I am a senior environmental science student conducting research on the global warming issue. Particularly, I am interested in raising public awareness of Vice President Al Gore's knowledge in the area of global warming. I would like to ask your candid opinion on the following question: Is Al Gore's stand on global warming backed by sound scientific data, or is he simply speaking about a subject about which he does not have a firm understanding?
Submitted by: Matthew Barlow
Answer:
With respect to the first part of your question, we do not believe that the position Al Gore has taken on this issue is backed by sound scientific data. He and many others, however, do. Hence, controversy surrounds the issue and seems destined not to abate anytime soon.
With respect to the second part of your question, we are confident that Al Gore has a fairly good grasp of the subject matter, although we disagree with his contention that the warming of the last century or so has been driven by the concomitant rise in the air's CO2 concentration. Hence, we also do not believe that reducing CO2 emissions will have any impact on earth's climate, again contrary to the stand he has taken on the issue.
Clearly, equally informed and conscientious people hold different views on this subject, as do uninformed and not-so-conscientious people (see our Vol. 2, No. 9 Editorial Commentary Where is Truth?). We have no way of knowing, however, exactly where the Vice President falls along this spectrum. We know he is informed. We would hope he is conscientious. We believe he is wrong.
It should also be recognized that these same things could be said about us, and probably are. And that's why talk is cheap. Anyone can say anything. And if your pulpit's big enough, and your sermon's scary enough, and you repeat it long enough, you can make a lot of converts. But if you want to know the truth, you've got to get past the rhetoric and into the data: what are they and what do they mean? These are the questions we try to broach in each issue of our web site. And we give full citations to the peer-reviewed scientific literature we review in this context, so you can go to the original sources and determine for yourself whether or not we have fairly represented their findings.
Of course, folks on the other side of the issue can make the same claims. So it all boils down to this: you've got to go to the data yourself and make your own determination if you're ever going to be sure of anything. Truth does not come easy; you've got to work for it. Trust us. Or perhaps we should say: Don't trust us!
And don't trust Al Gore either.