The 35 Errors In "An Inconvenient Truth" - Part 10

ERROR 24 West Antarctic ice sheet "unstable"

Gore says disturbing changes have been measured under the West Antarctic ice sheet, implicitly because of “global warming.”

The Facts:

Most of the recession in this ice sheet over the past 10,000 years has occurred in the absence of any sea-level or temperature forcing. In most of Antarctica, the ice is in fact growing thicker. Mean Antarctic temperature has actually fallen throughout the past half century. In some Antarctic glens, environmental damage has been caused by temperature decreases of up to 2 degrees Celsius. Antarctic sea-ice spread to a 30-year record extent in late 2007.
*See the figures above

ERROR 25 Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves "breaking up“

Gore says half a dozen ice shelves each “larger than Rhode Island” have broken up and vanished from the Antarctic Peninsula recently, implicitly because of “global warming.”

The Facts:

Gore does not explain that the ice shelves have melted before, as studies of seabed sediments have shown. The Antarctic Peninsula accounts for about 2% of the continent, in most of which the ice is growing thicker. All the recently-melted shelves, added together, amount to an area less than one-fifty-fifth the size of Texas.

ERROR 26 Larsen B Ice Shelf "broke up because of' global warming"

Gore focuses on the Larsen B ice shelf, saying that it completely disappeared in 35 days.

The Facts:

There has been extensive ice-shelf break-up throughout the past 10,000 years, and the maximum ice-shelf extent may have been in the Little Ice Age in the late 15th century.

The figure above shows the area where ice shelves disintegrate and get reported in the media. What does not get reported is that many of these ice shelves disintegrate periodically. The size gets reported without keeping it in proportion to what is actually happening – areas of larger than usual ice growth. Notice that the area where the shelves disintegrate does not even have an orange line representing the median of the 1979-2000 ice extent in the area. This is because it is not unusual for the ice to melt in this area.

One of the other things that Al Gore forgot to mention about the Antarctic Peninsular is the active volcano(s) in that region that may be an alternate source of any recent shelf destruction.

Each of the red dots is a volcano in Antarctica. Note how many are on the peninsula near the Larsen and Wilkins Ice shelf's which are the ones most used to prove a link to global warming and in the western half of Antarctica in general.

The 35 Errors In "An Incovenient Truth" - Part 9

ERROR 22 Mountain glaciers worldwide "disappearing"

Gore says that “the ice has a story to tell, and it is worldwide.” He shows several before-and-after pictures of glaciers disappearing.

The Facts:

The glacial melt began in the 1820s, long before humankind could have had any effect, and has continued at a uniform rate since, showing no acceleration since humankind began increasing the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere. Total ice volumes in three of the last four Ice Ages were lower than they are today, and “global warming” had nothing to do with that.

Despite Al Gore’s claim that glaciers are “disappearing” world wide, he clearly forgot to mention these ones that are growing in some cases for the first time in 250 years.

NORWAY : Ålfotbreen Glacier, Briksdalsbreen Glacier, Nigardsbreen Glacier
Hardangerjøkulen Glacier, Hansebreen Glacier, Jostefonn Glacier,
Engabreen glacier ;
FRANCE: Mt.Blanc;
SWITZERLAND: Silvretta Glacier;
KIRGHIZTAN: Abramov;
RUSSIA: Maali Glacier;
GREENLAND: glacier advancing 7.2 miles per year!;
NEW ZEALAND: All 48 glaciers in the Southern Alps have grown during the past year, most notably the Fox, Franz Josef glaciers.
SOUTH AMERICA: Argentina's Perito Moreno Glacier; Chile's: Pio XI Glacier;
ECUADOR: Antizana 15 Alpha Glacier;
UNITED STATES: Colorado, Washington (Mount St. Helens, Mt. Rainier*and Mt. Shuksan), California (Mount Shasta)' Montana, Glacier Peak, Washington, Alaska (Mt. McKinley and Hubbard first time in 250 years).
CANADA: Helm Glacier, Place Glacier
HIMALAYER’S: in the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram.

So it could also be argued there is world wide growth of Glacier’s too.

ERROR 23 Sahara desert "drying"

Gore says terrible tragedies are occurring in the southern Sahara because of drought which he blames on “global warming.”

