segunda-feira, 12 de setembro de 2011

Al Gore needs some geography lessons

Mr Gore made a wrong choice for his Climate Reality stunt in Cape Verde... I've debunked it, and recently shown that Cape Verde is benefiting from Global Warming! He chose the presenter from the Canary Islands, some 1400 kilometers north of Cape Verde. Someone must tell Al Gore that Cape Verde and the Canary Islands are not the same thing! Then, it happens that Portuguese is spoken in Cape Verde, while Spanish is spoken in the Canary Islands. An important difference!

The presenter is José Ramón Calvo Fernandez, a professor of Health Education at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In the interview with Ramón in the Climate Reality site, no wonder there is not a single word about Cape Verde, because he really loves ... the Canary Islands!

This makes me wonder... I'm pretty sure that Al didn't find anyone suitable in Cape Verde to sell his snake-oil. He couldn't switch to the Canary Islands, because of a different timezone. So, instead, he switched presenters! I even wonder if the transmission will really be made from Cape Verde, or from the Canary Islands!

Then, there is the language item. Besides English, Portuguese was the only language spoken in more than one of the 24 Climate Reality locations worldwide. Portuguese is the seventh most natively spoken language in the world. But it's not one of Climate Reality's languages. Indeed, Gore has translated his site in Indonesian and French, which are the 12th and 17th most natively spoken in the World, but has left Portuguese out!

I also wonder what is delaying the Brazilian presenter for Rio de Janeiro...