Gore Demeans Global Warming Skeptics "A Little Bit"

In footage of an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl (March 27, 2008, see story and video), former Vice President Al Gore disparaged global warming skeptics:

STAHL: You're launching this big ad campaign at a time when there's still a lot of skepticism about whether global warming is man-made.
GORE: I don't think there's a lot.
STAHL: Well, there's pretty impressive people like the vice president.
GORE: Well.
STAHL: He said we don't know what causes it.
GORE: You're talking about Dick Cheney.
STAHL: Yeah. But others, and they say, 'Well we don't know what causes it and why spend all this money 'til we really REALLY know?'
GORE: I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the Earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off.

By asserting that global warming skeptics deserve to be disparaged in the same way as flat-earthers, Gore is essentially calling them ignorant, which is a form of name-calling.

If Gore believes that scientific evidence proves that Earth is warming, and that humans caused it (and that they can reverse it, which is another matter altogether), then he should say so and cite the evidence.

But to go on to say that anyone who disagrees deserves to be disparaged is uncalled for.