The Facts:

There is no drought caused by “global warming.” In 2007 there were record rains across the whole of the southern Sahara. In the past 25 years the Sahara has shrunk by some 300,000 square kilometres because of additional rainfall. Some scientists think “global warming” may actually mitigate pre-existing droughts because there will be more water vapor in the atmosphere. Before 1200 AD there were frequent, prolonged and severe droughts in the Great Plains. Since 1200 AD, there has been more rainfall. Likewise, the US has had more rainfall since the 1950s than it had in the earlier part of the 20th Century, when the great droughts which were then common were described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. South African rainfall was also more stable in the second half of the 20th Century, when human effect on climate is said to have become significant, than in the first half.

The 35 Errors In "An Inconvenient Truth" - Part 8

ERROR 18 Arctic "warming fastest"

Gore says the Arctic has been warming faster than the rest of the planet.

The Facts:

While it is in general true that during periods of warming (whether natural or anthropogenic) the Arctic will warm faster than other regions, Gore does not mention that the Arctic has been cooling over the past 60 years, and is now one degree Celsius cooler than it was in the 1940s. There was a record amount of snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere in 2001.

Several vessels were icebound in the Arctic in the spring of 2007, but few newspapers reported this. The newspapers reported that the North-West Passage was free of ice in 2007, and said that this was for the first time since records began. But the records, taken by satellites, had only begun 29 years previously. The North-West Passage had also been open for shipping in 1945, and, in 1903, the great Norwegian explorer Amundsen had passed through it in a sailing ship.

ERROR 19 Greenland ice sheet "unstable“

Gore says “global warming” is making the Greenland ice sheet unstable.

The Facts:

Greenland ice grows 2in a year. The Greenland ice sheet survived each of the previous three interglacial periods, each of which was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the present. It survived atmospheric CO2 concentrations of up to 1000 ppmv (compared with today’s 400 ppmv). It last melted 850,000 years ago, when humankind did not exist and could not have caused the melting. There is a close correlation between variations in Solar activity and temperature anomalies in Greenland, but there is no correlation between variations in CO2 concentration and temperature changes in Greenland. The IPCC (2001) says that to melt even half the Greenland ice sheet would require temperature to rise by 5.5 degrees C and remain that high for several thousand years.


ERROR 20 Himalayan glacial melt waters "failing"

Gore says 40% of the world’s population get their water supply from Himalayan glacial melt waters that are failing because of “global warming.”

The Facts:

The water comes almost entirely from snow-melt, not from ice-melt. Over the past 40 years there has been no decline in the amount of snow-melt in Eurasia.

ERROR 21 Peruvian glaciers "disappearing"

Gore says that a Peruvian glacier is less extensive now than it was in the 1940s, implying that “global warming” is the cause.

The Facts:

Except for the very highest peaks, the normal state of the Peruvian cordilleras has been ice-free throughout most of the past 10,000 years.

The 35 Errors In "An Inconvenient Truth" - Part 7

ERROR 14 Big storm insurances losses "increasing"

Gore says insurance losses arising from large storms and other extreme-weather events are increasing, by implication because of “global warming.”

The Facts:

Insured losses, as a percentage of the population of coastal areas in the path of hurricanes, were lower even in 2005 than they had been in 1925.

In 2006, a very quiet hurricane season, Lloyds of London posted their biggest-ever profit: £3.6 billion.

This is backed up by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which stated in Feb 2008:

A team of scientists have found that the economic damages from hurricanes have increased in the U.S. over time due to greater population, infrastructure, and wealth on the U.S. coastlines, and not to any spike in the number or intensity of hurricanes.

“There is nothing in the U.S. hurricane damage record that indicates global warming has caused a significant increase in destruction along our coasts.”

ERROR 15 Mumbai "flooding"

Gore says flooding in Mumbai is increasing, by implication because of “global warming.”

The Facts:

Rainfall trends at the two major weather stations in Mumbai show no increase in heavy rainfall over the past 48 years. (See graph above)

ERROR 16 Severe tornadoes "more frequent"

Gore says that 2004 set an all-time record for tornadoes in the US.

The Facts:

More tornadoes are being reported because detection systems are better than they were. But the number of severe tornadoes has been falling for more than 50 years. (Note the black line on the graph, above)

ERROR 17 The sun "heats the Arctic ocean"

Gore says that ice-melt allows the Sun to heat the Arctic Ocean, and a diagram shows the Sun’s rays heating it directly.

