When it comes to scientific theories, even some of history's most respected and renowned people and institutions have graciously admitted when they were wrong in the face of irrefutable evidence.
It took 359 years, but the Catholic Church eventually conceded in 1992 that the church was wrong and Galileo Galilei was right – the Earth revolves around the sun.
Throughout the 18th century, chemists widely believed that a substance called phlogiston was released when materials were burned. But when Antoine Lavoisier demonstrated that many metals often became heavier when burned – the opposite of the phlogiston theory – his contemporaries humbly admitted their error and praised his experiments.
And when scientists, including Edwin Hubble in 1929, demonstrated that the universe is expanding rather than remaining static, as Albert Einstein had theorized, even the revered Einstein readily admitted he was wrong, calling it "my biggest blunder."
Twenty years ago, in 2006, former Vice President Al Gore released his film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which included ominous and even hysterical warnings about a coming climate apocalypse if mankind did not dramatically change its ways.
In the two decades since its release, the film's most dire warnings have proven to be inaccurate. Examining Gore's film on the anniversary of its release, several writers have pointed out its most glaring errors, including deaths from climate-related disasters plummeting, hurricane frequency and intensity declining, globally, areas burned by wildfires decreasing over the past quarter century, and the supposedly endangered polar bear population more than doubling from the 1960s to today.
“Gore's apocalyptic climate predictions have aged poorly," one critic concludes.
Despite the overwhelming preponderance of evidence refuting his original hypotheses, one might assume that Gore – like the Catholic Church, the chemists of the 18th century, and even the great Albert Einstein – would humbly concede his mistakes.
One would be wrong. In a recent interview marking the anniversary of "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore insisted that he and the scientists he relied upon have been right all along – while simultaneously demonstrating that his penchant for hyperbole remains unabated.
Gore's atomic bomb analogy, which asserts that the amount of heat trapped in the Earth's atmosphere is equivalent to the amount released by 800,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every day, is a claim that has been widely debunked and ridiculed.
It is little wonder that Gore finds himself so easily mocked. His analogy originated from climate alarmists who have been using it for years, adding a few hundred thousand to the estimate of bombs every so often.
Unfortunately for the average citizen – both in the U.S. and worldwide – the far-left media's enthusiasm for propping up Gore and the climate craze have real-world consequences. Despite mountains of conflicting evidence, the media provides cover for leftwing government types who, when in power, throw billions of dollars toward scientifically unsupported efforts to replace our most affordable and reliable energy resources with defective "alternatives" made feasible only because of taxpayer subsidies.
That's why Americans deserve a more realistic approach to energy consumption and environmental conservation. The Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act should be passed into law by Congress, put into effect by presidential executive order, or at the very least embedded into policy by agency rule.
