It implodes, no matter where anyone starts to look at it beyond just quick glances into it. The slur itself is the second of just two pillars of support holding up the climate issue, namely 1) “the science is settled on how burning fossil fuels is the main driver of catastrophic global warming” and 2) “therefore, nobody has any obligation to listen to industry-paid shill scientists who’ve been directed to deceive the public through efforts to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.” Al Gore’s 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth” movie exemplifies that, he spent the first 72 minutes of the film with his ‘the science is settled’ claims, wrapping up all of that with a reference to Naomi Oreskes’ December 2004 Science magazine 100% consensus figure, which is not true in the least. Then he used that as a segue to imply a tiny handful of skeptic climate scientists were paid industry money to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” – he spelled out that exact phrase full screen in red letters, comparing it to a tobacco industry memo title. The late Washington Examiner columnist / “Undue Influence” book author writer Ron Arnold proved at his June 2016 LeftExposed piece how the ‘leaked memo directive’ containing that phrase was never implemented by anybody.
The elemental problem here, is that few people are aware of how vulnerable that second pillar is to total collapse, and how it not only imperils Vice President Gore’s legacy as a ‘climate crisis truth-teller,’ it imperils the entire climate issue. The key to getting the fatal crack started in that second pillar is to put Al Gore under oath and begin by asking him two questions: first, where did he get that ‘leaked industry memo’ phrase, and second – more importantly – did he ever make any efforts to check the veracity of it?
Because if he had done so, we would not see that same accusation as a core item of evidence about ‘industry disinfo campaigns,’ such as what’s seen in the January 2026-filed Michigan v BP lawsuit. Or what’s in weeks-old social media accusations.
Set aside any input Gore has on the science of global warming, if he has anything at all of his own ‘personal expertise’ to contribute. He claims in his movie that he became interested in global warming after being taught in a college class about carbon dioxide being a greenhouse gas from a specific professor, Dr Roger Revelle. As apparently revealed by filmaker Joel Gilbert, Gore’s claim there is quite likely a fabricated story (more on that here).
He may be able to explain his way out of that narrative derailment by saying his mis-remembered between his college class and the later time when he met Dr Revelle as a congressman. Arguably, however, that problem alone could be described as just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ when it comes to basic inconsistencies in Gore’s various climate issue narratives, which lead deeper to his false accusations about skeptic climate scientists.
The situation might go downhill at an exponential rate on where his biggest – and basically unexamined – vulnerability is found. He’s appeared in front of congressional hearings and been asked about his science claims. Nobody asked him about his dubious political accusations.
Among many questions to ask is when exactly he inserted the accusation about ‘industry-paid skeptic climate scientists’ into his pre-movie slide show. A Grist magazine 10-year retrospective back on his movie noted that Gore’s original slide show that evolved into become his 2006 movie was first assembled in 1989. I have little doubt that his first show presentations were on just the ‘settled science’ pillar of the issue. The Grist article says he was also gathering notes for is then-upcoming “Earth in the Balance” book, which was ultimately published on January 1, 1992 That’s where the problem starts.
For Gore to have have inserted the bit in his book’s page 360 Conclusion about a memo leaked to his Senate office regarding a ‘cynical coal industry advertising campaign targeting “older, less-educated males” and “young, lower-income women”’ – almost exactly the very same lines in the larger memo set which Ross Gelbspan most prominently brought to fame in his own 1997 “The Heat is On” book – Gore must have gotten those memos sometime earlier in 1991. The leaked memos themselves were first seen in public in late June 1991. So, if Gore had time for his slideshow presentations in the summer of 1991, the question would be if it stopped being one with just one pillar of support holding it up, and became a “science is settled” / “don’t listen to crooked skeptic scientists” show at that time. If not then, how soon after?
The memo pages about such a narrowly-focused ad campaign audience (with words which are identical to what’s in Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”) are certainly part of the “reposition global warming” set which – again as the late Ron Arnold proved, and which can be corroborated by the still-living members of that ad campaign – was never implemented anywhere.
Al Gore’s movie companion book for “An Inconvenient Truth” clearly credits “Pulitzer winner” Gelbspan with the discovery of the “reposition global warming” memo. The question there is whether Gore was implying Gelbspan discovered just that one memo page, or did that assertion apply to the entire [unsolicited, rejected] memo set? And did Gore actually not know that Gelbspan never won a Pulitzer?
