Gore Re-Gored

Al Gore's film may have inadvertently done us all a favour: by making itself a home for all the main global warming nostrums and a lightning rod for global warming enthusiasm -- attracting worldwide bouts of almost religious enthusiasm, including local cheerleaders from Helen Clark to John Key, whose "buttons," he said had all been pushed -- it has attracted to it as well high-voltage bolts of criticism that demolish his primary thesis.

Two authors in particular have been carrying serious water debunking Al Gore's celluloid fits of fantasy.

Writing in the UK's Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Monckton even attracted Al Gore himself to fire off a broadside defending himself and his science. A scathing Monckton has just fired off his return salvo [pdf].

You can see the whole series here -- and you owe it to yourself to get to grips with the arguments:

1. Christopher Monckton (5 Nov.): The Sun is Warmer Now Than for the Past 11,400 Years
2. Christopher Monckton (12 Nov.): Wrong problem. Wrong Solution
3. Al Gore's response (19 Nov.): At Stake is Nothing Less Than the Survival of Human Civilisation
4. Christopher Monckton: Gore Gored: A Science-based response to Al Gore’s Global Warming Commentary in London’s Sunday Telegraph, 19 November 2006. [PDF]

And Marlo Lewis offers his 'Skeptics Guide to An Inconvenient Truth,'which you would have seen here in draft format, now updated into an online book, a powerpoint display, and a series of short online videos:

A Skeptics Guide to an Inconvenient Truth - online book
Inconvenient Truths for Al Gore - Videos
Inconvenient Truths for Al Gore - Powerpoint presentation

This is a goldmine. If for example you know teachers who are using Gore's film as a 'teaching tool,' as many are unfortunately doing, then send them Lewis's Powerpoint presentation [ppt] as a counter-balance.

Now as you would expect, both Monckton and Lewis make similar criticisms of the main points of the film. Monckton quotes Senator James Inhofe’s list of some of Gore’s scientific errors or exaggerations, which gives you a convenient short list of the main points of both in summary form:

• · Gore promoted the now-debunked “hockey stick” temperature chart for the past 1,000 years in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate, and attempted to debunk the significance of the mediaeval warm period and little ice age (for discussion and references, see the full discussion in the online book [pdf]).
• · Gore insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most scientist believe does not exist (for discussion and references, see the full discussion in the online book [pdf]).
• · Gore asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoringthat temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer (NCDC, 2006);
• · Gore said the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice (see my first article).
• · Gore hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing (for discussion and references, see the full discussion in the online book [pdf]).
• · Gore erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, though satellite measurements show no temperature change at the summit, and the peer-reviewed scientific literature suggests that desiccation of the atmosphere in the region caused by post-colonial deforestation is the cause of the glacial recession (see my first article).
• · Gore made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific “consensus” and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature (for discussion and references, see the full discussion in the online book [pdf]).
• · Gore incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing (see Polissar et al., 2005, for an interesting discussion of glaciers in the tropical Andes).
• · Gore blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, though NASA scientists had concluded that local water-use and grazing patterns are probably to blame (Foley and Coe, 2001).
• · Gore inaccurately said polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact 11 of the 13 main groups in Canada are thriving, and there is evidence that the only groups that are not thriving are in a region of the Arctic that has cooled (Taylor, 2006).
• · Gore did not tell viewers that the 48 scientists whom he quoted as having accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support the Democrat Presidential candidate, John Kerry, in 2004.

Now, go do your homework.
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RELATED: Global Warming, Science, Politics-UK, Politics