Court Identifies Eleven Inaccuracies in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

An update on the recent High Court ruling in Britain, via Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters:

Here's something American media are virtually guaranteed to not report: a British court has determined that Al Gore's schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" contains at least eleven material falsehoods.

It seems a safe bet Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer won't be discussing this Tuesday morning, wouldn't you agree?

For those that haven't been following this case, a British truck driver filed a lawsuit [0] to prevent the airing of Gore's alarmist detritus in England's public schools.

According to [1] the website of the political party the plaintiff, Stewart Dimmock, belongs to (ecstatic emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

How marvelous. And what are those inaccuracies?

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
• The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
• The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

In the end, a climate change skeptic in the States must hope that an American truck driver files such a lawsuit here so that a U.S. judge can make similar determinations.

Of course, even if one could find such an impartial jurist, our media wouldn't find it newsworthy, would they?

Judge: Gore's film promotes "partisan political views"

From the Times Online:

A lorry driver from Kent has forced the Government to rewrite guidance for schools that want to show Al Gore’s climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Stewart Dimmock, a father of two, brought a High Court action against the screening of the documentary in schools, claiming that it was “politically partisan” and “sentimental”.

His lawyers argued that the film contained serious scientific inaccuracies. They accused the Government of backing the film, by the former US Vice-President, as a way of “brainwashing” pupils on global warming.

Mr Dimmock, a school governor with children aged 11 and 14, said at the outset of the hearing: “I wish my children to have the best education possible, free from bias and political spin, and Mr Gore’s film falls far short of the standard required.”

Yesterday the High Court judge Mr Justice Burton said that the film did promote “partisan political views”.

Global Warming is not caused by carbon dioxide

A good website to check out: The Science of Global Warming in Perspective
h/t: On Climate Tinkers:

When an ice age begins, global Warming occurs exactly as it is doing now. Heated oceans cause precipitation to increase. Eventually, increased snowfall will reflect away solar energy and trigger a cool-down.


Alarmists are not promoting science; they are promoting propaganda justified through a black-box analysis which generates contrived numbers. Science requires evidence and logic.

There is no mechanism for carbon dioxide creating global warming

"Greenhouse gases" absorb all radiation available to them in a few meters. More of the gas cannot absorb more radiation. A thick sheet of plastic does nothing more than a thin sheet. Doubling the CO2 would only shorten the distance for absorption of radiation from 10 meters to 5 meters, which is not an increase in temperature.

The real cause of global warming could be an increase in solar energy, as critics generally claim; but there is evidence that it is due to variations in heat from the earth's core. Ice ages are caused by oceans heating, which appears to result from increased heat from inside the earth. The primary evidence is the exact cycling of ice ages. Environmental factors would not be so precise. Also, the oceans heating more than the atmosphere points to the heat coming from inside the earth.

Atmospheric changes can result from variations in solar activity, but they are superficial compared to heat from the earth's core which drives ice age cycles.

Ice over oceans is melting much faster than expected. The reason is because the oceans are heating, not the atmosphere. Heated oceans can melt ice rapidly, while heated air cannot. Ninety percent of ice is below the surface—exposed to water, not air—and water has the heat capacity needed for melting.

The Science of Global Warming in Perspective by Gary Novak.

Dirty snow?

Are the so-called greenhouse gases taking the heat for dirty snow?

Writing about their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the researchers explained that dirty snow has had a significant impact on climate warming since the Industrial Revolution. UCI scientist Charlie Zender said that in the past 200 years, the Earth has warmed by about 0.8 degrees Celsius and he contends that up to 20 percent of this rise could be attributed to dirty snow.

The effect is more conspicuous in Arctic areas, where Zender believes that more than 90 percent of the warming could be attributed to dirty snow. "When we inject dirty particles into the atmosphere and they fall onto snow, the net effect is we warm the polar latitudes," said Zender. "Dark soot can heat up quickly. It's like placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack."

(...)

Zender explains that dirty snow is potentially much more of a threat to Arctic areas than greenhouse gases, levels of which have increased by one-third in the last two centuries. "A one-third change in concentration is huge, yet the Earth has only warmed about 0.8 degrees because the effect is distributed globally," Zender said. "A small amount of snow impurities in the Arctic have caused a significant temperature response there."

Zender believes policymakers could use these research results to develop regulations to limit industrial soot emissions and begin switching to cleaner-burning fuels that would leave snow brighter. New snow falls each year, and if it contained fewer impurities, the ground would brighten and temperatures would cool.

And it would be a lot cheaper to clean up emissions of soot than to try to reduce CO2 to Kyoto levels. A lot more effective too.

But then again, Al Gore & Co. wouldn't be able to impose regulations on industry and make billion$ from the carbon cap & trade swindle.

The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore’s Carbon Crusade

For Al Gore, the business of climate change is all about the money. Here's a great article by Deborah Corey Barnes at Human Events.com

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain?

There's nothing new about Gore's profit motives concerning carbon trading, but Barnes lays out the details very thoroughly in her article.

