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Guest host Nick Huizenga interviews Phil Valentine, the producer of the 2012 documentary An Inconsistent Truth, which critiques Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth. Valentine says Americans have been bamboozled about global warming – and that there are many scientists who disagree with Gore but are afraid to speak out.
Gore’s documentary won two Oscars, was widely acclaimed at film festivals, and was the darling of the mainstream media. But seven years after that film exited theaters, how have his predictions panned out? Valentine says pretty much everything Gore said has been proven to be wrong.
An increase in the hurricane rate? It hasn’t happened. Ice melting? In some places, it’s actually increasing.
Off The Grid Radio
Ep178
Released: October 11, 2013
Nick: Welcome to Off the Grid Radio. I’m Nick (inaudible 0:31). Bill Heid is on assignment today and Brian Brawdy is on injured reserve. We have with us today Phil Valentine, to talk about a few different things including his movie, An Inconsistent Truth. So, welcome Phil.
Phil: And thank you for having me.
Nick: So Phil, watching the trailer for An Inconsistent Truth, I noticed you were at Al Gore’s house. Did you encounter any problems with authorities? I mean, did they call the cops on you or anything?
Phil: Well, you have to watch the movie to see, but we stood out there for a while. I will tell you, Al didn’t come out and we never had a chance to chat with him, but we did chat with somebody inside of his house, and as you’ll see in the movie, he sort of covered for him as far as all of Al’s residences and his houseboat and all this kind of stuff. We were there, trying to get an interview with Al and we also went to one of his book signings to see if we could get an interview with him, which didn’t pan out. He seems to be very slippery and disappears. I don’t think he wants to be talking to folks like us for some reason.
Nick: Right. And I’ve actually read before that Al Gore has a bigger “carbon footprint” than just about anybody else in his area. Have you found that to be true? I hear his electrical bill is like $10,000 a month.
Phil: Well, his electric bill at one point was 20 times that of the average national household, so he decided to “green” his house and after he put in geothermal and some other things like this, found out that his house was only 10-15 times, using the electricity of your average national house. So he considers himself green, but in the real world of people like you and me, not too green at all. And he got actually some kind of gold certification from some environmental group because what he’s done to his house. But the point is, Al Gore is living in a 10,000 square foot house. At that point, when we were doing the movie with just him and Tipper, at this point it’s just him. Tipper’s left. So, he has that house. Three or four other houses. A houseboat. He flies around on private jets, so he can tell us and lecture the rest of us, the unwashed masses, that we need to lessen our carbon footprint.
Nick: Hmm. Wow. Did he get this gold certification from an environmental group that he started, by any chance?
Phil: I don’t … that would make sense. I think it’s actually some other group. No, I can’t remember who the group was. But it’s some green group out there and they sort of circle the wagons when it comes to people like Al Gore because they don’t want to make him look bad, but the basic question is, if you’re an environmentalist, what are you doing living in a 10,000 square foot house?
Nick: That’s a great question. Who needs a 10,000 square foot house? Does he have 20 children?
Phil: No, he’s got three and they’re all grown, so there’s nobody in the house but him.
Nick: Wow. That’s incredible. What other kind of things did you encounter? Is the movie basically focused on Al Gore, or is it just focused on the idea that this global warming thing has kind of gotten out of hand?
Phil: We looked at the science of course. We interviewed several renowned scientists. Actually, one of them was the lead officers of the (inaudible 4:22) report. He doesn’t agree with Al Gore. Al Gore tries to tell it to the (inaudible 4:26) unanimous, nothing close to being unanimous. He also exaggerates the number of scientists to work on the report. He said there were 3,000. There were actually 192. So we looked at the sciences, and we also explore the culture, because I think it’s important for people to understand why people are so adamantly following Al Gore in spite of the fact that everything that he’s saying is not coming true. For example, hurricanes are not getting more intense. They’re not getting more frequent. The sea levels are not rising. The polar bears are not dying off. In fact, the polar bears are thriving. CO2 is not a pollutant. The ice is not melting all over the planet, although it has been melting in the artic. It has been rolling in the Antarctic, and as a matter of fact, this summer we got 60 percent more ice in the arctic than we had last year. So, none of what he has said in his movie or his lecture tour or the 20 or 30 years he’s been doing this, none of this has come true. All of the climate models that had predicted – there were 73 of them that date back to 1979 – that predicted we would be two to three degrees warmer than we are now, so all the climate models have been wrong. Nothing about this (inaudible 5:42) is coming true.
