No, really
(Politico) POLITICO’s Michael Grunwald recently sat down with Al Gore in Miami during a training conference for the newest version of his climate-change slide show. The following is a transcript of their conversation.
MG: It was amazing seeing your slide show nine years later. It seems like the biggest difference is: There’s tons of proof and tons of hope. Maybe more proof than hope.
AG: All the predictions of the scientists have come true in spades, except it’s now abundantly obvious that they erred on the conservative side. The process of science values caution, as it should. But it’s abundantly apparent from all the real-world evidence that the projections back then were way too conservative. The damage is widespread and accelerating. And yes, the second big difference in the slide show is that the potential for renewable energy and efficiency and battery storage to replace the carbon-based energy system, which was speculative nine years ago, is now racing ahead on an exponential curve that is absolutely thrilling.
Remember this one?
Five years ago at a UN Conference on Climate Change, Al Gore predicted that, global warming having reached such an unbridled pitch, the North Pole might be completely ice-free during the summer of 2014. This climate change crusader had made the same claim when he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Was he right? Let’s take a look.
FYI, it wasn’t ice free. Nor was it ice free in 2015. Or any of the other years they claimed would be ice free.
They’ve been predicting the “climate change tipping point” for 25 years, yet it hasn’t come to pass. They told us that school kids wouldn’t know what snow is. We were told that the big 2005 hurricane season would be the new normal. We were told that Superstrom Sandy would be the new normal. Nope.
Here’s a post on failed predictions. And another. And another. And another. And another. And here’s the biggest fail of all