The Facts:

The ocean emits radiant energy at the moment of absorption, and would freeze if there were no atmosphere. It is the atmosphere, not the Sun that warms the ocean. Also, Gore’s diagram confuses the tropopause with the ionosphere, and he makes a number of other errors indicating that he does not understand the elementary physics of radiative transfer.

The 35 Errors In "An Inconvenient Truth" - Part 6

ERROR 10 100 ppmv of CO2 "melting mile-thick ice"

Gore implies that the difference of just 100 parts per million by volume in CO2 concentration between an interglacial temperature maximum and an ice-age temperature minimum causes “the difference between a nice day and having a mile of ice above your head.”

The Facts:

Gore’s implication has the effect of overstating the mainstream consensus estimate of the effect of CO2 on temperature at least tenfold.

…Gore is accordingly implying that 100 ppmv can cause a temperature increase of up to 12 degrees C. However, the

Consensus as expressed by the IPCC is that 100 ppmv of increased CO2 concentration, from 180 to 280 ppmv, would increase radiant energy flux in the atmosphere by 2.33 watts per square meter, or less than 1.2 degrees Celsius including the of temperature feedbacks.

ERROR 11 Hurricane Caterina "manmade"

Gore says that Hurricane Caterina, the only hurricane ever to strike the coast of Brazil, was caused by “global warming.”

The Facts:

In 2004, Brazil’s summer sea surface temperatures were cooler than normal, not warmer. But air temperatures were the coldest in 25 years. The air was so much colder than the water that it caused a heat flux from the water to the air similar to that which fuels hurricanes in warm seas.

Again I thought Al Gore said "...we cannot attribute any particular storm to global warming....." . So why does he constantly keep doing just that?

ERROR 12 Japanese typhoons "a new record"

Gore says that 2004 set a new record for the number of typhoons striking Japan.

The Facts:

The trend in the number of typhoons, and of tropical cyclones, has fallen throughout the past 50 years. The trend in rainfall from cyclones has also fallen, and there has been no trend in monsoon rainfall.

ERROR 13 Hurricanes "getting stronger"

Gore says scientists had been giving warnings that hurricanes will get stronger because of “global warming".

The Facts:

Over the past 60 years there has been no change in the strength of hurricanes, even though hydrocarbon use went up six-fold in the same period. Research by Dr. Kerry Emanuel,.. has been discredited by more recent findings that wind-shear effects tend to nullify the amplification of hurricane strength which he had suggested, and, of course, by the observed failure of hurricanes to gain strength during the past 60 years of “global warming.

The 35 Errors In "An Inconvenient Truth" - Part 5

ERROR 8 Polar bear "dying"

Gore says a scientific study shows that polar bears are being killed swimming long distances to find ice that has melted away because of “global warming.”

The Facts:

The study, by Monnett & Gleason (2005), mentioned just four dead bears. They had died in an exceptional storm, with high winds and waves in the Beaufort Sea. The amount of sea ice in the Beaufort Sea has grown over the past 30 years. A report for the World Wide Fund for Nature shows that polar bears, which are warm-blooded, have grown in numbers where temperature has increased, and have become fewer where temperature has fallen. Polar bears evolved from brown bears 200,000 years ago, and survived the last interglacial period, when global temperature was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the present and there was probably no Arctic ice-cap at all. The real threat to polar bears is not “global warming” but hunting. In 1940, there were just 5,000 polar bears worldwide. Now that hunting is controlled, there are 25,000.

Ms. Kreider says sea-ice “was the lowest ever measured for minimum extent in 2007.” She does not say that the measurements, which are done by satellite, go back only 29 years. She does not say that the North-West Passage, a good proxy for Arctic sea-ice extent, was open to shipping in 1945, or that Amundsen passed through in a sailing vessel in 1903.

The photo of the stranded polar bear(seen above) was one of a couple that were used time and again by environmentalist groups to pull at the heartstrings of the viewer and win them over to their side of the arguement. This, however, has been debunked by the photographer.

ERROR 9 Coral reefs "bleaching" (This was the final point ruled on by the British High Court.)