Gore’s Circle of Business

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. “Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn’t a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets,” said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who, since the 1970s, has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement. Strong has described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.”

(...)

Along with Gore, the co-founder of GIM is Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Last September, Goldman Sachs bought 10% of CCX shares for $23 million. CCX owns half the ECX, so Goldman Sachs has a stake there as well.

GIM’s “founding partners” are studded with officials from Goldman Sachs. They include David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM); Mark Ferguson, former co-head of GSAM pan-European research; and Peter Harris, who headed GSAM international operations. Another founding partner is Peter Knight, who is the designated president of GIM. He was Sen. Al Gore’s chief of staff from 1977-1989 and the campaign manager of the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.

(...)

Front and Center

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that’s almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine.

This is only the start, you should read the rest.

There's more in my earlier post: Blood and Gore.

Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears

Marc Morano at The Inhofe EPW Press Blog:

Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions. The AP article also has been accused of mischaracterizing the views of a leading skeptic of man-made global warming fears. The scientists are dismissing the AP article, entitled “Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History” (LINK) as a “scare tactic,” “sheer speculation,” and “hype of the worst order.” (H/T: Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.org - LINK)

...more...

Notes for the speech of the President of the Czech Republic at the UN Climate Change Conference

Václav Klaus:

Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

As responsible politicians, we know that we have to act when it is necessary. We know that our duty is to initiate public policy responses to issues that could pose a threat to the people of our countries. And we know that we have to form partnerships with colleagues from other countrieś when a problem cannot be confined to national boundaries. To help us doing it is one of the main reasons for the existence of institutions such as the United Nations.

However, the politicians have to ensure that the costs of public policies organized by
them will not be bigger than the benefits achieved. They have to carefully consider and seriously analyze their projects and initiatives. They have to do it, even if it may be unpopular and if it means blowing against the wind of fashion and political correctness. I cońgratulate Secretary General Ban Kimoon on organizing this conference and thank him for giving us an opportunity to address the important, but until now onesidedly debated issue of climate changes. The consequences of acknowledging them as a real, big, imminent and manmade threat would be so
enormous that we are obliged to think twice before making decisions. I am afraid it is not the case now.

Let me raise several points to bring the issue into its proper context:

1. Contrary to the artificially and unjustifiably created worldwide perception, the increase in global temperatures has been – in the last years, decades and centuries – very small in historical comparisons and practically negligible in its actual impact upon human béings and their activities.

2. The hypothetical threat connected with future global warming depends exclusively upon very speculative forecasts, not upon undeniable past experience and upon its trends and tendencies. These forecasts are based on relatively short time series of relevant variables and on forecasting models that have not been proved very reliable when attempting to explain past developments.

3. Contrary to many selfassured and selfserving proclamations, there is no scientific consensus about the causes of recent climate changes. An impartial observer must accept the fact that both sides of the dispute – the believers in man's dominant role in recent climate changes, as well as the supporters of the hypothesis about their mostly natural origin – offer arguments strong enough to be listened to carefully by the nonscientific community. To prematurely proclaim the victory of one group over another would be a tragic mistake and I am afraid we are making it.

4. As a result of this scientific dispute, there are those who call for an imminent action and those who warn against it. Rational behavior should depend on the size and probability of the risk and on the magnitude of the costs of Its avoidance. As a responsible politician, as an economist, as an author of a book about the economics of climate change, with all available data and arguments in mind, I have to conclude that the risk is too small, the costs of eliminating it too high and the application of a fundamentalistically interpreted "precautionary principle" a wrong strategy.

5. The politicians – and I am not among them – who believe in the existence of a significant global warming and especially those who believe in its anthropogenic origin remain divided: some of them are in favor of mitigation, which means of controlling global climate changes (and are ready to put enormous amounts of resources into it), while others rely on adaptation to it, on modernization and technical progress, and on a favorable impact of the future increase in wealth and welfare (and prefer spending public money there). The second option Is less ambitious and promises much more than the first one.

6. The whole problem does not only have its time dimension, but a more than important spatial (or regional) aspect as well. This is highly relevant especially here, in the UN. Different levels of development, income and wealth in different places of the world make worldwide, overall, universal solutions costly, unfair and to a great extent discriminatory. The already developed countries do not have the right to impose any additional burden on the less developed countries. Dictating ambitious and for them entirely inappropriate environmental standards is wrong and should be excluded from the menu of recommended policy measures.

My suggestions are as follows:

1. The UN should organize two parallel IPCCs and publish two competing reports. To get rid of the onesided monopoly is a sine qua non for an efficient and rational debate. Providing the same or comparable financial backing to both groups of scientists is a necessary starting point.

2. The countries should listen to one another, learn from mistakes and successes of others, but any country should be left alone to prepare its own plan to tackle this problem and decide what priority to assign to it among its other competing goals.

We should trust in the rationality of man and in the outcome of spontaneous evolution of human society, not in the virtues of political activism. Therefore, let's vote for adaptation, not for the attempts to mastermind the global climate.