Nick: Wow. That’s something else. I know when his movie came out, An Inconvenient Truth, it was sensational. It was over-sensationalized, in my opinion. And it seems like culture just stuck to it because it was this new thing, right? Where we all have to save the planet. Which, you know, isn’t bad. Of course you want to save the place that you live in, but what do you think his motivation was for that whole adventure of his?
Phil: Well, we go into that too, because Al Gore left the white house as Vice President worth a little less than $2 million. Now he’s worth upwards of $200 million. Nobody knows for sure. But he has made a ton of money off this whole global warming scare. He was invented – as we point out in the movie in the Chicago Climate Exchange – which was where all the (inaudible 6:47) would be traded, if it would ever pass that legislation, which the founder of that exchange, Richard Sandor, predicted it would be a $10 trillion business. So Al Gore has set himself up to make a ton of money. In the meantime, he chastises and ridicules anybody on our side as being in the hip pocket of big oil and all the rest of the garbage. So in the meantime, he sells his television network, makes $70 million of his share off current TV, selling it to Al Jazeera, which is owned by the country of Qatar, which is one of the largest oil producing nations on earth. So, the guy is now neck deep in oil himself, yet points and accusatory finger at everybody else, saying your reputation is damaged because you’re so in with the oil companies.
Nick: That’s not surprising.
Phil: The ultimate hypocrisy, isn’t it?
Nick: Yeah. Which we’re used to that. That crosses party lines for sure, the whole hypocrisy, but man. I never realized that he was associated with an oil-producing nation like that.
Phil: Oh yeah. Made $70 million from them.
Nick: $70 million. Wow. You can’t make that kind of money doing speaking engagements.
Phil: A lot of carbon offsets, I guess. What he’s going to do with that, because that’s what he says he does well. I do these things, I have these houses, but I buy carbon offsets, which really makes absolutely no sense at all. It is like buying indulgences. Many years ago with the church, you can sin as much as you want, as long as you pay the church your indulgences. So that’s what he’s doing, essentially, is paying carbon indulgences.
Nick: That’s great. That’s just fantastic. Does the Catholic Church know about this?
Phil: Maybe he owes them some money too, I don’t know!
Nick: I’m sure he does. Oh, man. Well, what else do you want to talk about today Phil?
Phil: Well that’s it. I just want people to go to aninconsitenttruth.com [1] and they can learn more about the movie and this week we’re trying to get ramped up. We’ve hit the top 1,000 on Amazon.com [2]. We’re looking to be number one. So if this movie hits number one, it’ll be impossible for the people on the other side to ignore our side, because they think that only marginalized kooks and minority of people are on the skeptic side. If you see a movie that’s on the skeptic side that hits number one, that’s a huge thing. So we hope people help us with that endeavor. They go to aninconsitenttruth.com [3] or go straight to Amazon.com [4] and look for the movie and hopefully they pick it up and help us make a point to get some of these sciences some cover that it’s okay to be a skeptic. It’s okay to come out of the closet and let’s have a discussion and a dialogue about this.
Nick: Indeed. We should. I mean, that’s the thing. It seems like we take whatever “science” has served up – science in quotation marks again – which is usually government and put on our plate and we say, “Well, we can’t complain about that. We can’t even question that.” And it’s always healthy to have a dialogue. To have a discussion about these things. When was this movie released Phil?
Phil: The DVD just came out last week. It was out in theaters, limited run in theaters, last year, and the DVD came out last week.
Nick: And have you had a pretty good response so far?
Phil: Oh yeah, we’ve had a really good response. I think there’s an appetite on the skeptic side for some good information, but presented in a way that’s entertaining. The movie’s got some very funny parts in it, so I think people will enjoy it.
Nick: Yeah. Well, do you find that no matter which side you end up on, you’re always being accused of being a conspiracy theorist?
Phil: Yeah. That tends to be the case, doesn’t it? Anytime you’re going to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, you’re doing to be accused of all sorts of things. So, yes. The main thing they accused me of is being in the hip pocket of big oil. That’s what Al Gore likes to say and the others. We take no oil money – not that there’s anything wrong with oil money – but we take no oil money or any other kind of money, coal or anything else. I financed this 100 percent myself, just because of that. Because I don’t want people to be able to look at me and accuse me of having some ulterior motive other than getting at the truth.