Gore says coral reefs are “bleaching” because of “global warming.”

The Facts:

There was some bleaching in 1998, but this was caused by the exceptional El Nino Southern Oscillation that year. Two similarly severe El Niño's over the past 250 years also caused extensive bleaching. “Global warming” was nothing to do with it.

Supported by:

New research from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the seas rapidly cooled from 2003 to 2005.

The 35 Errors In "An Incovenient Truth" - Part 4

ERROR 5 Snows of Kilimanjaro "melting"

Gore says “global warming” has been melting the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

The Facts:
The melting of the Furtwangler Glacier at the summit of the mountain began 125 years ago. More of the glacier had melted before Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1936 than afterward.

…Temperature at the summit never rises above freezing and is at an average of –7 Celsius. The cause of the melting is long-term climate shifts exacerbated by imprudent regional deforestation, and has nothing to do with “global warming.” .

…the temperature at the summit of Kilimanjaro remains below freezing and has not risen in 30 years, “global warming” is not “exacerbating the stresses” at the summit of Kilimanjaro.

The Photo above shows a view of Mt. Kilimanjaro in 1970, 2000 and 2008. Note the return of the snows to the peak in 2008 so it is not much different to 1970. A clearer view is in the photo below:

ERROR 6 Lake Chad "drying up"

Gore says “global warming” dried up Lake Chad in Africa.

The Facts:

Over-extraction of water and changing agricultural patterns dried the lake, which was also dry in 8500BC, 5500BC, 1000BC and 100BC.

This is supported by: Lake Chad is so shallow it nearly dried out as far back as 1908, and again in 1984. So many more people depend on it now that the water pumped out for irrigation has quadrupled in 25 years.

Error 7 Hurricane Katrina "man made"

Gore says Hurricane Katrina, that devastated New Orleans in 2005, was caused by “global warming.”

The Facts:

The subsequent destruction was caused by the failure of ..the administration of New Orleans, to heed 30 years of warnings by the Corps of Engineers that the levees – dams that kept New Orleans dry – could not stand a direct hit by a hurricane. Katrina was only Category 3 when it struck the levees. They failed, as the Engineers had said they would. Poor maintenance of the infrastructure, not “global warming,” Was to blame for the consequent death and destruction.

So when Al Gore said: "Although we cannot attribute any particular storm to global warming....." we can only assume by standing in front of a large picture of Hurricane Katrina and declaring that it was caused by global warming, was him not attributing any particular storm to global warming???

The 35 Errors In "An Inconvenient Truth" - Part 3

ERROR 3 Thermohaline circulation "stopping":

This is the scenario played out in the Hollywood film “The Day After Tomorrow”. Gore says “global warming” may shut down the thermohaline circulation in the oceans, which he calls the “ocean conveyor,” plunging Europe into an ice age.

The Facts:

A paper published in 2006 says:

“Analyses of ocean observations and model simulations suggest that changes in the thermohaline circulation during the last century are likely the result of natural multidecadal climate variability.

Indications of a sustained thermohaline circulation weakening are not seen during the last few decades. Instead, a strengthening since the 1980s is observed.”

It is now near-universally accepted that the thermohaline circulation cannot be and will not be shut down by “global warming,” and the film should have been corrected to reflect the consensus.


ERROR 4 CO2 "driving temperature"

Gore says that in each of the last four interglacial warm periods it was changes in carbon dioxide concentration that caused changes in temperature.

The Facts:

It was the other way about. Changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 concentration by between 800 and 2800 years, as scientific papers including the paper on which Gore’s film had relied had made clear.

The judge found that Gore had very clearly implied that it was changes in carbon dioxide concentration that had led to changes in temperature in the palaeoclimate, when the scientific literature is unanimous (save only for a single paper by James Hansen, whom Gore trusts) to the effect that the relationship was in fact the other way about, with a carbon dioxide feedback contributing only a comparatively insignificant further increase to temperature after the temperature change had itself initiated a change in carbon dioxide concentration.

The significance of this error was explained during the court proceedings, and was accepted by the judge. Gore says that the 100 ppmv difference between carbon dioxide concentrations during ice-age temperature minima and interglacial temperature maxima represents “the difference between a nice day and a mile of ice above your head.” This would imply a CO2 effect on temperature about 10 times greater than that regarded as plausible by the consensus of mainstream scientific opinion.

