The Associated Press story claimimg that all the top climatologists are giving a "5 star accuracy rating" to Al Gore's freak-out flick, An Inconvenient Truth, is getting huge attention from the MSM. Just one problem ---
-- the story is misleading to the max.
Here is a report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works that directly challenges the AP story. Check it out.
There are also several articles over at TCS Daily, articles which examine global warming in detail with science uppermost in priority instead of politics. You'll see that when the a priori assumptions are removed and the claims for global warming and its attendant horrors face the test of real science, Mr. Gore ends up with egg all over his now-beardless face.
This page lists a few of those TCS Daily stories.
And finally, from a few other sources, here are some scientific perspectives that also weren't considered newsworthy for the Associated Press story:
Below are some quotes from top climate experts discussing Gore's film and global warming that apparently slipped under the radar.
-"Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology." -Dr. Tim Ball, former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. ("Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe" by Tom Harris, Canada Free Press, June 18, 2006)
-"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years."-Dr. Tim Patterson, Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. ("Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe" by Tom Harris, Canada Free Press, June 18, 2006)
-"He (Gore) blames global warming for the eventual disappearance of the famous snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro. A bigger culprit is a decline in atmospheric moisture."-- Dr. Robert Balling, professor in the climatology department of Arizona State University. ("Gore's Movie: Is it more than just hot air?" by Tom Avril, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, PA. 6/12/06).
-"While the film will surely attract activists from both major political parties, the vast majority of Americans will be caught in the middle-- left to wonder what the appropriate policies should be to address a problem that is being overstated for political gains." -Joseph D'Aleo, chairman of the Atmospheric Meteorological Association. (Science presents an inconvenient truth for Al Gore" by Joseph D'Aleo, The Union Leader, Manchester, NH 5/26/06)
-"Dramatic images of icebergs calving into the ocean in former Vice President Al Gore's new climate-change movie, An Inconvenient Truth, are designed "to scare people into believing that global warming is serious, ergo we must do something about it." -Dr. Roy Spencer, research scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. ("Plan to Stop Warming" by Jim Erickson, The Rocky Mountain News, Boulder, CO. 6/9/06).
