NORMAN, Okla. - Former Vice President
ans on Thursday that dire environmental consequences will result if changes are not made to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that humans put into the air and sea.Gore spoke before a mostly supportive crowd estimated to be about 7,000 people at the university's Lloyd Noble Center, drawing a larger crowd at the arena than the Sooners have for some basketball games this season. His appearance capped a day-long focus at OU on the global warming debate.
Earlier Thursday, two university professors held a forum on the issue in the campus' student union building, and more than 500 people filled an auditorium and part of another room to hear the professors' arguments.
Those attending Gore's speech included Gov. Brad Henry, his wife, Kim and one of their daughters; State Treasurer Scott Meachem and State Attorney General Drew Edmondson. Like Gore, Henry, Meachem and Edmondson all are Democrats.
"We are focusing on a subject that matters," OU President David Boren said in introducing Gore. "This is not simply a subject to discuss. It is a subject to live out."
Gore entered the bowl-shaped arena from the upper concourse, shaking hands with dozens of people as he walked down steps to the arena floor.
Gore and Boren served for eight years together in the U.S. Senate. Boren, also a Democrat, drew a loud cheer when he noted that Gore had received 500,000 more votes than any other presidential candidate, a nod to Gore's narrow loss to " type="hidden"> SEARCH
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Boren drew another ovation when he mentioned that Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar earlier this week for best documentary feature.
Gore's multimedia presentation lasted an hour and 42 minutes.
"Many assume the earth is so big we as human beings couldn't have any lasting impact on it ... that's not so," he said.
Gore called global warming the biggest crisis in human history.
"This is not a political issue. It's a moral, ethical and spiritual issue," he said.
He criticized the United States for having not ratified the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which commits 35 industrialized nations to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012, but noted that the city of Norman is one of 369 communities in the country that has "embraced" the treaty.
"You guys have to be a part of the new way of thinking," he said, adding that the United States has "a responsibility for leadership (on global warming issues) in ways other countries do not."
Two of the world's largest polluters, China and India, are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol. That bothers David Deming, an OU professor of arts and sciences who participated in the on-campus forum.
"Why does China get a free pass? Why is it always the U.S. that is the villain," asked Deming, who testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in December on the global warming debate.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., is one of Congress' most prominent critics of the global warming theory and was the chairman of that committee until being replaced in January by Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), a California Democrat.
Deming spoke Thursday opposite David Karoly, an OU professor of meteorology who believes in global warming.
Gore said there wasn't much disagreement among scientists about global warming and he called skeptics of global warming "a group diminishing in number more rapidly than glaciers." He added, "These glaciers don't care about politics. They just freeze or melt."
Deming also addressed that subject, but from a different viewpoint.
"Like Socrates, we ought to be skeptical anytime anyone says they have a monopoly on the truth," Deming said, calling global warming "a scientific question, not a moral one, and it should be decided on the basis of the facts" instead of emotion.
Deming, a geophysicist, said that geologists, and not meteorologists, should be believed when it comes to the issue and that "we don't understand earth's climate system" because of its complexity.
He said that during the last few years, media coverage of the issue has "degenerated into national hysteria" and said Gore's book and documentary is the "largest single factor driving this debate today.
"I don't have a Hollywood movie ... but I do know how to use the library," Deming said, declaring that "global warming is no more real than Bigfoot."
Karoly said the scientific evidence is abundant that global warming exists and said that while the earth has gone through numerous warming and cooling cycles through the ages, "that does not mean that what is happening now is natural."
He said that "we can have a large impact on global temperatures in the next 100 years with the right decisions in the next 20 years."
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