Former US Vice President, Al Gore, stated in a Time Magazine interview and in a recent presentation that climate change deniers and the so-called birthers—those who refuse to accept that President Obama was born in the US despite clear evidence—are similar. The implication being that both groups are denying clear evidence and creating a “struggle over what is a fact and what is not”.
Politico
reports that Gore told a Jewish social justice conference that “it hurts our country to have such a sharp partisan divide over the basic facts” where “questions of fact became questions of power.”
Gore made a similar point last month in an interview with Time Magazine.
“[The birthers] so closely resembles the willful refusal of climate skeptics to accept the truth of the climate crisis. It’s like the Moynihan quote: ‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.’ For me the [climate change] case was made a long time ago. But the political chapter contains one of the most startling facts about this. [He shows an illustration indicating that 19% of college-educated Republicans believe in climate change, compared to 75% of college-educated Democrats.] That difference is astonishing, and it also echoes the birther controversy,” Gore told Time.
Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the Earth is warming. During the 20th Century, global surface temperatures rose by a minimum of 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degrees Celsius) and up to 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius). Temperatures continue to rise: the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record since 1880 when rigorous temperature recording began. Last year was also among the warmest years on record. Additional lines of evidence have been rigorously studied, including shrinking Arctic sea ice, melting glaciers, migrating species, earlier springs, rising sea levels, and increasing extreme weather events among others.
Experts overwhelmingly conclude that rising temperatures are largely due to a rise in greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels to widespread deforestation.
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