The 35 Errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” - Part 2

ERROR 1 Sea level "rising 6 m:

Gore says that a sea-level rise of up to 6 m (20 ft) will be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland. Though Gore does not say that the sea-level rise will occur in the near future, the judge found that, in the context, it was clear that this is what he had meant, since he showed expensive graphical representations of the effect of his imagined 6 m (20 ft) sea-level rise on existing populations, and he quantified the numbers who would be displaced by the sea-level rise.

The Facts:

The sea has been rising since near the end of the little Ice age in 1850. It’s rate of rise has been fairly consistent over that entire time (both pre and post man made CO2 rise) as can be seen in the graph above.

The IPCC estimates a sea-level rise of “59 cm” by 2100. This is the IPCC’s upper estimate, on its most extreme scenario. The IPCC has reduced this upper estimate from 3 ft in 2001 to less than 2 ft (i.e. half the mean centennial sea-level rise that has occurred since the end of the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago) in 2007.

The judge was accordingly correct in finding that Gore’s presentation of the imagined imminent threat of a 6 m (20 ft) sea-level rise, with his account of the supposed impact on the present-day populations of Manhattan, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, etc., etc, was not a correct statement of the mainstream science on this question.

Closer examination of the Topex and Jason satellite recordings from 2009 (above) shows no net rise since 2005. Also whilst the initial rate of rise looks steep on this graph when you put it on the long term historical context(seen below) it is barely a rise at all.

ERROR 2 Pacific islands "drowning":

Gore says low-lying inhabited Pacific coral atolls are already being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.

The Facts:

There are several coastlines (the east coast of England, for instance) where the land is sinking as a consequence of post-ice-age isostatic recovery, or where (as in Bangladesh) tectonic subduction is similarly causing the land to sink. But such natural causes owe nothing to sea-level rise.

In Tuvalu the tide-gauges (as seen above) maintained until recently by the National Tidal Facility of Australia show a mean annual sea-level rise (of 0.07 mm per year) over the past half-century equivalent to the thickness of a human hair. A graph of sea level changes in all the locations tested by the National Tidal Facility is also seen above. Note the lack of any dramatic rises on any of the locations.

The Carteret Islands flooding arose not because of rising sea levels but because of imprudent dynamiting of the reefs by local fishermen.

In the Maldives, a detailed recent study showed that sea levels were unchanged today compared with 1250 years ago, though they have been higher in much of the intervening period, and have very seldom been lower.

A well-established tree very close to the Maldivian shoreline and only inches above sea level was recently uprooted by Australian environmentalists anxious to destroy this visible proof that sea level cannot have risen very far.

The tree in question is shown above.

The 35 Errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” - Part 1

In October 2007 Lord Christopher Monckton (seen above), Third Viscount of Brenchley, who was Special Advisor to Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister from 1982 and is currently chief policy adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute in the USA wrote an article that highlighted the full 35 errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s Movie. Remember the first nine were ruled on by the British High Court:

It can also be seen via You Tube:

35 Inconvenient truths part 1, and



35 Inconvenient truths part 2 .



The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors”, he would have made a finding that the Government’s distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.

Al Gore’s spokesman and “environment advisor,” Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented “thousands and thousands of facts.” It did not: just 2,000 “facts” in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate. The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion.

…Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term “errors.” In fact, the judge used the term “errors,” in inverted commas, throughout his judgment.

As can be seen here: The Judgement.

….Ms. Kreider then says, “The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex.” However, the single web-page entitled “The Science” on the movie’s official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the IPCC, but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term.

…All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion.

We now itemize 35 of the scientific errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s movie. The first nine were listed by the judge in the High Court in London in October 2007 as being “errors.” The remaining 26 errors are just as inaccurate or exaggerated as the nine spelt out by the judge, who made it plain during the proceedings that the Court had not had time to consider more than these few errors. The judge found these errors serious enough to require the UK Government to pay substantial costs to the plaintiff.

All 35 will be covered in the following parts to this post.

Private Beneficiaries of Climate Change

It would also appear that some of those most vocal about the dangers of climate change are also making a healthy living from their lectures, movies and books on the subject. According to this article from the Times Online:

When he lost the 2000 election (to George W. Bush), Al Gore was worth just £1m. His biggest assets were his two homes in Nashville, Tennessee, and Arlington, Virginia, valued at £375,000, and £500,000 invested in oil company shares.

