If I hear "Al Gore" one more time...

Some friends and I were discussing what makes a Democrat a Democrat and a Republican a Republican the other day, and of course one of the traits listed was 'antienvironment.' A Repub in the group spoke up with, "It's not so much that we're antienvironment, we're just in the group that didn't bow down and worship Al Gore and his 80-minute PowerPoint." This was very distressing and insulting to me, and I told him so. A comment like that makes it sound like we environmentalists never use our brains. After seven years in school for my master's degree, I am positive I worked really hard to get where I am. I know for damn sure that my peers worked as hard or harder for the same results. So why put it all on Al Gore? Where do they think he got his facts? Certainly not from climate monitoring, which began in the late 1800s, or from ice cores analyzed by people who know more about science than he ever will.
Well, Al Gore just happens to be the one who brought global warming to a broader audience. But wait...I'm not a climate scientist. I studied ecology, in the proud tradition of Aldo Leopold, John James Audubon, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, and numerous others. Fortunately, I am scientifically literate enough to understand the procedures used in other forms of science, and guess what...They make sense! It seems like a small thing to get riled about, but I'll bet the other side wouldn't like me telling them how to run their businesses any more than I like them telling me how I learned about biology. Maybe we should just stick to what we do best.