I really didn't set out to keep writing about Al Gore. I mean, he's a good guy, and all. But there are more important things to worry about in the battle between science and superstition. Nevertheless the most active post on the ScienceBlogs at the moment is one in which PZ Myers decries Gore's alleged belief in creationism and suggests that this is undermining the famous climate change slide show. In reality, Gore is not a creationist and PZ seems to have swallowed an apocryphal report to the contrary.
I'm one of Gore's army of 1,000 slide show presenters. I've shown the offending slide, in which the phrase "Rise of Humans" on a graph of human population growth (near the vertex at 160,000 years ago) fades out to be replaced by "Adam and Eve." As anyone who's attended one of my presentations, and likely any of the other 6,000 similar events across the country and abroad would know, this is simply a joke.
During our training, Gore explicitly suggested the device will provide some needed humor in what is mostly a rather dark presentation. And he was right. It does exactly that.
A lesson on the need to adapt (or, "frame," if you will) the slide show for specific audiences was also included in the training. Indeed, I sat at a table with a women whose intention it was to give the show exclusively to church audiences. Good luck with that, I said. But nowhere does or did Gore suggest that the science should be ignored to suit those who won't accept the real time scales involved. The ice-core data go back 650,000 years, according to the presentation, and there's no easy way around what is a crucial part of the scientific back story.
Besides, the old mitochondrial Eve theory (problematic at best, I know) would trace the progenitor female of Homo sapiens to a location in Africa some 200,000 years ago, so I suppose you could even put the joking reference to Adam and Eve in a scientific context. I don't, (again, mitochrondial Eve is a bit on the dodgy side) but you could.
Now, like PZ, I have little patience for religiosity and it would nice if Gore didn't feel compelled to admit to his faith in public as often as he does. Of course, he's from Tennessee, and he knows he audiences, so I give him a bit of slack. I was also troubled at the training session's reception, at which Gore referred to us trainees, in what could be charitably described as a Freudian slip, as his "calvary" instead of "cavalry," not once but twice. But hey, maybe he had a long day. Yeah, that was it, now that I think about it.... he had been traveling...
Anyway, it's a joke. Yes, Gore is a man of faith, one who believes that everything was set in motion by a god figure. And no, he does not hide it. But he's not a creationist. He knows how old the Earth is.
If anyone else has any questions about Gore's presentation, and can't get an answer from the man himself, please feel free to ask me: jamesh (at) cyamid (dot) net.
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Thnaks you! Glad I didn't post earlier and make myself look like a "Bush"!@
Hmm, that's what I thought might be the case when I read PZ's post: it's got to be a joke from Gore to lighten up the presentation. I'm glad it turns out to be that indeed. A pity it's so easy to misinterpret out of context.
Sounds like I wasn't the only one burned by exercising insufficient skepticism this week.
I took it as a joke. And it doesn't bother me that Al Gore believes in God; he pitches for science in education and policy and that's what matters.
I saw the 'most-active post' on ScienceBlogs RSS feed (no point in visiting his blog anymore) and noticed the predictable knee-jerk reaction.
I admit I didn't see it as a joke from the description I read. From experiences to listening to Gore I figured that the probability of it not being a joke was higher than the probability of it being a joke. Guess I should have been there. Jokes are always better live.
Blame it on the Right Wing Attack Squad's depressingly successful "Al Gore Is An Emotionless Robot, Or At Least A Vulcan" meme.
Sadly, I think people are MOST surprised at humor from Al Gore - who can be quite funny, but in a deadpan way.
Anyone touting this much scientific evidence I seriously doubt can be any form of hackneyed creationist. He sounds more like a Dieist than anything else.
First of all, I want to thank you for clearing up the issue about Gore's joke in his presentation. When I first read about it, I was tempted to renounce my support for the guy. In the back of my mind, however, I did suspect that it might possibly be a joke, but the original poster, who was there in person, implied that it was dead serious.
Anyway, regarding the theory of mitochondrial Eve: Why do you say that this is a sketchy theory? It makes perfect sense in the context of what we know about genetics and the common ancestor aspect of evolution. The key is that mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to daughter, (and sons), with no mixing with the father's DNA. From this, the concept of a specific female whose mitohondria were the ancestors of all living human mitochondria follows logically. Of course, the mitochondrial Eve was NOT the only female human alive at the time, (and so the biblical analogy doesn't go very far). There is also a male counterpart called "Y-chromosome Adam," who probably lived about 120,000 years ago in East Africa. Again, he wasn't the only male human alive at that time. The genetic study of human migration is a pretty hot topic right about now, and very interesting. I would recommend checking out the Genographic Project:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic
-Ed