…Today Gore commands between £50,000 and £85,000 a speech, holds stock options in Google worth £15m and has made as much as £4m from advances on his book deals. He is also advising a US venture capital company on how to invest a $600m green technology fund.
…Since the release of his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has given 150 speeches a year.

…A contract for one of his speaking arrangements, released by the University of California under freedom of information requirements, reveals that Gore demands first class travel and accommodation and £500 a day for meals, phone calls and other expenses.

The contract stipulates that Gore’s car from the airport should be “a sedan, not a sports utility vehicle”.

Then there is this from the U.K.'s Daily Mail:

In December of 2007 Al Gore gave a speech to the Fortune Forum summit in London charged £100,000 for a half –hour speech. That equated to an earning rate of £3,300-per-minute.

Also this from the Drudge Report:

In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria.

His spokesman emphasised, however, that Gore waives his lecture fees for charities and schools and gives a proportion of his income to the Alliance for Climate Protection, of which he is chairman.

Australia is not immune from this also. Professor Tim Flannery, whilst not in the league of Al Gore, has regularly commanded $10,000 a speech on Climate Change, however, according to Michael Warner of Melbourne’s Herald Sun :

The climate change crusader confirmed he charges US corporations up to $US50,000 for speeches -- an Australian record.

Prof Flannery revealed he pocketed $US50,000 ($A64,000) for a speech last year and would soon be paid the same amount on a US speaking tour.

But he said he charged much less for speeches in Australia, often giving presentations for free.
Prof Flannery said he intended giving 10 per cent of his earnings to a yet-to-be-named environmental fund.

The scientist, explorer and best-selling author said he had received up to 20 speaking requests a day from around the world since being named Australian of the Year.

Professor Flannery’s book “The Weather Makers” not only is on the best seller list of many countries but is also in junior reader format so that it can be put into Australian schools.

It could be argued from these two examples of high profile scientists and the funding arrangements detailed by Professor England, that it would not be in any of their interests to say anything that would cast doubt that Climate Change is anything but real. As for all concerned it has been a strong source of profit or funding for each of them.

In The Pay Of Big Oil And Other Funding Arrangements

So what of the claims that sceptics are in the pay of “Big Oil.” The most repeated accusation is that organizations sceptical of man-made climate fears have received $19 Million from an oil corporation over the past two decades. Whilst it is true that organisations like the “George C. Marshall Institute” and “Heartland Institute” who have received part of their funding from Exxon in the past, the amount pales when compared to the funding that the believers are now drawing from both government and private sources.

James Spann, a meteorologist certified by the American Meteorological Society, suggests :

Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story, Spann wrote on January 18, 2007 For many, global warming is a big cash grab, Spann added.

"Tens of thousands of interested persons benefit directly from the global warming scare—at the expense of the ordinary consumer. Environmental organizations globally, such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defence Fund, have raked in billions of dollars. Multi-billion-dollar government subsidies for useless mitigation schemes are large and growing. Emission trading programs will soon reach the $100 billion a year level, with large fees paid to brokers and those who operate the scams," Professor Fred Singer explained on June 30, 2007.

"In other words, many people have discovered they can benefit from climate scares and have formed an entrenched interest. Of course, there are also many sincere believers in an impending global warming catastrophe, spurred on in their fears by the growing number of one-sided books, movies, and media coverage," Singer added.

Even if you factor in former Vice President Al Gore's unsubstantiated August 7, 2007 assertion that $10 million dollars a year from the fossil fuel industry flows into sceptical organizations, any funding comparison between sceptics and warming proponents utterly fails. Al Gore launched a $100 million a year multimedia global warming fear campaign. Gore alone will now be spending $90 million more per year than he alleges the entire fossil fuel industry spends, according to an August 26, 2007 article in Advertising Age.

Also according to this article from the U.S Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:

The [climate] alarmists also enjoy a huge financial advantage over the sceptics with numerous foundations funding climate research, University research money and the United Nations endless promotion of the cause.

