I can’t shake the feeling that Al Gore is probably making this up.

Via IOP:

Former U.S. Vice President and environmental activist Al Gore spoke on topics ranging from Common Sense to Citizens United on Monday evening at a talk sponsored by the Institute of Politics (IOP) and hosted by the Chicago Theological Seminary.

The event took place in the Seminary chapel. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold-certified environmentally friendly building was a fitting location for Gore’s message calling for citizens to join the fight against the money tainting politics and the fight against climate change. The event started with a speech by Gore and ended with a Q&A session led by IOP Executive Director David Axelrod (A.B. ’76), who read from preselected questions posed by people on Twitter.

With the stained glass of the chapel windows in view, at times Gore’s voice took on the tone of a preacher, warning against the perils of global warming, but more so about the consequences that may come if nothing is done to prevent it.

“If…you were somehow magically able to consult with 10,000 leading heart specialists in the world and 9,999 of them said, ‘Oh my god, you’ve got to take this medicine, change your diet, get some exercise, and make these other changes,’ but out of the 10,000 of them you found one that said, ‘Well I don’t know yet, the jury’s still out—what would you do?” Gore asked. “That is what some people are doing on climate now.”

He pointed to recent events in the weather as evidence for these findings, including Hurricane Sandy that hit the East Coast in 2012. “The waters over which [Sandy] passed were nine degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal. That’s where the energy came from,” he said. “The single most criticized passage in [An Inconvenient Truth] was an animation about how the World Trade Center memorial site would be invaded by ocean water….But it happened with Sandy, ahead of schedule.”