Yes, An Inconvenient Truth is Accurate
Posted in Environment, Politics by George
Many critics have claimed that the problem with An Inconvenient Truth is that the facts are not accurate. This, in fact, turns out to be shoddy criticism. The top climate scientists in the US have approved the movie for accuracy.
The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory. Most scientists had not seen the movie, which is in limited release, or read the book.
But those who have seen it had the same general impression: Gore conveyed the science correctly; the world is getting hotter and it is a manmade catastrophe-in-the-making caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
So basically, all those who bothered to see the movie confirmed that it was all correct. Those who “oppose” the idea that global warming is happening and is caused by humans and is dangerous are the ones who covered their ears and shut their eyes and didn’t even bother to see the film.
“They are quite literally afraid to know the truth,” Gore said. “Because if you accept the truth of what the scientific community is saying, it gives you a moral imperative to start to rein in the 70 million tons of global warming pollution that human civilization is putting into the atmosphere every day.”
June 28th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Wait, this US gov’t reply says differently.
http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&...
The rest of this post comes from the article…
Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, wrote in reference to review of scientific literature by the journal Science which claimed 100% consensus on global warming.
“…A study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words “global climate change” produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.”- Lindzen wrote in an op-ed in the June 26, 2006 Wall Street Journal.
June 28th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Maybe you better look at the following article and rewrite a bit…
http://newsbusters.org/node/6138
You might also take a look at Greenland where, thousand years ago, Norsemen were harvesting grapes in warm, fertile fields. In more recent times, however, explorers have unearthed several World War II-erra planes that crashed in 1942. They were found under 268 feet of snow.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Chris,
Here is why I don’t buy that link 100%. Look at the URL. See where it says: party=rep ?
Same goes for the second link which is a link to Chris’s comment.
Where are you getting info that planes are found under 268 feet of snow?
June 28th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
I understand that my link was from a Republican administration, but I think an MIT endowed professor carries some weight in whatever article he writes.
You cannot say a documentary is 100% correct when a big time MIT Ph.D. makes a statement that clearly contradicts one of Mr. Gore’s statements.
Maybe I should just include a link to the Ph.D.’s actual editorial. Maybe the Wall Street Journal is unbiased enough for you.
You don’t buy an argument from the Republican party when a former Presidential candidate fronts a scientific documentary? He has no graduate degree of any kind (may I remind you that he didn’t graduate from either Vanderbilt Divinity or Law schools), while Dr. Lindzen has a Ph.D, M.S, and B.A. from the same Harvard University Mr. Gore attended.
Here is a snippet of one of Dr. Lindzen’s over 200 publications on the atmospheric sciences.
http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/198_greenhouse...
The most important greenhouse constituents of the atmosphere are water vapor and clouds, but water vapor cycles so quickly through the atmostphere that its concentration is usually regarded as feedback, rather than a forcing in the climate system. Next to water vapor and clouds, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and ozone are the most important green house constituents. Rising levels of these constituents raise concertn that the Earth’s climate may warm appreciably. Just how much warming occurs depends crucially on the response of water vapor and clouds to changing climate, but the physics controlling these important feedbacks is still inadequately understood or modeled. Thus while the basic physics of the greenhouse effect is well understood, quantitative estimates of its sensitivity to climate change are hampered by poor understand of certain key phsyical processes and by inadequate measurement of clouds and water vapor in the upper troposphere.
Sounds like conservative mumbo jumbo to me… wonder why the Oxford University Press, the Journal of Climate, Journal of Atmospheric Science, and Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (or other peer-reviewed journals) publishes any of his work anymore…
June 28th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
Interesting facts about Dr. Lindzen from http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard...:
June 28th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Ah, clearly, he is biased.
You can see from this website that Al Gore received at least as much money from Exxon and Mobil employees in his 2000 presidential campaign.
http://www.opensecrets.org/2000elect/lookup/AllCan...
This must mean Al Gore is in the bag for Big Oil. (I’m sure he only sells positions for much more money.)
The issue still stands:
How can would accurately predict climate changes hundreds of years in the future, when we don’t totally understand the physics and processes interacting in global warming? We can’t even model weather in the next week or two, without giving ranges of scenarios.
He is saying that correlation does not imply causation, until the systems are fully understood.
June 28th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
On a side note… the website is pretty cool if you want to look up how your business leans.
George, you can see how the attorneys at Latham and Watkins spent their contributions. $77K for Bush and $140K for Kerry in 2004. I’m not sure how the whole personal vs. corporate contributions go, but it’s interesting.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:33 am
Yeah, I really like sourcewatch, it’s pretty cool. I’m surprised there were more kerry contributions, just from conversations I’ve heard around the office. Maybe I’ve just had a bad sample…