Gore's film has had a majority of scientists reveal that it is full of untruths.
This is complete nonsense. But feel free to back it up with something remotely resembling facts if you can.
Even a judge in Britain found it was riddled with 9 inaccuries(if you present something known to be false as the truth doesn't that make you a liar).
Right, let's put this in perspective.
This film is 100 minutes long - that's over an hour and a half. It's loaded with scientific information. Finding nine errors in a presentation that long is not remotely a case of it being "riddled" with inaccuracies. And depending on the nature of the inaccuracies, no, it doesn't necessarily make someone a liar.
Here's a transcript of the movie:
Politics Blog » An Inconvient Truth Transcript
Here are the nine inaccuracies (from the
New Scientist blog).
1.
Sea level rise of up to 7 metres will be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future.
I may be missing something, but I don't see anything about "the near future" in either the transcript or the book, which I'm looking at as I write this. It just says that if certain parts of these ice shelves melt - and it turns out that the melting is happening faster than was predicted and is accelerating - it'll lead to a sea level rise of 18-20 feet. He quoted Sir David King in support of his thesis.
2.
Low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls are being inundated because of global warming. Populations have had to evacuating as a result.
The judge claimed that there was no evidence that evacuations had happened. However, there is documented evidence that as early as 2003 the residents of Carteret Atoll were slated for evacuation because the atoll was being flooded. The evacuation was supposed to have been done by now but has been delayed. To say that there's no evidence that it has already happened is to be distinctly disingenuous. The evacuation is under way, it just isn't a done deal yet.
3.
The "Ocean Conveyor" in the North Atlantic will shut down
The judge says there's no evidence for this. At the time the movie was being made, it was generally thought that there was a real possibility that this might happen if enough melting took place in the Arctic. More recent research (last year or two) shows that it's probably unlikely. At the time the movie was being prepared, the notion of the conveyer shutting down was pretty much the conventional wisdom.
4.
There is a direct relationship between historic rise in CO2 in the atmosphere and in temperature
The judge was taking issue with an assertion of an exact fit between two graphs (one of carbon dioxide and one of temperature). I don't see anywhere in the book or the transcript where he claims an exact fit. His actual words are "The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside." Please note the "the relationship is very complicated" comment. Not quite "there's an exact fit."
5.
The receding snows of Kilimanjaro are due to global warming
This is too simplistic a statement since there seem to be a number of effects in this case. However, like the conveyor question, confirmatory studies of other effects weren't published till 2006, meaning that Gore was basing his conclusion on the science available at the time. This doesn't alter the fact that it's universally accepted (apart from by the deniers, who don't seem to accept anything) that many cases of depletion of year-round snow and recession of glaciers are due directly to global warming.
6.
Lake Chad's disappearance is due to global warming
The judge claims that the disappearance is due to other causes, including overuse for irrigation and local climate variability. However, the main cause appears to be a series of devastating droughts in the area over several years, a symptom far more of long-term climate change than just local stuff. One of the predictions of global warming is the pattern of severe drought year after year after year in some areas and severe flooding in others.
7.
The impact of Hurricane Katrina was due to global warming
This is another oversimplistic statement, and the science at the time was less firm than it is now. However, he's quite right when he says "Of course when the oceans get warmer, that causes stronger storms." Hurricanes get their energy as they pass over warm water, and the seas are getting warmer. There are a lot of other factors in the number and strength of hurricanes, but in terms of the aspect related to global warming, he isn't making any errors.
8.
Polar bears are dying due to disappearing ice
The judge claimed that the only study of dying polar bears showed that they died in a storm, not from drowning after being unable to find ice. However, again, the more severe weather in the North Atlantic is believed to be a function of climate change. And also, it was reported at the time of the study that the bears had died because of lack of ice. For example:
Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts - Times Online
SpringerLink - Journal Article
The abstract of the study said "We speculate that mortalities due to offshore swimming during late-ice (or mild ice) years may be an important and unaccounted source of natural mortality given energetic demands placed on individual bears engaged in long-distance swimming. We further suggest that drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues."
And that's what Gore reported.
If that's what scientists were saying at the time and that's what he included in his film because it's what the scientists were saying, then the only problem with his comments is that they appear to be a bit out of date. Which is par for the course when dealing with a fast-moving scientific field.
9.
Coral reef bleaching events are due to global warming
The judge said he shouldn't have claimed that bleaching is due to global warming when there are also other factors. However, the amount of warming over the last 50 years is within the parameters of causation by global warming. No doubt there are also other factors, some of which may not be independent of global warming, but global warming is a major one and there's little disagreement on that point.
Seems to me that this judge is nitpicking to kingdom come, and I'd be interested to know why. I hope we get some more details in the future about who advised him. He's complaining about some cases of conclusions based on science that was current at the time but has been overtaken in the meantime, he's quibbling about evacuations because they haven't actually happened yet even though it's a matter of record that they're under way, he's saying that Gore makes claims he doesn't actually make. This looks like a case of a person going full-out to try and find mistakes. The fact that he only found nine, some of which are very dubious, in a movie this long when he was obviously looking so hard means that the movie is overall a very accurate piece of work.
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