Friday, March 30, 2007

Al Gore's movie is totally misleading

Last night I continued to watch even more of Al Gore's blockbuster doom and gloom film, An Inconvenient Truth (see here for my first post on it).

I started to investigate some of his core beliefs, his main theories and predictions, and found this list of 25 problems with the science and statistics he uses.

Well, I'm utterly convinced that Al Gore has little or no credibility now. He certainly cannot claim a monopoly on the truth, or say that he represents a "scientific consensus". This list of 25 problems are not minor technical glitches, or slight errors in any sense. They are a total refutation of the key themes and predictions made in the film:

  • He spent 10 minutes talking about C02 levels correlating with temperature
  • He spent 5 minutes talking about record temperatures, record heat waves, record tornado and hurricane activity.
  • He spent 3 or 4 minutes talking about polar bears becoming endangered
  • He spent 5 minutes talking about shrinking lakes
  • He spent 15 minutes talking about receding ice
  • He talks about species extinction and species invasion for 5 minutes
  • He also mentions the bleaching of coral reefs, the spread of malaria and Antarctica shrinking.
If you look at the overall content of the film, as it transitions from one theme to another, with Al Gore occasionally providing some narrative, political jokes, photos of landscapes and wildernes, it seems that every time he performs scientific analysis and makes predictions, it is utterly irresponsible and misleading claptrap. Not one student in the audience challenged him on these issues, but then again that wouldn't make for such a compelling blockbuster film.

If Al Gore had to present his slide-show before an audience of climatologists, he would be interrupted and questioned and challenged repeatedly.