Go Ahead Sue: We Have the Truth!

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_021710/content/01125115.guest.html

“In the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud), ok let’s assume global warming is a hoax (it’s not) could Al Gore be sued for fraud? He certainly gained from The Inconvenient Truth but, so do Holocaust deniers yet they are not sued for fraud. Why is this? It’s because they believe in their own deception and it is not intentional. Therefore, you could argue that, “sure the evidence now shows global warming to be a hoax (again not true) but when Al Gore made the Inconvenient Truth he believed in the evidence we had at the time, he wasn’t intentionally deceiving anyone. “ Al Gore is simply repeating ideas that have been put forward by scientists before him, would they be sued as well for originally creating the idea? Who exactly would sue Al Gore? One of the elements of common law fraud is “plaintiff's ignorance of its falsity”, which means that anyone who has always maintained that climate change is a hoax could not sue Al Gore since, they were not ignorant of its falsity. It may be possible that a believer turned denier could sue Al Gore but only if they could improve that they were somehow damaged by the results of Al Gore’s actions. They would have to prove for example, “that because of Al Gore’s movie I went out and bought an electric car. I was seriously injured in a crash because the car was small and did not offer adequate protection.” A case like that would be very difficult to prove. What about the company that sold the car? Why wouldn’t you charge them for knowingly selling you a dangerous vehicle?

It amuses me how Al Gore has become the poster boy for climate change issues. As if attacking his credibility somehow undermines the climate change argument. Apparently it’s all a lie created by him so he should be sued for fraud. What about all of the organizations that maintain that climate change is real?

National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The Royal Society of the UK (RS)
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

How do these organizations gain financially from saying climate change is real? More funding perhaps but, their primary goal isn’t to gain funding it’s to study climate change.

Not too long ago I paid a visit to Info Wars, the site run by conspiracy whack-job Alex Jones. On the forums there was a title “Al Gore Sued by 30 000 Scientists for Global Warming Hoax”. I did a Google search for more information. All that came up were links to sites that if their names are any indication are dedicated to conspiracy theories, providing a video that was posted to Youtube with the same title. I did some more digging and discovered that the so-called “30 000 scientists” is based on the Oregon Petition. While it may have 30 000 signatures, not all of them belong to scientists and some were made by pranksters (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980501&slug=2748308). The creator of the petition has admitted to doing no direct research into global warming, further undermining the credibility of this petition. Even worse, he has aligned himself with HIV denialists and anti-vaccinations (http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Oregon_Petition#cite_note-2). Yet we are expected to believe that this is all the work of someone with a credible view on climate change.

You know what? I’m going to change my stance; Al Gore should be sued for fraud, just so we can further expose the lunacy of these climate deniers. In fact, John Coleman, who sas called for Al Gore and other climate change proponents to be sued wants to use the legal system as a forum for the debate saying, “"I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case" (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337710,00.html). I personally think it would be hilarious to see that plan back-fire on the deniers. If their argument is that taking this issue to court will settle things once and for all then so be it. Here is a challenge to the deniers, take us climate change proponents to court. If you win, we will pay. If we win, then in agreement with your own terms, it will be settled, climate change will be declared real once and for all. The ball’s in your court deniers.