should not throw stones at those trying to avert catastrophe.
USA Today helped the global warming Deniers and Delayers throw sand in the eyes of the American public last week by publishing a misleading, erroneous, and irrelevant ad hominem attack on former Vice President Al Gore. The article, “Gore isn’t quite as green as he’s led the world to believe,” by author and Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer, accuses Gore of not practicing what he preaches.
That USA Today would publish an obviously un-fact-checked article from someone who works at an institution that has recevied nearly $300,000 from ExxonMobil to spread disinformation on global warming is more evidence of how big media helps confuse the public on global warming.
The article is so flawed, USA Today was itself forced to run a correction. DeSmog Blog offers a good debunking–“Hoover Institute and the Art of Slander,”–and I will run the reply by Gore’s communications director at the end of this post. I want to focus here on the cleverly misleading irrelevancy of the core argument, which Schweizer summarizes in his final paragraph:
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