Lies, Damn Lies, and Republican Talking Points

The political right is deeply invested in insisting that global warming isn’t happening, or that if it’s happening it’s not our fault, and in either case we should do nothing about it. It’s an article of faith with them, in no small part because of the degree to which they’re beholden to Big Oil.

Ergo, it’s no surprise they’ve tried to come out with the long knives for Al Gore’s documentary. The first attacks were pretty funny: insisting it was a flop based on radically selective readings of box office receipts. Of course, now that it’s one of the most financially successful documentaries of all time, it’s awful hard to make that stick. Yes, “Cars” made more money. No, no one is surprised by that. No, this doesn’t make “An Inconvenient Truth” a flop.

Comes now boneheads like John Stossel, trotting out long-dismissed canards purporting to undercut the conclusions of the vast majority of climatologists. He doesn’t do well, as Media Matters can show, but at least he didn’t start with attacks on Gore himself, unlike most who oppose his film.

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