Nick: Right. Right. Well, I see that … boy, was this an independent movie?
Phil: Yes.
Nick: Yes? Oh, that’s great. I love independent movies. Winner best documentary at the Nevada Film Festival. Winner of Excellence in Film Making, Anthem Film Festival. Runner-up best documentary at (inaudible 12:02) film festival. How many festivals did you enter this into?
Phil: We entered festivals like the Sundance Film Festival, which we didn’t make. We entered some festivals we knew we were just going to make a point of entering, but weren’t going to get into. Most of them are very liberal and most of them do not (inaudible 12:20) to this kind of film, so the ones that we got into, I was pleased. The Appalachian Film Festival, I was very proud of that. The Anthem Film Festival is a libertarian film festival, so we were thrilled with that too. The folks with really open minds were open to take a look at the film, and once they took a look at it, they loved it.
Nick: I can’t wait to watch it, honestly. I’m going to order it as soon as we get off air here. I’m sure my wife and my kids would both love it. How long did it take you guys to make this?
Phil: It was four years, probably. This is my first foray into film making, so I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into. Once we got into it, it was a lot more involved than I thought. It took a couple of years to get all the materials together, and once we’d get what we though was the movie together, then something else would come out. Like climate gate or another breaking story like that, so we had to keep going back and adding to it until we finally liked the way it looked. There’s always going to be something new and something to add. We’ve got to close the thing down and say, “This is the movie.” But we really got a nice balance of all sorts of information on it. The motivation, the culture of the people behind the movement, the science and all of that. So we’re really proud of all we were able to cram into 89 minutes.
Nick: It looks very interesting. From the science aspect, the social aspect, because culturally, this thing has gotten out of hand. Did you produce the film? Did you write it, or was it just kind of a “let’s go and see what we can get filmed today by going and doing X?”
Phil: Yeah, I produced the film, and wrote what needed to be written, as far as the dialogue and things like this, but it’s kind of hard to contain all of it because there’s so much of this issue. So many facts out there. So much to try to cram in. So we really had to cull it down to the main things that we wanted to dispel and that basically boils down to CO2 not being a pollutant and the polar bears not dying off and the ice not melting all over the planet. So we really had to focus and cut it down to four or five big issues that we could wrap our arms around and then just go from there.
Nick: Huh. That’s an awesome concept and a great way to go out and do it. Did you come across anybody while you guys were filming this that you really buddied up with, that really became a key player, I guess, more than you would have suspected in what you do and what your mission is with this?
Phil: Well, Dr. Roy Spencer, who is the lead scientist on the Aqua Satellite – that’s the satellite that checks surface temperatures and sea ice and everything else around the planet and has been since 1979 for NASA – Dr. Roy Spencer is the team leader on that and once we interviewed him, and once we got in with him, I asked him if I could send him dailies and rough drafts and things like this. So he would help with that from time to time to make sure we were telling the story and the science was right. So there were some folks. People working on the film volunteered. That was the beautiful thing about it. We had people who were just clamoring to be a part of it because they wanted to tell the story and it really turned out nice.
Nick: That’s great to have volunteers. The cost of filming something like this can, I’m sure, be insurmountable sometimes. Would you call this a no-budget film, or would you call it a low-budget film?
Phil: Low budget, I would probably say. Somewhere around $100,000. But it’s something that once you get into it, you’ve got to finish it.
Nick: Sure. Otherwise all the money you spent was wasted.
Phil: That’s right. Exactly.
Nick: But for anyone who doesn’t really know about the filming industry, $100,000 is not really very much to spend on a production like this.
Phil: We were fortunate because we had some cameras that were our own, but we needed more cameras and boom mikes and things, so we found a place that actually donated that for the cause. So, we were able to cut down on the cost tremendously from what a motion picture normally would have cost. Probably over a million bucks if we’d paid for everything, because we had so many people and so much equipment that was volunteered. So that turned out real nice.
Nick: So your entire crew volunteered their time?
Phil: Yup. From the director to the boom mike operator to the camera operators. Everybody volunteered on the film and I think that’s why it turned out as well as it did, because they did it because they love doing it, not because they were getting paid or anything else. They wanted to tell the story and so they jumped in and just did it.
