|
 |
 |
|
Al Gore to Rick Perry: Climate scientists aren’t motivated by money
Former Vice President Al Gore (D) on Friday bashed the notion that climate scientists are manipulating data for financial gain, a charge levied by global warming skeptics, including GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry.
“This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money,” Gore said in an online interview.
“These scientists don’t make a lot of money,” Gore added. “They are comfortable, as they should be, but they don’t make a lot of money. That is not their motivation for doing what they do.”
His comments came in a wide-ranging interview with Alex Bogusky, a prominent former advertising executive who is working with Gore on the former vice president’s Climate Reality Project.
Gore didn’t mention Perry by name in the interview, although Bogusky mentioned Perry as part of a broader question about doubt and climate
science.
“I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data, so that they will have dollars rolling into their, to their projects,” Perry said.
Perry and Gore have a political history that dates back more than 20 years.
Perry was Gore’s Texas state campaign chairman when then-Sen. Gore (Tenn.) ran for president in 1988. Perry was a Democrat at the time, and later switched his political affiliation to Republican.
Gore broadly attacked what he called an organized campaign by fossil fuel interests to sow doubt about climate change and climate scientists, saying it’s based on tobacco industry campaigns of the past about the health effects of smoking.
“Millions of people died unnecessarily,” Gore said. “They were able to delay action — not by refuting the surgeon general, but by injecting enough doubt so that people would feel ‘maybe this isn’t settled yet.’ Now the coal and oil companies are doing exactly the same thing.”
The overwhelming view among scientists is that the planet is warming and that human activities are a major cause.
