Gore went back on ABC to defend his old climate film
Former Vice President Al Gore sat down with ABC News to mark 20 years since An Inconvenient Truth, and he arrived with the usual confidence that only a long-running media echo chamber can provide. Gore said the main parts of the film were confirmed by science and brushed aside criticism as cherry-picking, even as the interview touched on forecasts that did not hold up the way he had promised. The message was familiar: trust the experts, ignore the awkward parts, and please do not look too closely at the old clips.
The internet brought the receipts, as it often does
X users quickly lined up the old claims that have followed Gore for years. Those included warnings about an ice-free Arctic, disappearing snow on Mount Kilimanjaro, Glacier National Park fading away, dramatic sea level rise, and polar bears drowning in large numbers. Some of those predictions were made with great confidence and repeated often, which is a common feature of public alarm. The less common feature is accountability. That part tends to go missing right after the headlines do.
ABC asked the question, then helped carry the luggage
The interviewer did raise a fair point by asking why so much criticism had followed the film if the science was supposedly so solid. Gore answered that critics had focused on a few small forecast issues, which is a tidy way to describe a record that includes some very specific misses. ABC then moved along as if the subject had been resolved by tone of voice instead of evidence. That is modern broadcast journalism in a nutshell. Ask a hard question, then hand the guest a pillow and call it balance.
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