Dion in deep doo-doo

Some articles from the national press today:

Dion to judge Tory fate after throne speech

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion says he will wait until after next month's throne speech before deciding to vote down the Conservative government. (...)

Former Liberal cabinet minister and political analyst Jean Lapierre told CTV's Question Period that the Liberal caucus will have to debate the likelihood of Dion gaining popularity against voting down the throne speech.

"Mr. Dion has to realize that he really can't sell himself to Canadians so he's got to have a very strong team to make up for his weaknesses," Lapierre said on Sunday.

The sinking Liberal ship

Both provincial and federal Liberals are in trouble in Quebec

"Humility" is the word used by Liberal MP Denis Coderre to describe party leader Stéphane Dion's public self-flagellation after the Liberals' disastrous performance in Monday's federal by-elections. "Humiliation" might more accurate.

It was almost painful to watch Dion beat himself up, first in an interview on Radio-Canada television on Wednesday evening, then in front of reporters after a speech in Montreal the following day.

He said he recently realized he has an image problem among his fellow French-speaking Quebecers, which makes him the last person in the province to realize this.

Last, but not least, Sheila Copps: The Liberal civil war has officially started.

Is Stephane Dion really in any position to defeat Stephen Harper's government and force a winter election? He can't be thinking seriously about this.

Unless, of course, he's getting his advice from the Ignatieff camp.

WaPo: U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming

From Investors Business Daily (with emphasis added, of course):

Did NASA scientist James Hansen, the global warming alarmist in chief, once believe we were headed for . . . an ice age? An old Washington Post story indicates he did.

On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.

The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.

Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.

So what about those greenhouse gases that man pumps into the skies? Weren't they worried about them causing a greenhouse effect that would heat the planet, as Hansen, Al Gore and a host of others so fervently believe today?

"They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere," the Post said in the story, which was spotted last week by Washington resident John Lockwood, who was doing research at the Library of Congress and alerted the Washington Times to his finding.

Hansen has some explaining to do. The public deserves to know how he was converted from an apparent believer in a coming ice age who had no worries about greenhouse gas emissions to a global warming fear monger.

This is a man, as Lockwood noted in his message to the Times' John McCaslin, who has called those skeptical of his global warming theory "court jesters." We wonder: What choice words did he have for those who were skeptical of the ice age theory in 1971?

People can change their positions based on new information or by taking a closer or more open-minded look at what is already known. There's nothing wrong with a reversal or modification of views as long as it is arrived at honestly.

But what about political hypocrisy? It's clear that Hansen is as much a political animal as he is a scientist. Did he switch from one approaching cataclysm to another because he thought it would be easier to sell to the public? Was it a career advancement move or an honest change of heart on science, based on empirical evidence?

If Hansen wants to change positions again, the time is now. With NASA having recently revised historical temperature data that Hansen himself compiled, the door has been opened for him to embrace the ice age projections of the early 1970s.

Could be he's feeling a little chill in the air again.

Or then again, maybe he's feeling a litlle heat...

Hiatus

Everyone needs a break sometime - even a poor old Dog Named Kyoto, so I've decided to take this opportunity to explore other parts of this wonderful planet.

Rest assured, I will be looking for evidence of anthropogenic global warming wherever my travels may take me.

And trying my best to keep cool.

Ahhh...

Al Gore: architect of fear

An excellent article by Marc Sheppard: Al Gore's Real Assault on Reason:

In the opening chapter of The Assault on Reason, its seldom reasonable author accuses the Bush administration of exploiting people’s fears “to short-circuit debate and drive the public agenda without regard to the evidence, the facts, or the public interest."

[...]

What’s most confounding about these stinging allegations is that they were penned by the very same man whose Oscar awarded fear-exploitation-film proclaimed – in a gross distortion of prevailing evidence and facts -- that: “Humanity is sitting on a time bomb."

Al Gore has made the exploition of people's fears into an art form. Hypocrisy is no stranger to the former VP. He is himself one of the great architects of anxiety and fear:

As fear of impending doom plays such a crucial role in hysteria-building, it’s no wonder that AGW has been blamed for everything from lighthearted Costa Rican Frog Die-Offs, Australian cockroach migration, Swedish beetle-infestation, Great Britain’s puffin decline, a rise in hay fever and even staff shortages at Bulgarian brothels to deadly serious outbreaks of Malaria, Dengue Fever, West Nile Virus and Cholera, the killer Indian Ocean tsunami, and even last week’s Lake Tahoe wildfires.

In fact, when U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon wrote a WaPo piece this month actually blaming the genocide in Darfur on AGW, his was, not all that surprisingly, not the first. In fact, back in April, Stephan Faris had suggested in an Atlantic Monthly article that:

“The violence in Darfur is usually attributed to ethnic hatred. But global warming may be primarily to blame.”

A good read.

Gore should call for an end to distortion of science

From Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny in the Chicago Sun-Times

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads,

"We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth."

Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.

If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.

A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

The author, James M. Taylor calls on Al Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science and goes on to list a number of distortions that Gore could easily correct - if he means what he says.