More questions abound on this particular matter – unless Ross Gelbspan made prior mentions of that memo set privately somewhere, the earliest I’ve found of him ever mentioning that [rejected] memo set’s strategy phrase and targeting goal was in November 1995. However, in one of Gelbspan’s last-ever articles written as a reporter for the Boston Globe in late May 1992, he mentioned ‘contrarian’ scientist Dr S Fred Singer and quoted Gore directly on Gore’s anger against anyone who questioned the certainty of the ‘settled science.’
Just 52 days prior to Gelbspan’s Globe article at a Senate hearing, Al Gore grilled skeptic climate scientist Dr Sherwood Idso about receiving money from the Western Fuels Association (WFA) coal company. Dr Idso was noted in just one solitary reference within Greenpeace’s scans collection of the actual ICE campaign docs / rejected “reposition global warming” memo set docs, with no indication if he was actually used for an interview appearance during that PR campaign.
That same year – 1992 – Al Gore’s alleged college class ‘mentor,’ Dr Roger Revelle, essentially recanted his position about CO2 being a primary driver of global warming in an article co-authored with Dr S Fred Singer and Dr Chauncey Starr. Gore evidently did not view nuclear physicist Dr Starr as a threat to his climate issue agenda; he certainly did view Dr Singer as a huge threat, which Marc Sheppard detailed in his 2006 American Thinker article “Gore’s Grave New World,” and which Dr Singer detailed in his own account of the situation, “The Revelle-Gore Story – Attempted Political Suppression of Science.” Basically, as both stories describe, Gore dispatched an assistant to assail Dr Singer over supposedly conning Dr Revelle into recanting his position about CO2. Dr Singer prevailed in a defamation lawsuit against Gore’s assistant ……. and there is a connection to Ross Gelbspan on that angle, which I detailed here – Gore’s assistant completely, although perhaps inadvertently, undercut Gelbspan’s tale of when Gelbspan started investigating ‘corrupt’ scientists such as Dr Singer.
Skip forward just two years to February 2024, where Al Gore attempted to prompt ABC News Nightline’s Ted Koppel into castigating mainly Dr S Fred Singer for having an alleged association with the WFA, along with Dr Patrick Michaels – a genuine participant in the actual WFA PR campaign … and Dr Sherwood Idso, where Gore must have told Koppel where to find his specific Senate video hearing where he questioned Dr Idso about WFA funding.
That effort with Ted Koppel didn’t work out well for then-Vice President Al Gore. As I detailed here (ironically using the Nightline video very oddly uploaded to Youtube by one of the main promulgators of the “crooked skeptic scientists” accusation), Koppel ultimately ended up castigating Al Gore for using the tactic of character assassination as a means to distract the public away from taking skeptic climate scientists seriously.
Nevertheless, the person which Al Gore likely viewed as ‘the most dangerous man on the plenet’ – at least concerning efforts to convince the public that global warming was a threat to the planet – needed to be silenced by any means possible.
The question needs to be asked – since Ross Gelbspan said more than once that he started in 1995 to dig into the energy company funding of skeptic climate scientists, how much of a problem is it that Gore’s assistant flatly stated that Gelbspan began that effort in the spring of 1994? Mere weeks after Gore’s flameout appearance on Koppel’s Nightline program?
Skip all the way forward to Al Gore’s off-camera appearance at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, where he flatly implied that the “reposition global warming” memo phrase was an effort orchestrated by Exxon, despite how his 1992 “Earth in the Balance” book credited the memos to coal industry efforts. What’s up with that contradiction?
Al Gore gets hit on random occasions over his ‘carbon footprint hypocrisy,’ and he was obligated in 2013 to make the rounds on news programs to explain his way out of his hole of selling his cable TV operation to a so-called ‘news group’ which was funded by Middle Eastern oil and gas interests.
Imagine the fallout if he were to face real inquisitors having major investigative power, where he’d be held accountable for explaining what’s behind one of the only two pillars holding up the entire climate issue, and where the people are unlikely to give a pass to any artful attempts on his part to dodge the questions.