Nick: Wow. That’s great. That’s a great thing. And you can tell that most people wouldn’t do that for something they didn’t necessarily believe in. So you must have a pretty good following with this. Any other interesting things happen? Did you ever end up in jail while this was going on? It just seems like something …
Phil: No. That could have happened, I’m sure, but we didn’t get locked up this time around. Yeah, it was just a labor of love. I enjoyed the entire time we were doing it. The editing, of course, takes a lot longer than one would think. You get in there and there’s just so much to cull through and through in some comprehensive way. But I think we were able to do that, to where it really has a nice flow to it and the (inaudible 18:49) is in different chapters, like 36 different chapters. So if you’re looking for something in particular, you can go in and find just that. If you want to look at the arctic ice melting or you want to look at polar bears or whatever, we’ve got it broken down into an easy way for you to just go and use it as a reference film as well. It ended up flowing very well.
Nick: That’s great. Did you cull most of your footage? I know obviously you’re going to film a lot more than what actually makes the movie, but did you find that you were pretty efficient with the footage you were taking?
Phil: Well, I don’t know efficient. We had two terabytes worth of footage when we got through, which is quite a bit. Of course that had to be cut down dramatically. And we had some things, on the DVD we had a scene that we actually deleted, a fantasy piece between Al Gore and me when I’m actually questioning in that we edited together, but we found out that once we put that in the picture and we ran it for the test crowd, we had a problem because they started believing that it was real. That I was actually interviewing Al Gore and that he was saying all these things, and so we didn’t want to detract from the rest of the movie, for people to question whether the whole thing was real or not, so we pulled that out. It’s a stand alone, an extra on the DVD, of my interviewing Al Gore. But we had to just really cut it down. My brother said – when we were in the middle of all this – he said, “Your mind can only absorb what your butt can endure,” and I had the same way of putting it. People are not going to sit still for a two-hour documentary, and when we first had it cut it was a little over two hours. I insisted that we cut it below 90 minutes, which we have. That’s from start to the end of credits, and the credits run four and a half minutes. So it’s a nice-sized movie. It’s a chunk that people can bite off in one sitting and not feel like they’re getting antsy. As people would say when they went to see it in the theaters in some places, just when you’re getting to a point where you’re going to overload on the science, something funny happens or some light moment happens. So we deliberately sprinkled those out on regular intervals so it breaks up the science of it and people can really get into it.
Nick: Right. Because you don’t want to throw everything at everyone at one time. Then you wouldn’t be able to absorb it.
Phil: No, your eyes start glazing over.
Nick: Right. Right. Roll back into your head.
Phil: No kidding.
Nick: So have you ever spoken with Al Gore?
Phil: I’ve only met – we live in the same town – and I’ve only met him one time, and that was during the campaign he was running with Clinton in ’92, but I’ve never run … of course we ran into him at the book signing, but I’ve never talked to him. He doesn’t want to talk to anybody like me. He’s made it very clear he wants to avoid us.
Nick: Wow, that’s rather noble of him.
Phil: Yes, isn’t it though?
Nick: What can we take away from this? What would you say your conclusion was? Did you have any life-changing moments while making this film that said, “Hey, here’s something that I was wrong about?”
Phil: Not really, but I do think what people will take away from this – this is what my wife said, because she was not that familiar with the issue and she went to see the movie – she said what people need to understand is if nothing else, if you still haven’t had your mind changed, you still need to understand that there is no consensus. And that’s the one thing Al Gore keeps beating over people’s heads, is that there’s a consensus on this issue. There is no consensus and you can’t sit through this movie and then come out the other side and say, “Oh, yeah, there’s still a consensus. Al Gore is right.” We talked to so many people and there’s so much evidence on the other side of people who were skeptical of man-made global warming. The one thing you walk away from that movie knowing is that there is no consensus. The dialogue needs to continue. They want to shut down the argument. That’s what they do. They feel like if they can shut down the argument, they win and the facts (inaudible 23:22) so as we see the temperatures have not risen over the last 10 or 15 years and that the hurricanes are not doing what they said and the ice is not melting like they said, people are starting to realize they’ve been bamboozled by Al Gore and his minions on the other side.
Nick: So Al was under the impression that we were coming to a pretty ominous collapse, and soon, right, in his movie?
Phil: Yeah. Absolutely. He kept talking about how – his movie came out I think in 2006, which was right after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – and he kept telling us the hurricanes would be more frequent and more severe every year. That has not happened. As a matter of fact, since Hurricane Katrina, we’ve been in a record low trend, and this year seems to be another one of those low activity hurricane seasons. Eventually they’ll be right. Eventually we’re going to have a high activity hurricane season, if they keep saying it every year, but you can’t get away with that. You can’t say it every year and be wrong 10 times and then right the 11th time and then people say that you’re credible. They absolutely have no credibility on that issue, and on the rest of the stuff. None of what Al Gore has said in the movie that was going to come true has come true. None of it.
