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It was 20 years ago that Al Gore's book "An Inconvenient Truth" was published, and ... well, it turns out that the truth was inconvenient -- for Al and his band of apocalyptics.

I asked my team to use the AI chatbot ChatGPT as a referee in assessing the accuracy of the book's scary and often-quoted conclusions.

It turns out ChatGPT is very diplomatic. Its overall conclusion was that "the fairest assessment is more nuanced than saying that 'An Inconvenient Truth' was simply 'wrong.'"

Instead we learn that over and over, on page after page, the former vice president's "specific predictions and timelines were exaggerated or did not occur as presented."

That we can all agree on. Here are some of the predictions and ChatGPT's conclusions about their accuracy.

Claim: Kilimanjaro's snow would disappear within a decade.

Truth: The mountain still has ice/snow, although its glaciers have shrunk.

Claim: Glacier National Park's glaciers will disappear by 2020 or so.

Truth: No, they have not disappeared. Maybe his timing was just way off.

Claim: Sea levels could rise by about 20 feet.

Truth: This was labeled "dramatically misleading." In reality, a 20-foot rise has not remotely occurred since Gore's 2006 claim.

Claim: A melting/breaking of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could trigger catastrophic sea-level rise.

Truth: This hasn't happened either.

Claim: Hurricanes will become more severe and frequent.

Truth: There isn't a modern-day trend of steadily increasing numbers of stronger hurricanes. So far this year, there have been no hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Claim: Arctic ice will disappear.

Truth: Arctic summer sea ice has declined substantially, but it has not disappeared.

As the great Yogi Berra used to say: It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Even the best forecasters make best-guess mistakes.

But the mistakes that Gore, the United Nations and other climate change alarm groups make are always in the same direction.

They employ fear and trumpet worst-case scenarios in their demands for more government control and more funding for ... themselves. They've often been highly successful. Nations have spent multiple trillions of dollars to combat climate change -- and yet even they admit that their policies haven't fixed things. Then they call for even more money. It's become a climate-industrial complex and a racket.

Given Gore's faulty forecasting record, I keep wondering whether he will be a stand-up guy and admit that his Chicken Little warnings were wrong.

Probably not. Falsely predicting the end of the world is making too many people rich. And that really IS an inconvenient truth.

Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and the cofounder of Unleash Prosperity, which advocates for education freedom for all children.

Copyright 2026 Creators Syndicate Inc.