I appreciate the detailed information Mark, I've read all of that 
before, which is what lead to my reaction.  I think the most accurate 
portrayal of Algore in recent times is the "Manbearpig" episode of South Park.

At 09:40 PM 9/20/2006, Mark Wonsil wrote:
> > You're doing yourself a significant disservice by letting your prejudices
> > overpower your good judgement.
>
>Shawn's reaction is understandable in the sense that, rightly or wrongly[1],
>Al Gore has a reputation for exaggeration and hyperbole.
>
>I honestly didn't know much about Al Gore when he became Vice President but my
>first post-election exposure was memorable. It was the vote on the tax
>increase of 1993 - President Clinton's first major legislative act. Arms were
>twisted and breaking in the halls of Congress. The measure passed in the House
>by a single vote and the Senate tied until VP Gore broke the tie. You cannot
>pass a law in the United States by a slimmer margin. Vice President Gore was
>interviewed immediately afterward and declared that the tax increase was a
>clear mandate. Even the interviewer (Bob Schieffer IIRC) cocked his head and
>chuckled. Little did I know at the time that this would haunt Gore later when
>he ran for President.
>
>http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gore
>...
>Whether it was the misreported assertion that he'd invented the Internet or
>the ridiculously exaggerated brouhaha over his quickly corrected claim that he
>and his wife, Tipper, were models for the young lovers in Erich Segal's
>best-selling novel Love Story, Gore's close friends and admirers agree that
>Gore has a penchant for hyperbole. But in last year's election, the press
>elevated this relatively minor personality quirk into a character-defining
>issue.
>...
>
>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E3DD1630F931A15751C0A9669C8
>B63
>
>Arlie Schardt (Op-Ed, Feb. 16) seems irked by the fact that some news outlets
>are quoting a long-forgotten memo that he sent to Al Gore in 1988, when he was
>Mr. Gore's campaign press secretary. ''Your main pitfall is exaggeration,''
>Mr. Schardt wrote. Mr. Schardt looks to excuse Mr. Gore's exaggerations about
>himself based on the heat of the moment. But the fact that Mr. Schardt found
>it necessary to write the memo, even as ''pre-emptive advice,'' belies his
>contention that Mr. Gore doesn't have a problem with exaggeration.
>
>SAM BIRNBAUM
>Oceanside, N.Y., Feb. 16, 2000
>
>This next clip is from a quite positive review of an Inconvenient Truth. There
>are many comments attached and worth a read if you have an hour to kill:
>
>http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299
>...
>There are a few scientific errors that are important in the film. At one point
>Gore claims that you can see the aerosol concentrations in Antarctic ice cores
>change "in just two years", due to the U.S. Clean Air Act. You can't see dust
>and aerosols at all in Antarctic cores -- not with the naked eye -- and I'm
>skeptical you can definitively point to the influence of the Clean Air Act. I
>was left wondering whether Gore got this notion, and I hope he'll correct it
>in future versions of his slideshow. Another complaint is the juxtaposition of
>an image relating to CO2 emissions and an image illustrating invasive plant
>species. This is misleading; the problem of invasive species is predominantly
>due to land use change and importation, not to "global warming". Still, these
>are rather minor errors. It is true that the effect of reduced leaded gasoline
>use in the U.S. does clearly show up in Greenland ice cores; and it is also
>certainly true that climate change could exacerbate the problem of invasive
>species.
>
>Several of my colleagues complained that a more significant error is Gore's
>use of the long ice core records of CO2 and temperature (from oxygen isotope
>measurements) in Antarctic ice cores to illustrate the correlation between the
>two. The complaint is that the correlation is somewhat misleading, because a
>number of other climate forcings besides CO2 contribute to the change in
>Antarctic temperature between glacial and interglacial climate. Simply
>extrapolating this correlation forward in time puts the temperature in 2100
>A.D. somewhere upwards of 10 C warmer than present -- rather at the extreme
>end of the vast majority of projections (as we have discussed here). However,
>I don't really agree with my colleagues' criticism on this point. Gore is
>careful not to state what the temperature/CO2 scaling is. He is making a
>qualitative point, which is entirely accurate. The fact is that it would be
>difficult or impossible to explain past changes in temperature during the ice
>age cycles without CO2 changes (as we have discussed here). In that sense, the
>ice core CO2-temperature correlation remains an appropriate demonstration of
>the influence of CO2 on climate.
>
>For the most part, I think Gore gets the science right, just as he did in
>Earth in the Balance. The small errors don't detract from Gore's main point,
>which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional
>ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate
>change. This is not entirely a scientific issue -- indeed, Gore repeatedly
>makes the point that it is a moral issue -- but Gore draws heavily on Pacala
>and Socolow's recent work to show that the technology is there (see Science
>305, p. 968 Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50
>Years with Current Technologies).
>
>I'll admit that I have been a bit of a skeptic about our ability to take any
>substantive action, especially here in the U.S.
>
>Gore's aim is to change that viewpoint, and the colleagues I saw the movie
>with all seem to agree that he is successful.
>
>In short: this film is worth seeing. It opens in early June.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Around the time that "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, I had heard someone on
>the radio (Mitch Albom of "Tuesdays With Morrie" fame IIRC) who said that Gore
>told him that he feels so strongly about this issue that some statements in
>the film are meant to "shake people up" and that he used a bit of exaggeration
>to get the point across. Even the author of the above review states that Gore
>sees this as a moral issue. Unfortunately, moral issues do not always lead to
>clear arguments. The "ends justify the means" can be seen in abortion clinic
>bombings/Oklahoma City bombing/the 9-11 attacks/teaching (or not teaching)
>evolution/the Crusades & Jihad/etc.
>
>Deservedly or not, Al Gore does have a perception problem. The election cycle
>does not help his cause either. Nevertheless, I imagine that quite a few
>people shared Shawn's reaction.
>
>Mark W.
>
>1.) The topic of Al Gore's "Embellishment" problem is covered in a 25+ page
>Harvard paper.
>http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/Research_Publications/Case_Studies/1679_0.
>pdf#search=%22al%20gore%20hyperbole%22 or
>http://tinyurl.com/n2bd6
>
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Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
www.mindawn.com
949-713-3276

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