan, who co-equally ‘obtained’ those “reposition” memos with Ozone Action, may have fabricated his own hero story of how he re-entered the climate issue.
It becomes significantly more problematic that Naomi Oreskes has the identical memos in her 2008 Powerpoint presentation and the identical (worthless) “Chicken Little” newspaper advertorial that Passacantando’s Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action has, ……. and that she also has apparently fabricated her heroine story.
Now we seem to have this far larger problem with Al Gore’s hero story. The connecting thread — in Gore’s 1992 book and movie / in Passacantando’s Ozone Action / in Gelbspan’s book / and in Oreskes’ 2008 PPT slide show and her 2021 UK Guardian article — is a worthless memo directive / particular PR audience targets who were never targeted / and worthless newspaper ads.
Think about it: what are the odds that four separate prominent enviro-heroes – who all use an identical set of evidence to say the fossil fuel industry deceived the public – appear to be caught fabricating their personal stories on how they started in this climate issue? And that same ‘evidence set’ items are in the Sher Edling law firm’s “ExxonKnew” lawsuits?
Somebody ought to dive deep onto a Federal-level investigation to see whether an unbroken line can be drawn straight from Al Gore’s 1991-’92 Senate office through the late Ross Gelbspan, Passacantando’s Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action, and Oreskes, to the Sher Edling lawsuits.
Oh, wait, Senator Cruz and Rep Comer are already investigating Sher Edling.
Maybe Al Gore can dig his way out of his Roger Revelle hole by saying, “Well, I must have mis-remembered where I learned about CO2, and it was not actually in his class …”
But how is he going to explain his way out of saying Ross Gelbspan ‘discovered’ the famous memo directive in a set that he – Gore – already had, and how is he going to explain his name-drop of Naomi Oreskes at a 2016 NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman press conference, where this is the same AG whose attorneys met a year earlier with Passacantando and his Greenpeace USA / Ozone Action subordinate about suing Exxon? That former subordinate supplying Sher Edling with worthless docs and that Oreskes who’s on retainer with Sher Edling, by the way.
All just sheer coincidence? Really?
But what happens if Davies, Passacantando, and Oreskes ultimately find themselves between a rock and a hard place while under oath at a Senate/House hearing and potentially face prosecution?
Just askin’.