Nick: Hmm. That doesn’t surprise me. He is Al Gore, after all. Why do people not recognize that, I guess? And I’ve never seen his movie personally, but I would like to think if I had seen it, I would recall the claims that he was making in his movie and say, “Hey, wait a minute. This isn’t happening,” after so many years go by. What is it culturally that’s got us so wrapped up in what we’re force-fed by the media?
Phil: I think along those lines is that people feel guilty – they’re made to feel guilty – by people like Al Gore, and the good news for those people who feel guilty is you can do something about your guilt. You can actually make a difference. You can change the world and all the other things that go along with it. It’s ridiculous, but people do fall for this. “Oh, I’m guilty of something and I want to do something about it.” Guilt is a strong motivator, and if you can get people to feel guilty, you can make them do all sorts of things. Especially if they know they’re going to be able to get rid of their guilt. So then once they get rid of the guilt, then it turns into a zealot type mentality, that they’re going to go forth and spread this cult or whatever it is to everybody else so they can have the same feeling of euphoria that they have somehow rid themselves of the guilt to destroy the planet. Fact of the matter is, we couldn’t destroy the planet if we wanted to. The other fact of the matter is, they’re not even going after real pollution. But Al Gore has done a masterful job of melding smog and CO2 by shortening CO2 to just carbon. Carbon footprint. Carbon pollution. Carbon this, carbon that. When CO2 is not only harmless, it’s beneficial for the planet and CO2 is not in smog. Smog has ground level ozone, sulfur dioxide, all sorts of nasty things detrimental to your health, but there is no CO2 in smog. So Al Gore has ingeniously melded the two where people thing smog when they think carbon, and they think that’s what they’re getting rid of. And they’re not! They’re doing nothing about smog.
Nick: Hmm. What do you think his motivation was for this? I mean, was he just misinformed, or is he really fleecing us?
Phil: Well, he’s really fleecing us and I think he’s a (inaudible 27:24) but I also think that he’s done this … everybody has to have – they tell you this in the entertainment business or whatever – you have to have a gimmick, you know? With KISS it’s the makeup. With Alice Cooper it was … everybody’s got to have a gimmick in order to have them different. You know, One Direction it’s the hair. Whatever it is. So with Al Gore, it’s global warming. This is something he could hang his hat on. Something he’s known for. And they tell you this in any entertainment business, including radio. Be known for something! So Al Gore is being known for global warming, so he’s the go-to guy. He’s the guru, the expert, when in fact he has no idea what he’s talking about.
Nick: Yeah, it seems like risky business, to be the poster boy for something that you don’t, well, you don’t know to be true, and that you frankly don’t have the scientific skills to prove to be true, even to yourself.
Phil: Yeah, people say, “What (inaudible 28:30) do you have? How many science degrees do you have?” I say, “I have the exact same number of science degrees as Al Gore.” So if you’re going to look to him as the expert on this – I’m not asking to be looked at as an expert. I’m just merely bringing you the truth of the movie through other experts. And that’s the difference between our movie and Al Gore’s movie. Al Gore only talks about Al Gore in his movie. He doesn’t talk to anybody else. We talk with numerous experts on the other side, science experts, policy experts, politicians and everything else, and we put it together in a nice package so people can just try it on their own. I don’t profess to be an expert on this issue, but I do profess to be somebody who has found a bunch of experts and put them in a nice little package for people to watch.
Nick: I think you have to know what you don’t know. And you can always facilitate experts better than you can become an expert yourself, certainly. Well, Phil, I really thank you for joining us on today’s show. It’s been a great time having you here and talking about these things. Really has gone on too long with this whole global warming farce, and it’s really a fantasy. Guilt driven.
Phil: Get them informed on the other side. We have all sorts of resources, news stories, things they want to find out, at aninconsistenttruth.com [5] and they can get the movie there if they want and they can learn about the scientist we interviewed. It’s all right there.
Nick: Well that’s great. Anybody who wants to check that out, it’s aninconsistenttruth.com [6] and thanks again for joining us on Off The Grid Radio, Phil.
Phil: Appreciate your time.