Howard Dean seems to think so.

Pay particular attention to the part where Colbert asks about Al Gore.  

For those unable to watch the video, he basically says that "people didn't think about global warming" until Gore made his movie.  

:rolleyes:

and I liked Dean too . . .

The problem with virtually instantaneous and ubiquitous media is that, if you wait long enough, you'll manage to catch someone saying something stupid.  Even more of a problem is the expectation that we sometimes have that people in the limelight should have every statement carefully scripted.

Go on liking Dean.  Most of what he says ordinarily is what you like about him anyway, and you know that Dean didn't mean this statement literally, any more than Gore meant his (oft mis-quoted) statement about the Internet almost a decade ago literally.

!i!

I'm pretty sure Al gore invented Inventing. The rest is just invention by proxy.

In Inconvenient Truth did sway a lot of GW skeptics though. So I think giving Al his props is the way to go.

Whether or not Dean said it in the most accurate way possible shouldn't really be the issue.

Al did an amazingly good thing (TM) with that movie and his lectures that it's based on.

No he didn't. He used biased data and massive overstatement of worst-case scenarios to imply that his views were a) the most accepted and b) the most accurate (not the same things, btw). It was gross propoganda of the most deceptive sort. Miami is not going to be under water. Polar Bears are not going to become extinct. We're not going to have mass die-offs of humans. Etc. etc. etc.

The problem is the GW is based on a lot of data that is questionable. My daughter hit on a question just the other day in earth science. supposedly we are coming out of an ice age, if that is true then would not the earth temperature be naturally rising anyway. Since wehave never measured the temperature rise and variation of an ice age we cannot conclude that the changes are due to GW especially since certain natural causes produce the same type of supposedly harmful type substances that GW proponents are complaining of. Now if you disagree about evolution by not believeing in it or even do not think it works according to today's mainstream view on it, most of GW's truths are really suspect.

The whole GW issue a numbers game of which data you take use  to prove your point and which you ignore. If you do not accept some of the basis for GW the whole proof falls short.

Now I do believe we should take care on how we use earths resources and be mindful of polution but to much is being made out of the issue as so much is based on if X is true but there is enough doubt about X that we should not be claiming such.

Let me step back in for a sec and state that I am aware (I will not say "agree" because the Earth dosn't give a flip if I agree or not) that the temperatures are rising. They are also rising on Mars, Saturn, etc. The sun is getting warmer, ergo, everything in the Solar System will be too. And yes, we're probably having an effect on Earth as well, but we're not the sole cause of it, and its highly debateable whether we're having a big enough impact to warrant the draconian measures some environmentalists propose. If we stopped all human industry and activity NOW, the Earth would still be warming. There is no such thing as a steady-state environment - its is always changing, has always changed, and will always change until the day the Sun engulfs us about 8-10 billion years from now. Our best hope for the future is not to scale back the progress that is needed for our salvation. We should work on learning how to cope with the inevitable changes to come, rather than wasting effort, time, and money on trying to stop something that in all probablilty CAN'T be stopped.