The Ordeal

June 30, 2006

Gore’s Grave New World
Marc Sheppard


Imagine, if you can, a modern society in which scientists positing
theories contrary to those accepted by agents of the government are
declared heretics and swiftly punished. Ray Bradbury imagined one in
his novel “Fahrenheit 451,� as did Pierre Boulle in “Planet of
the Apes.� Unfortunately, Al Gore has also envisioned such a culture
– ours.


Gore first introduced us to his one-time Harvard professor, Dr. Roger
Revelle in his 1992 book, “Earth in the Balance,“ and refers to him

again in his new film, "An Inconvenient Truth.� He credits the
professor with being the man who originally influenced his views
regarding the dangers of global warming. The implication is, therefore,

made that his mentor also blames everything but nature for shifting
global weather patterns.


It is true that Dr. Revelle’s early research papers exploring the
relationship between rising atmospheric CO2 levels and global
temperatures are considered by many to be the opening salvo in the
global warming debate.


And yet, based on his new movie, Gore would appear to have suffered
convenient selective amnesia when telling the story of his guru and
erstwhile college professor. You see, when Dr. Revelle co-authored an
article [1] entitled “What to Do About Greenhouse Warming: Look
Before you Leap,� which appeared in the April 1991 issue of Cosmos
magazine, the student’s treatment of the teacher was anything but
reverent.


Regrettably, Dr. Revelle died three months after the article, which
concluded that “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too
uncertain to justify drastic action at this time,� was published. Its

contrarian message – that Earth was, in fact, not in the balance. As
luck would have it for Gore, the reaction to the original article and
its conclusions was quite lukewarm. This was likely due to the limited
readership of the magazine at that time.


However, when the piece was cited over a year later in a New Republic
article by Gregg Easterbrook, the climate got decidedly warmer. You
see, the piece also suggested that Gore, "the bright light of political

environmentalism, seems increasingly to believe that the only correct
stance is to press the panic button on every issue."


As described by one of Revelle’s coauthors, Dr. S. Fred Singer in his

personal account [2], “The Revelle-Gore Story:�


“The contradiction between what Senator Gore wrote about what he
learned from Dr. Revelle and what Dr. Revelle had written in the
"Cosmos" article embarrassed Senator Gore, who had become the leading
candidate for the vice presidential slot of the Democratic Party.�


Dr. Singer recalls a phone call he received from Dr. Justin Lancaster,
one of Dr. Revelle's former associates, on July 20, 1992. During that
conversation, Lancaster first requested, then demanded that Singer
remove Revelle’s name from a forthcoming inclusion of their article
in a global warming anthology to be edited by Dr. Richard Geyer. Said
Dr. Singer:


“When I refused his request, Dr. Lancaster stepped up the pressure on

me. First at a memorial symposium for Dr. Revelle at Harvard in the
fall of 1992 and in a lengthy footnote to his written remarks at that
event, he suggested that Dr. Revelle had not really been a coauthor and

made the ludicrous claim that I had put his name on the paper as a
coauthor ‘over his objections.’ “


“Subsequently, Dr. Anthony D. Socci, a member of Senator Gore’s
staff, made similar outrageous accusations in a lengthy letter to the
publishers of the Geyer volume, requesting that the Cosmos article be
dropped.�


A libel suit was filed in April of 1993, prompted by Lancaster’s
words, which also included suggestions that Singer’s purpose in
listing Revelle as a co-author was "to undermine the pro-Revelle stance

of [then] Sen. Gore." It was revealed during the suit’s discovery
period that Gore had called Lancaster shortly after learning of the New

Republic article. Numerous links between Gore, Gore’s staff, and the
actions of Lancaster were also discovered, as were the latter’s
myriad mistruths, misdeeds, and material misstatements.


But Gore’s was not a single-front assault plan. As Jonathan Adler
wrote in the Washington Times on July 27, 1994:


“Concurrent with Mr. Lancaster's attack on Mr. Singer, Mr. Gore
himself led a similar effort to discredit the respected scientist. Mr.
Gore reportedly contacted 60 Minutes and Nightline to do stories on Mr.

Singer and other opponents of Mr. Gore's environmental policies. The
stories were designed to undermine the opposition by suggesting that
only raving ideologues and corporate mouthpieces could challenge Mr.
Gore's green gospel. The strategy backfired. When Nightline did the
story, it exposed the vice president's machinations and compared his
activities to Lysenkoism: The Stalinist politicization of science in
the former Soviet Union.�


In fact, the 2/24/94 "Nightline" edition which Adler refers to included

a segment-end wherein the host, Ted Koppel, said (jaw-agape emphasis
mine):


“There is some irony in the fact that Vice President Gore, one of the

most scientifically literate men to sit in the White House in this
century, that he is resorting to political means to achieve what should

ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis.�


Yet, even in the face of Gore’s blatant abuse of public office, the
suit was, ultimately, settled. On 4/29/1994, Dr. Lancaster issued a
statement in which he "fully and unequivocally" retracted his claims
against Dr. Singer. Gore’s dystopian attempts aside, the Geyer volume

did, indeed, include the Revelle, Singer, and Starr piece – with all
attributions present and accounted for.


