Sixteen years in the past tonight, Hollywood liberals handed former Vice President Al Gore a “greatest documentary” Academy Award for his alarmist international warming movie, An Inconvenient Reality. The award set off a 12 months of the media touting Gore and selling his agenda, culminating when European liberals gave him the Nobel Peace Prize in December.

However the ensuing years have proven lots of Gore’s predictions to be exaggerated or outright false (see under), suggesting that the media’s right posture ought to have been skepticism, as an alternative of embarrassing adulation.

“Unbelievable as it might appear, Al Gore shouldn’t be solely completely carbon impartial, however geek-chic cool,”
the Washington Submit’s William Sales space gushed in a February 25, 2007 front-page profile headlined “Al Gore, Rock Star,” previewing that evening’s award ceremony.

Sales space trumpeted the over-the-top testimonials of Gore’s mates and allies: “‘He’s extra well-liked now than he ever was in workplace, and he is aware of it,’ says Laurie David, one of many producers of Inconvenient Reality and a Hollywood environmental activist (and spouse of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David) who has traveled around the globe selling the movie with Gore. ‘He’s a superhero now.’”

The subsequent night, after Gore was formally given his Oscar, CBS and ABC had been over the moon, hoping that the Hollywood second may result in a political comeback. CBS’s Gloria Borger applauded that Gore was now not “simply one other defeated presidential candidate. He’s an Oscar-winning environmental evangelist.”

ABC’s Invoice Weir (now CNN’s resident local weather crusader) decided that Gore now had one thing known as “Oscar credibility” and handed alongside the wishful considering “that every one this popular culture love will nudge him into the race.”

The subsequent month, when Gore confirmed as much as champion his agenda on Capitol Hill, CBS anchor Katie Couric seemed like a giddy fangirl on the March 21 Night Information: “A film star confirmed as much as testify earlier than Congress — a film star named Al Gore.”

The not-so-subtle cowl of Time journal (Might 28) selected a Christ metaphor, “The Final Temptation of Al Gore.” Author Eric Pooley elevated the ex-Vice President above strange politicians:

Al Gore — the improbably charismatic, Academy Award-winning, Nobel Prize-nominated environmental prophet with a military of followers and large reserves of political and cultural capital at his command….[Losing the 2000 election] modified Gore for the higher. He devoted himself to a bigger trigger, doing the whole lot in his energy to sound the alarm in regards to the local weather disaster, and that call helped remodel the way in which People take into consideration international warming and carried Gore to a brand new state of grace….No marvel mates, social gathering elders, moneymen and inexperienced leaders are nonetheless attempting to speak him into working.

Later that month (Might 30), CBS Early Present co-host Harry Smith really tried to pin a “Gore 2008” button on the previous candidate on the finish of an interview: “Right here, let’s see what it appears like,” he admired. “Save that in a freeze body.”

In July, yet one more favor from the company media: NBC Common poured an unprecedented 75 hours of free publicity to Gore’s “Reside Earth” live performance occasion, together with three hours of prime time on NBC, plus seven hours on CNBC, 18 hours on Bravo, and extra on Telemundo, mun2, Sundance, and Common HD.

NBC Senior Vice President Dan Harrison informed the Washington Submit’s Howard Kurtz he didn’t suppose all of that free airtime to a possible Democratic candidate needs to be seen as political: “I actually don’t suppose local weather change is a political problem….If it’s a political problem, it’s whether or not the political will exists to handle that change.”

But throughout NBC’s primetime protection on July 7, NBC’s Ann Curry demonstrated it was clearly political by repeatedly badgering Gore to run once more for the White Home: “Lots of people need me to ask you tonight if you happen to’re working for President…. Would you reply the decision?…Have you ever dominated it out?”

The media had one other excuse to swoon when Sweden’s Nobel Prize Committee handed their 2007 Peace Prize to Gore. “This man was laughed off the stage by some within the media, and a few Democrats, as a coverage stiff when he was Vice President and when he ran in 2000,” Politico’s Jim VandeHei beamed on CBS’s Early Present on October 12, quickly after the announcement from Oslo. “And now he appears like a genius relating to international warming.”

“This award has eminent scientists in every single place excited,” ABC’s Invoice Blakemore preached on ABC’s Good Morning America the following day (October 13). “Joyous, as a result of scientists have been way more apprehensive than anybody about international warming, discovering it’s way more harmful, coming a lot faster, than they anticipated.”

“He turned a prophet on a difficulty that’s crucially vital to the world,” ex-Time reporter Margaret Carlson exulted on Bloomberg’s Political Capital that Saturday.

“Again in 1992, the primary President Bush known as you ‘Ozone Man.’ He ridiculed your efforts to carry consideration to local weather change. He even known as you loopy at one level. So is that this [prize a] vindication, of a form, for you?” NBC’s Meredith Vieira requested Gore in a usually softball interview on November 5 on At present.

In December, when Gore retrieved his Nobel Prize in Oslo, the media went again for a couple of extra smooches. “Your critics ridiculed you as ‘Ozone Man,’ after which the film [An Inconvenient Truth] got here out,” CNN Worldwide’s Jonathan Mann informed Gore in a one-hour particular on December 10. “You went from being ‘Ozone Man’ to ‘The Goracle.’ This turned — the Nobel Prize turned ‘The Goronation.’”

As in February, the Washington Submit was prepared with one other hard-hitting piece: “For Uma Thurman, whose credentials with regards to attractive are impeccable, there was no query that ‘the person’s lovable.’ ‘After all he’s attractive,’ she stated. ‘He appears to be flourishing and following his calling. It’s simply essentially the most enviable factor on the planet, like watching a stupendous racehorse run.’ Al Gore, attractive man. The considering lady’s thoroughbred,” writers Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan wrote in a December 12 Fashion-section merchandise.

However within the years since, Gore’s “documentary” has fallen flat on the info. Earlier this 12 months, FoxNews.com’s Thomas Catenacci wrote about Gore’s hyped claims on rising sea ranges: “In his 2006 international warming documentary An Inconvenient Reality, Gore predicted that the worldwide sea degree may rise as a lot as 20 toes ‘within the close to future.’…[But] between 1993-2021, the ocean degree has ticked up 3.8 inches, in keeping with the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At that fee, it will take roughly 1,136 years for the world’s sea degree to rise 20 toes.”

Within the movie, Gore shamelessly hyped how this rise would flood large swaths of the San Francisco Bay space and the state of Florida. “Lots of people reside in these areas,” he apocalyptically warned. (You possibly can watch the video right here.)

And the New York Submit famous final 12 months that whereas “polar bears [were] featured in Al Gore’s terrifying film An Inconvenient Reality… the actuality is that polar bear numbers have been growing — from someplace between 5 and ten thousand polar bears within the Nineteen Sixties, as much as round 26,000 as we speak.”

Again in 2007, a Media Analysis Heart examine confirmed that the elite media had been censoring anybody who disagreed with Gore’s local weather change horror story: “MRC’s analysts discovered simply 4 tales out of 115 (simply over 3%) contained any point out of dissent from Gore’s strategy to international warming — and even these tales had been closely stacked in favor of his ‘local weather disaster’ place.”

On reflection, the 12 months of “the Goracle” turned out to be the 12 months when the media celebrated the not-credible hype of a liberal politician longing for redemption. And so they don’t appear to have realized very a lot within the intervening 16 years.

For extra examples from our flashback sequence, which we name the NewsBusters Time Machine, go right here.