Oh hooray Walter Russell Mead has more.
Our original assessment holds. What impresses about Mead's latest emanation is how wonderfully puffball it is. Nowhere does Mead actually engage Al Gore on what Al Gore actually says. Here is the extent to which Mead manages to quote Gore directly:
Gore simply bellows: “What’s the matter you soul-dead, hired flack of the evil oil companies, don’t you believe in Science?”
Which is not, you know, something that Gore wrote, and so is not, er, a quote.
Mead is such a fucking weenie fraud.
Key graph.
The real issue here is not climate science. It is true that, as many critics attest, Gore fundamentally misstates the nature of the scientific discussion of climate change and, especially, the extremely complex questions associated with interventions in it. He overstates what is known, disregards the inherent uncertainties involved in the study of a complex system like the climate, understates the significance of the remaining gray areas, and demagogues the science to get more out of it than his case really merits. The contrast between the intellectually unscrupulous propaganda he makes (the green-friendly UK has ruled that Gore’s Oscar winning film can only be shown in schools if teachers alert students to its errors of scientific fact) and Gore’s self-presentation as a condescending, de haut en bas Great Explainer patiently enlightening the rubes so infuriates many of his opponents that they cannot help themselves. They start arguing with him about hockey sticks and CO2.
There is a lot of noise here, but only one testable claim about as to whether or not Gore is, you know, right on the science.
And that would be this: "the green-friendly UK has ruled that Gore’s Oscar winning film can only be shown in schools if teachers alert students to its errors of scientific fact."
Horseshit. I mean shit... The judge:
The judge concluded "I have no doubt that Dr Stott, the Defendant's expert, is right when he says that: "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate."
Mead in other words is demostrably guilty of talking crap, and yet his whole thesis is how Gore is a hypocrite.
Right.
Mead assaults Gore for being naive about ever thinking that somehow climate could be solved, but from a non-loony perspective, that argument falls apart into gibberish cynicism if Gore is correct on the science.
And Gore is. Broadly. Which should be good enough for government work.
That we have a political system that cowers hapless in the face of planetary calamity may provide yuks at Al Gore's expense, but from an "I don't want to die" point of view, there may be less fun on offer.