natural post report on 'an inconvenient truth"

[orbsycli]

The gods are laughing
Scientists who work in the fields liberal arts graduate Al Gore wanders through contradict his theories about man-induced climate change
Tom Harris, National Post
Published: Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Albert Einstein once said,
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

While the gods must consider An Inconvenient Truth the ultimate comedy, real climate scientists are crying over Al Gore's new film. This is not just because the ex-vice-president commits numerous basic science mistakes. They are also concerned that many in the media and public will fail to realize that this film amounts to little more than science fiction.

Gore's credibility is damaged early in the film when he tells the audience that, by simply looking at Antarctic ice cores with the naked eye, one can see when the American Clean Air Act was passed. Dr. Ian Clark, professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa (U of O) responds, "This is pure fantasy unless the reporter is able to detect parts per billion changes to chemicals in ice." Air over the United States doesn't even circulate to the Antarctic before mixing with most of the northern, then the southern, hemisphere air, and this process takes decades.
Clark explains that even far more significant events, such as the settling of dust arising from the scouring of continental shelves at the end of ice ages, are undetectable in ice cores by an untrained eye.

Gore repeatedly labels carbon dioxide as "global warming pollution" when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball. The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a major contributor to global warming is just that -- an unproven hypothesis, against which evidence is increasingly mounting.

In fact, the correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don't precede, and therefore don't cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise -- by as much as 800 years. Even in the past century, the correlation is poor; the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the fastest rate in our history.

Similarly, the fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore. While humanity's three billion tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere's CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere's total CO2 content (750-830 GT). The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth's oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT -- making three GT seem hardly worth mentioning.

But Gore persists, labeling future CO2 rises as "deeply unethical" and lectures the audience, "Each one of us is a cause of global warming." Not satisfied with simply warning of human-induced killer heat waves -- events in Europe this past year were "like a nature hike through the Book of Revelations," he says -- he then uses high-tech special effects to show how human-caused climate changes are causing more hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, infectious diseases, insect plagues, glacial retreats, coral die-outs and the flooding of small island nations due to sea level rise caused by the melting of the polar caps.

I think I did a better job this time at finding a good source.

[InfiniteNow]

That post is pretty bunk. It's a clear smear and implies that anyone who thinks we're fukking up our planet is a moron... which they're not.

According to the BBC, there are nine documented errors in the film "An Inconvenient Truth," which was put together by several more people than just this year's shared Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. Teachers in the UK who wish to show the film in a classroom simply must describe these nine errors to the class before viewing. The rest is pretty spot on. Here's the story:

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Gore climate film's 'nine errors'



Here are the referenced errors for those interested:

Al Gore told there are nine inconvienient truths in his film - Times Online

Error one

Al Gore: A sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”.

The judge’s finding: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ”wake-up call“. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia.”

Error two

Gore: Low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls are already “being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.”

Judge: There was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.

Error three

Gore: The documentary described global warming potentially “shutting down the Ocean Conveyor” - the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe.

Judge: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it was “very unlikely” it would be shut down, though it might slow down.

Error four

Gore: He asserted - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed “an exact fit”.

Judge: Although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, “the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts”.

Error five

Gore: The disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to global warming.

Judge: This “specifically impressed” David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, but the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

Error six

Gore: The drying up of Lake Chad was used in the film as a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming, said the judge.

Judge: “It is generally accepted that the evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution. It is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.”

Error seven

Gore: Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans to global warming.

Judge: There is “insufficient evidence to show that”.

Error eight

Gore: Referred to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears were being found that had actually drowned “swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the ice”.

Judge: “The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm." That was not to say there might not in future be drowning-related deaths of bears if the trend of regression of pack ice continued - “but it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description”.

Error nine

Gore: Coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors.

Judge: The IPCC had reported that, if temperatures were to rise by 1-3 degrees centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and mortality, unless the coral could adapt. But separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution was difficult.

This issue is far too political if judges are weighing in. In my mind, these are more exaggerations than errors anyway, but whatever.

[Hill]

Good science should always involve skepticism, but never think that The National Post doesn't have an agenda: Climate change: The Deniers
Looking at its pedigree, it seems to be a very conservative-leaning paper, much like the Washington Times in the U.S. And like the Times, and all conservative voices, it is fighting the concept of anthropogenic climate change with all of its might. I have a difficult time figuring out why this is so, except that this well-researched theory suggests that businesses clean up after themselves before taking a profit for their share-holders.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by Hill

this well-researched theory suggests that businesses clean up after themselves before taking a profit for their share-holders.

And therein lies the real inconvenient truth.

[orbsycli]

so ..
why did al gore get the nobel peace prize?
for trying?

i ay ay. the guys in suits are just so shady.

who the hell is doing anything to stop this insane machine from itself?
WE THE PEOPLE

Peace is SO EASY.

Is there really no one else who is recognizably making a positive difference anymore?

The crescendo is so blazingly apparent nowadays.

Belly peace.
Family peace.
Truth peace.

round of applause for al gore for trying ok

[Zythryn]

The same judge also stated in his ruling that the book could be used by schools and that the basics of the book were acurate (with the above notations).
Al Gore won the prize for heightening awareness of this issue on a world wide scale. True, there are some exagerations and some things we know now are not true. However there are many more that are dead on. So don't throw out the baby with the bathwater