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The night and early morning of Nov. 7 and 8, 2000, is one that serves as a true inflection point for the United States. The time was around 7:50 p.m. Eastern, and all the major networks called Florida for Vice President Al Gore, effectively handing him the election with 272 electoral votes.
But there was one problem: In the quest to get it first instead of getting it right, the networks had called the race before polls closed on Florida’s deep-red panhandle, which is largely located in the Central time zone. It was an error that marked a preview of what legacy media would become in the 21st century: unreliable and lazy.
Here’s how on the latter: From 6:30 p.m. to 7:50 p.m. Eastern, 13 broadcast journalists reported a total of 39 times that all polls closed in the entire state of Florida at 7 pm across multiple national networks. How not one reporter, editor, producer, or executive was aware that Florida had two time zones is one of the most unintentional comedic moments in the industry’s history.
From there, chaos ensued. The networks were forced to rescind their calls of Florida and the entire presidential election. But at 2:15 am Eastern, the calls were made that Texas Gov. George W. Bush had won Florida and therefore the election to become the 43rd president of the United States.
Team Gore would go on to fight the result in court, arguing that the infamous hanging chads on ballots were miscounted, or not counted at all, which they said handed Bush the election by 537 votes. The Supreme Court finally decided matters on Dec. 12, 2000, in Bush’s favor. And to his credit, citing the need for the country to move on and heal, Gore conceded against the wishes of several members of his team.
What happened with Gore from there is, to put it plainly, odd. We all remember Ronald Reagan in 1976, after a close but devastating defeat to President Gerald Ford in a primary that was decided on the Republican convention floor. The Gipper quoted an old English poem on comebacks in his concession speech that proved to be prophetic: “I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile. Though I am wounded, I am not slain. I shall rise and fight again.”
Reagan went on to capture the Republican nomination in 1980 and defeated President Jimmy Carter in a landslide by capturing 44 of 50 states.
But Gore didn’t have that inclination to run again. One could argue, given how uninspiring and wooden Sen. John Kerry was in challenging Bush four years later, that Gore may have fared better — Kerry was narrowly defeated by Bush, with Ohio alone deciding the election. Instead, Gore jumped headfirst into his biggest passion: climate change.
In 2006, he released to much fanfare An Inconvenient Truth, a doom-and-gloom warning to the world that the end was coming sooner than anyone expected unless trillions of dollars were invested in reversing an ominous trend that would essentially kill off the planet.
On cue, Hollywood embraced the movie at its premiere at Sundance with a rousing standing ovation, despite almost all of the audience helping to destroy the planet’s carbon footprint by flying on commercial or private aircraft, awarding it two Oscars, including Best Documentary. Gore would also go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for it as well.
So how is this Oscar- and Nobel-winning masterpiece 20 years later? Here are the top claims that were presented as gospel instead of guesses, presented in Olympic form, with the winter games coming up soon.
Bronze medal
According to Gore in 2006, Mt. Kilimanjaro, located about 200 miles from the equator in Tanzania, would cease to have any snow on it by 2016.
Reality in 2026: Despite it being summer in Tanzania, there is snow, large glaciers, and ice caps on Kilimanjaro again, despite the tropical climate below.
No apology from Gore. Nor any return of any of his awards.
Silver medal
“These figures are fresh,” Gore declared on Wieslaw Maslowski’s behalf in the film. “Some of the models suggest to Dr. Maslowski that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
Reality in 2026: At last check, ice at the north polar ice cap actually accumulated from 2021 to 2023. And at the South Pole, there has been a record accumulation of ice on the Antarctic ice sheet over the period 2021 to 2023.
Whoops. But here’s the best part: At the time in 2006, the research professor that Gore quoted in An Inconvenient Truth took not so kindly to his research being twisted to push a narrative:
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Maslowski said at the time. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
No apology from Gore. No return of his awards.
Gold medal
“So as the ocean gets warmer, it has an impact on Antarctica,” Gore warned 20 years ago. “If this were to go, sea level worldwide would go up 20 feet. Greenland would also raise sea level almost 20 feet if it went.”
“If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of west Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in Florida,” Gore continued while showing Florida basically becoming one big extension of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.
“This is what would happen to San Francisco Bay [engulfing the city of San Francisco]. A lot of people live in these areas. The Netherlands, one of the Low Countries. Absolutely devastating. The area around Beijing that’s home to tens of millions of people. Even worse, in the area around Shanghai, there are 40 million people. Worse still, Calcutta, and to the east, Bangladesh, the area covered includes 60 million people.”
“Think of the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees when they’re displaced by an environmental event,” he concluded. “And then imagine the impact of a hundred million or more.”
At last check, nobody in any of these countries or areas are “a couple hundred thousand” refugees or “a hundred million or more” are being displaced due to the climate.
As recently as the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gore continued to fearmonger with no pushback on his unhinged claims. He also showed zero maturity in openly booing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick while he was speaking at a dinner event there.
Lutnick, for his part, called it “the greatest honor” to be jeered by the former vice president.
“I mean, what’s better than Al Gore — incapable of discourse, incapable of anything,” Lutnick told Jesse Watters on Fox News. “And you all remember Al Gore told us, by today, in 2025, the whole ice cap would be gone, and Greenland would be green.”
SMASH THE IRANIAN TERRORIST STATE
Gore, the man who almost was president, celebrates the anniversary of his acclaimed movie on a crisis that doesn’t exist.
An anniversary of a movie that has melted away any credibility he once had.
