Director Q & A
Director and Producer Joel Gilbert
Joel Gilbert is a documentary film maker based in Los Angeles and president of Highway 61 Entertainment. Gilbert is a graduate of the London School of Economics and George Washington University (MBA) and is a political commentator and foreign policy analyst. He has produced documentary feature films on American politics, including Michelle Obama 2024, Dreams from My Real Father, There’s No Place Like Utopia, and Trump: The Art of the Insult. His investigative projects include the blockbuster film, The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America. Gilbert has also produced films on Middle East history and politics including Farewell Israel and Atomic Jihad. Other films feature music icons, Inside Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years and Bob Dylan World Tour 1966: The Home Movies, as well as mockumentaries Paul McCartney Really is Dead and Elvis Found Alive.
How did the idea for The Climate According to AI Al Gore come about?
After completing my research on Al Gore and climate science, I emailed Al Gore to request an interview. While I was a student in Washington DC, I was an intern for US Senator Al Gore, so I thought he would respond. But he didn’t. So I asked myself, ‘What if I could use AI to have an honest conversation with Al Gore?’.
Did Al Gore launch today’s climate change movement?
Yes, and Al Gore became the godfather of it all. Because of Gore, governments worldwide spend billions on carbon dioxide reduction policies. In fact, climate change is now a kind of religion, and Al Gore is their messiah. It all began in 1992 when Gore published his climate emergency manifesto, Earth in the Balance, where he called for the environment to become “the central organizing principle for civilization.” Then in 2006, with the release of his film, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s climate change movement exploded.
Al Gore is no scientist. Where did Gore gain his knowledge about the climate?
The source cited by Al Gore for the past 30 years for his climate science has been his Harvard professor, Roger Revelle. To get some answers, I went to the University of California San Diego where Roger Revelle’s lifelong papers are stored. I discovered that Revelle did not agree with Gore at all about greenhouse gases, global warming or climate change. Revelle simply took measurements and asked good questions, nothing more. Yet Al Gore politicized Roger Revelle’s research with his climate alarmism, and credited Revelle for his extreme positions.
So where did Al Gore’s climate science really come from?
My research indicates that Gore’s apocalyptic environmental predictions in fact came from his experience attending Vanderbilt Divinity School in 1971. Gore applied to and attended this school to get out of serving in Vietnam after only four months. It was at Divinity School that Gore studied with radical environmental preachers. It’s also where he read the popular environmental cataclysm book called, Our Plundered Planet, first published in 1948. My analysis reveals that Gore simply pilfered Our Plundered Planet to write his environmental manifesto, Earth in the Balance. But in order to “mainstream” his apocalyptic religious vision of a “climate emergency,” Gore credited Roger Revelle. Had Gore told the truth, namely that he just rewrote Our Plundered Planet, Gore’s climate alarmism would have been laughed off as unacceptable.
“AI” Al Gore speaking to Director Joel Gilbert
Al Gore with his parents, US Senator Al Gore Senior and Pauline Lafon Gore when Gore Senior was defeated in 1970.
Al Gore with socialist presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy in 1968 when Gore founded the “Tennesseans for McCarthy” organization.
Film poster for Al Gore’s blockbuster Oscar winning film, An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore’s 1992 environmental manifesto book, Earth in the Balance, alongside the 1948 publication Our Plundered Planet, which Gore is found to have plagiarized.
What did you learn about carbon dioxide in your research? And is the greenhouse gas theory accurate?
I learned that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant or a bad gas. Carbon dioxide is our friend. Without it, life on Earth would not be possible. As humans we release it every time we exhale. In fact, carbon dioxide is the food of nearly all plants on earth. We need more carbon dioxide, not less. Earth's atmosphere contains only 370 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That’s just .0037 percent. Not even one percent! Even if its concentration were tripled, carbon dioxide would still be miniscule. No effect. The main gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. It causes about 95% of the “greenhouse effect”. Water vapor and clouds dominate the world, and always will.
What did you learn about scientists and the climate movement in your research?
I learned that the only scientists who agree with climate change are those dependent on government funding. Universities and green organizations also reap financial benefits from climate panic. There are not just billions, but now trillions of dollars at stake to keep the climate change narrative going. They are all in effect being paid by the government to agree. If you talk to real scientists, they will tell you there is nothing to global warming and that because of the climate’s complexity, reliable prognoses just aren’t possible. It is the sun, volcanoes, the tilt of the earth’s axis, water vapor, sun spots, clouds, and ocean cycles, that affect world temperatures, not carbon dioxide.
Has the climate movement taken on the characteristics of a religion?
Yes, the modern green movement is today a religion. And, religions don’t worry too much about facts. It’s a belief system. Mass movements can rise and spread, without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil. That’s why people who disagree with climate change are treated as heretics, they are evil, and deserve to be punished. For believers, the earth is pristine, and humans came and ruined it. So we are all original sinners. But, you can get salvation through sustainability. Buy an electric car!
How does today’s worldwide climate change movement impact the US economy?
Climate change today is merely the latest scam with the same socialist solutions that Americans would never vote for, central planning and wealth redistribution. It’s basically trying to stop the existence of the free market system. It’s really all an assault on freedom and prosperity. Climate warriors want to cripple the economies of the industrialized nations, while stopping needed economic growth in the developing countries. There is an unmistakable racial component to all of this. Black and brown people in the third world are essentially being told they can never have the same standard of living as the predominantly white Western world.
What did you learn about Al Gore the politician that you tell in your film The Climate According to AI Al Gore?
Al Gore was born in Washington, and is a creature of Washington. Gore’s life story is one of being anointed by his politician father, US Senator Al Gore Senior, to become president one day. This created tremendous pressure on Al Junior, who did not have a personality suited to politics, and lacked the charisma of his father. Accordingly, Gore felt compelled to create issues in order to achieve the ambitions his family had bestowed upon him. In the early 1980s, Gore studied hard to make himself into an arms control expert. By the early 1990s, Gore was pushing climate alarmism theories to try to garner political support. He felt the environmental issue was a popular one that crossed all class lines.
Though Al Gore is a very nice person, a good guy, he is shallow, there is no depth to his personality. What you see on the surface is it, that’s all there is.
Director Joel Gilbert was a student intern for US Senator Al Gore in 1989.