He's Not A Scientist, But He Plays One In Films

One question, and one question only about the NYT's story today dressing down Al Gore for hyping up global warming hysteria:

Why didn't they run it before the Oscars?

The controversy regarding Gore's statements about the amount of ocean rise, the frequency of hurricanes and the level of blame to be placed on humans has been growing from much earlier in Gore's hype-history than the release of An Inconvenient Truth.

Check out this Canadian article from last June, that leads off with this quote:

"Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

That's from a professor at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at Australia's James Cook University. It ran in the Canadian Free Press; maybe the NYT missed that. But how could they miss the controversy over CNN's Glenn Beck's comment:

Now, what happened where this thing falls apart -- and it won't for most people who go to this movie -- is he then projects what's coming. Again, it's the projection that's the problem. See, when you take a little bit of truth and then you mix it with untruth, or your theory, that's where you get people to believe. You know? It's like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in "and it's the Jews' fault." That's where things get a little troublesome, and that's exactly what's happening. Now, if Al Gore's projection is right about the CO₂ level going as high as he says it will, then the temperature here on planet Earth will be about 400,000 degrees. We'll be the sun; we'll be the frickin sun. But that's a huge "if."

That was in June 2006.

The NYT waited until hype had conquered all, Al had his Oscar and the malleable easy-believers were firmly in the Warmie camp before they broke ranks with this article.

Obviously, the motivation was to be the hard-hitting truth-teller they see themselves being. But by waiting so long to tell the obvious story, they've merely proven that they can be trusted to be at the head of the journalistic pack, then grandstand by breaking out of it.