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Global Warming Deniers (and their extreme right-wing enablers) are showing their desperation. Rather than continue with simply confusing people with distortion of data (lies, damn lies, statistics, and statistics from Global Warming deniers), we have before us a case of deliberate doctoring of evidence to distort events. For too many in the American right wing, hatred of Al Gore exceeds any ability to or willingness to contemplate reality. Thus, the efforts for the creation of a new “reality” that is more acceptable to the deniers.

As well documented in the WonkRoom, the Business & Media Institutes has made waves with the right wing denial world with a distorted misrepresentation of an Al Gore interview on NPR. The distortion extended to splicing separation pieces of the interview together to create a sentence, comments that Gore never made. Of course, with this being the Right-Wing Sound Machine, the deception didn’t stop with BMI, but went to Drudge, Fox, and other venues.

What did BMI publish? That Al Gore had said

“The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

In fact, according to the Wonkroom’s analysis and documentation, this is a misrepresentation of what Gore said, since this is actually from two paragraphs (last sentence and first sentence). The “consequences” that Gore specifically speaks to: ice melting in the Artic.

To support misrepresenting and demeaning Gore, BMI used the tactic of splicing together several different segments from the interview in an audio clip to accompany their article. As Brad writes at the Wonkroom:

In fact, the audio clip has been doctored and the conclusion that “Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a ‘Consequence’ of Global Warming” is false:

Gore Says Myanmar Cyclone Not A Consequence Of Global Warming. The BMI headline ignores that Gore says in the interview that “any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming – we’ve always had hurricanes.”

Gore Properly Described Relationship Between Storms And Global Warming. In the interview, Gore discussed Nargis and the devastating storms that struck China in 2006 (Typhoon Saomai) and Bangladesh in 2007 (Cyclone Sidr). He goes on to say that “the emerging consensus” among climate scientists is that the “the trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming, and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”

Gore was, as is typical, very careful with what he said. And, his comments were meticulously accurate with the science.

Brad’s work, as always, is worth reading in the whole.  He has clearly documented an effort to move beyond distortion to falsification. 

Sign of desperation?

Now, besides the fact that this distortion has rocketed through the right wing, one has to wonder at the desperation that this implies.  So, look at the false quote:

“The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”

Oh, no, in this false splicing of Gore’s words, there is the suggestion that the Burma catastrophe is in line with Global Warming and could be considered a consequence of it. Again, Gore did not state this, but what if he had? What if?  Instead (and in fact) he made the cautious and accurate comments that we cannot link any specific weather event to Global Warming, but that what happened to Burma/Myanmar is in line with what we can expect to occur with an increasingly warming globe.

It’s also important to note that the emerging consensus among the climate scientists is even though any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming — we’ve always had hurricanes — nevertheless, the trend toward more Category 5 storms, the larger ones, the trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming. And specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection, energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.

Yet again, Al Gore spoke truth.  Truth.  Perhaps that is why the Right Wing is so scared of him.

Even so, perhaps a stronger linkage statement is legitimate. This is how I finished a discussion of whether we could link the unusual Super Tuesday tornadoes to Global Warming.

Thus, we absolutely cannot say, with any justifiable basis that I am aware of, that Global Warming caused the devastating Super Tuesday tornado outbreak, but we can, it seems, question whether human activities contributing to Global Warming fostered the atmospheric stew that resulted in the outbreak.

NOTE:  See Jeff Masters, Wunder Blog, for a discussion of Nargis, including the point that sea surface temperatures were a full degree centigrade above historical averages in the area where Nargis intensified before making landfall.  See Mitchell Anderson’s excellent discussion cyclones and climate.