The well-heeled environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets compared to groups that express global warming scepticism. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defence Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often media derided (Sceptical) Competitive Enterprise Institute’s small $3.6 million annual budget. In addition, if a climate sceptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defence Fund) The alarmists have all of these advantages, yet they still feel the need to resort to desperation tactics to silence the sceptics.

The last two highlighted sentences say a lot. Any funding directed towards sceptical organisations is labelled tainted money by the believers and as a result the funding from “Big Environment” towards the believers far outweighs the amount of money being spent by “Big Oil” on the sceptics. Yet the Greenpeace propaganda is more widely known. Dr. David Evans also wrote a detailed account of being a global warming scientist prior to his defection to the sceptical side in his article: "I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train" (28/5/2007) where he states:

I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; there were international conferences full of such people. We had political support, the ear of government, big budgets. We felt fairly important and useful (I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet!

…Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. Climate change has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly blames carbon emissions, to the point of silencing critics.

As Melbourne’s Herald Sun Columnist Andrew Bolt suggests:

The government money, of course, follows the alarmism - and the political advantage.

The Reaction Of Some Of the Public To The Media Campaign On Climate Change

With all this constant doom and gloom being hyped by our scientist’s, politician’s, and media outlets and with some people not being aware there is even another side to the arguement, is it any wonder that the following is starting to happen:

We describe a patient with climate change delusion a previously unreported phenomenon. A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an 8 month history of depressed mood... He also had visions of apocalyptic events... The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of 'millions of people' through exhaustion of water supplies. He quoted'internet research' to substantiate this. The patient described that 'I feel guilty about it', had attempted to stop drinking... He was unable to acknowledge that the belief was unreasonable when challenged.

Or this one:

Psychiatrists in America have identified a new mental illness that threatens the very fabric of society: an obsession with saving the planet. Some people are so addicted to cutting their carbon emissions that they seem to have gone quite mad. Take, for example, Sharon Astyk, who makes her four children sleep in a huddle so she doesn't have to turn on the heating.

Or this one:

Or Jay Matsueda, who waters his lawn with his own urine so that he doesn't have to flush the loo; he says that it was his ex-girlfriend's choice of gas-guzzling car, rather than his habit of weeing on the grass, that led to the break-down of their relationship.

Or even this one:

The New York Times, have dubbed the problem "carborexia". A carborexic is someone who has become irrationally compulsive in their efforts to reduce their impact on the planet, and who becomes stressed when dealing with those whose sensibilities are not so finely attuned.

Walking into a friend's house, they may start to sweat on seeing the 4WD in the garage and the plasma TV on the wall. They will bite their fingernails on noticing appliances not switched off when not in use. And they will finally crack when they hear someone flushing the toilet unnecessarily. Yes - apparently there are such occasions. Quickly muttering their goodbyes, they walk 5km home carrying in a mesh carry bag the pockmarked organic vegetables they had planned to eat raw at your house.

In the US, one Seattle family told The New York Times they scrub out and reuse the plastic bags in which their children take their school lunches, and the used nappy bag their toddler brings home from childcare.

This all seemed fine in people's own homes, but if it started to affect how they interacted with others then there was a problem, said Elizabeth Carll, a New York psychologist who specialises in obsessive compulsive behaviour. "If you can't have something in your house that isn't green or organic, if you can't eat at a relative's house because they don't serve organic food, if you're criticising friends because they're not living up to your standards of green, that's a problem," she said.

Use Of Visual Media As A Propaganda Tool

Both visual media You Tube and Television are regularly being utilised by Greenpeace and other environmental interest groups to hype their climate change propaganda, as can be seen from these two example links:

This one showing Santa being rescued from a melting North Pole by the Rainbow Warrior:




This one showing a Polar Bear watching it’s world melt away that ran as a TV commercial:




There is no subtlety to them, they are designed to invoke an emotional reaction of fear and concern thus making the watcher become more willing to part with their hard earned currency.

According to the late Michael Crichton (author of the Global Warming novel “State of Fear” and AGW sceptic)

Environmental organizations are fomenting false fears in order to promote agendas and raise money.

Also according to Richard S. Lindzen, (Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology, MIT)

“There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition.”

UK Met Office Employs Hindsight to Claim Prediction Perfection.

This technique of rewriting information is not just restricted to the press, the UK Met Office was caught out rewriting their own forecasts after the prediction had passed.

