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Conservatives Doctor Gore Audio Clip
It sure would make political attacks easier if we could take interviews from people we don't like, rearrange their words to make them say what we want to hear, and then attack them for it. Sure, it would be deceptive and unethical, but just think how much more efficient smear campaigns could be. Why wait for a rival to say something controversial when we can make them say something controversial?
This week, for example, Al Gore appeared on NPR, and talked a bit about global warming and natural disasters. Business & Media Institute (BMI), a far-right outfit backed by activist Brent Bozell, thought it best to splice the interview together, to make Gore say something he didn't say.
Wonk Room's Brad Johnson has the story.
One week ago, Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck Burma, tracing an unprecedented path of devastation across this poor nation of 55 million, called Myanmar by its military dictatorship. On May 6, Jeff Poor wrote for the Business & Media Institute (BMI) a story entitled, "Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a "Consequence" of Global Warming," which was subsequently linked on the Drudge Report.
Poor claims: "Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming."
Poor wrote that Gore said in an interview on National Public Radio, "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, 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."
Story Presents False Clip Of Interview. The audio clip included with the online story includes two segments that have been spliced together, out of order, to mislead the listener as to Gore's actual meaning. The actual transcript ... makes it clear Gore was saying that the "consequences" of global warming we're seeing was the melting of the polar ice cap, which is unequivocally due to anthropogenic climate change.
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