But this was neither the first nor the last time that Gore would flex
his political muscle in order to salvage both his sham science agenda
and his similarly questionable credibility.


Shortly after the 1992 release of his book, then Senator Gore ran
hearings reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition. Before his committee,
scientists who disagreed with his junk science beliefs were put to the
rack and urged to recant. One scientist forced to face Interrogator Al
was Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in
the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.


Dr. Lindzen was and is a well known vocal critic of the seriousness of
a human-induced global warming threat. That, and his reputation for
questioning the motivations of his easily swayed brother scientists,
made him a prime candidate for the spectacle of public conversion.


In an interview [3] with Mike Miliard of "The Phoenix," he recalled:


“Gore would run star-chamber hearings and invite the heads of funding

agencies while he would try to get scientists [who doubted climate
change’s severity] to recant. . . . Everyone in the �eld knows
[that] when the funding went up to $2 billion a year under Bush the
elder, that money didn’t come because people thought climate was a
wonderful thing. It came because of alarm.�


In a piece appearing in the "Seattle Times" on 10/4/1992 headlined "The

Science of Distortion -- Good, Evil and Sen. Albert Gore -- Show Trials

Used Against Scientists Who Aren’t Sure the Apocalypse Is Near,"
Patrick J. Michaels, Professor of Environmental Sciences University of
Virginia, reported:


“Lindzen recently told one of Gore's hearings that the data didn't
support one of his many proposed ideas to explain the already obvious
failure of the forecasts of climate gloom and doom. ‘Lindzen has
recanted,’ one of Gore's staffers crowed.�


Of course, there had been no such recantation and, Lindzen, reportedly,

is still quite angry about the incident, calling the episode "bizarrely

dishonest.� In fact, 14 years later, he is still an outspoken critic
of those who would stifle scientific knowledge through tools of
intimidation. Additionally, as a minority dissenter on the various
scientific panels on which he sits, he is regularly misrepresented as
having “recanted.� This vote-rigging trick of Gore’s MSM
accomplices is well examined [4] in Robert W. Tracinski’s “The
Scientist Trap.�


Lindzen himself explains how “global-warming alarmists intimidate
dissenting scientists into silence� in his 4/12/06 article [5],
“Climate of Fear�:


“Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds

disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry
stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate
change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that

supposedly is their basis.�


So, effectively, Gore’s intimidation tactics over the course of the
last decade and a half have achieved his desired goal through a
menacing combination of politics, words and financial control. At a
glance, it would certainly appear that a significant number of American

scientists have been molded into obedient, PC puppets. Unfortunately,
as Dr. Lindzen states in his article, “this is only the tip of a
non-melting iceberg.�


“In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the
Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific
underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of

the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin,

first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning
climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and
Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing

climate-research funding for raising questions.�


If Dr. Lindzen is correct in his contentions, and there certainly
exists every reason to believe that he is, then, how can we possibly
hope to ever learn the truth about Earth’s climatology? Or, for that
matter, any other science which has been hijacked by the PC police?
What are the real dangers of AIDS? What are the long term health risks
of abortion for the mother? What do we really know about the evils of
DDT? What other junk might our scientists be feeding us as a byproduct
of the struggle to remain funded and unbridled?


In his brilliant 1977 essay, “Asimov's Corollary,� the great author

and biochemist Isaac Asimov wrote:


"If a scientific heresy is ignored or denounced by the general public,
there is a chance it may be right. If a scientific heresy is
emotionally supported by the general public, it is almost certainly
wrong."


How many times has that statement proven itself to be correct? Consider

Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin when evaluating the first sentence; then

UFO’s, ghosts, Astrology, ESP and other psychic phenomena for the
second.


Fortunately, it has been the customary burden of true men of science to

maintain stewardship over these truths. Asimov continues:


"It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right,
but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong....It is those who

support ideas for emotional reasons only who can't change.�


What will become of us in the Orwellian world fashioned by Gore and his

PC mercenaries when compromised scientists represent the majority? I
shudder to think……..


Further Reading:


[1] http://www.sepp.org/glwarm/cosmos.html
[2]
http://www.hoover.org/publications/b...cience/283.pdf
[3] http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid13761.aspx
[4] http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=945
[5] http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220


###


Marc Sheppard is a business owner, software developer and writer
residing on New York's Long Island. He is a regular contributor to
Opinion Editorials, The New Media Journal and Men’s News Daily. His
articles and commentary have also appeared in The American Thinker and
other Conservative and Libertarian websites.



The Hammered Astronomer wrote:
Here is a link directly to
the page it is on:

http://theastropost.com/This%20And%20That.html




Who the hell is Cathy?