#1 In 2008, Al Gore boldly declared to a German audience that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.” (Needless to say, that did not happen. In fact, the ice cap in the Arctic actually got larger this year.)
#2 “CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally. … Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.” (Actually, without carbon dioxide life on earth would not exist.)
#3 “The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say, ‘Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it’s not a problem.’ If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action.” (It sounds like what Al Gore really needs is more cowbell.)
#4 During a speech at NYU Law School in 2006, Al Gore made the following statement: “Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several “tipping points” that could — within as little as 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization.”
#5 “Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.”
#6 “The interior of the earth is extremely hot – several million degrees.” (It actually peaks out at about 11,000 degrees.)
#7 “There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming.”
#8 “It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.”
#9 “The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more — if more should be required — the future of human civilization is at stake.”
#10 “We ought to approach this challenge [of global warming] with a sense of profound joy and gratitude: that we are the generation about which, a thousand years from now, philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying, they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future.”