In a previous post I discussed the way that the media hypes stories that support the theory of anthropogenic global warming. They will take singular, odd weather events and purport that they prove that catastrophic warming is happening. Similar events, which lean the other way, are immediately dismissed and the Media reminds everyone that singular events don't prove anything. It's the double standard that bugs me.

But if you want pure chutzpah you have go to England's Met Office. I saw a mention of these posts at “Watts Up With That” but I found this so astounding I had to verify each post myself.

Let's start with their weather forecast from September, 2008. The Met "forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average.” (seen above).

Of course, as we reported, this winter in England was particularly bitter. So what did the Met say later about their earlier forecast? On December 12 the Met admits "that the UK has had the coldest start to winter in over 30 years." No one will fault them for not getting it right. But what I found astounding was that this statement claimed: "The Met Office seasonal forecast predicted the cold start to the winter season with milder conditions expected during January and February..” (As above)

They send out a press statement claiming the winter will be mild and when they get it wrong they send out another press statement claiming they predicted it would be unusually cold. In the same statement they told everyone that January and February, however, would be "milder" .

Unfortunately the beginning of January has remained quite cold and didn't turn mild as they forecast. But never fear. The Met Office released another press statement and ended it slapping themselves on the back. "The Met Office correctly forecast the spell of cold weather and kept the public informed via our various forecasts." (As seen above)


It is amazing how accurate their forecasts have become since they started doing them using the hindsight technique.

The Media on Climate Change - Part Four

This practice of Re-edited articles to favour a AGW believer’s perspective is not just restricted to the print and television media. Wikipedia the online encyclopedia used by millions everyday to check for facts on millions of topics has been edited by not only a dedicated team of AGW believers to constantly trawl the 10 million pages and wipe out any changes that suggest the science is not settled, but also by Kim Dabelstein Petersen who is a Wikipedia editor and William Connolley, who is a Wikipedia administrator. As was discovered by Lawrence Solomon of the National Review Online in his article: Wikipropaganda On Global Warming (8th Jul 2008):

Ever wonder how Al Gore, the United Nations, and company continue to get away with their claim of a “scientific consensus” confirming their doomsday view of global warming? Look no farther than Wikipedia for a stunning example of how the global-warming propaganda machine works.

As you (or your kids) probably know, Wikipedia is now the most widely used and influential reference source on the Internet and therefore in the world, with more than 50 million unique visitors a month.

In theory Wikipedia is a “people’s encyclopaedia” written and edited by the people who read it - anyone with an Internet connection. So on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion.

Not on global warming. On global warming we get consensus, Gore-style: a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit.

I first noticed this when I entered a correction to a Wikipedia page on the work of Naomi Oreskes, author of the now-infamous paper, published in the prestigious journal Science, claiming to have exhaustively reviewed the scientific literature and found not one single article dissenting from the alarmist version of global warming.

Of course Oreskes’s conclusions were absurd, and have been widely ridiculed. I myself have profiled dozens of truly world-eminent scientists whose work casts doubt on the Gore-U.N. version of global warming. Following the references in my book The Deniers, one can find hundreds of refereed papers that cast doubt on some aspect of the Gore/U.N. case, and that only scratches the surface.

Naturally I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Oreskes’s work had been vindicated and that, for instance, one of her most thorough critics, British scientist and publisher Bennie Peiser, not only had been discredited but had grudgingly conceded Oreskes was right.

I checked with Peiser, who said he had done no such thing. I then corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

Peiser wrote back saying he couldn’t see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again. I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.

Turns out that on Wikipedia some folks are more equal than others. Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of sceptics.

I soon found others who had the same experience: They would try to squeeze in any dissent, or even correct an obvious slander against a dissenter, and Petersen or some other censor would immediately snuff them out.

Now Petersen is merely a Wikipedia “editor.” Holding the far more prestigious and powerful position of “administrator” is William Connolley. Connolley is a software engineer and sometime climatologist (he used to hold a job in the British Antarctic Survey), as well as a serial (but so far unsuccessful) office seeker for England’s Green party.

And yet by virtue of his power at Wikipedia, Connolley, a ruthless enforcer of the doomsday consensus, may be the world’s most influential person in the global warming debate after Al Gore. Connolley routinely uses his editorial clout to tear down scientists of great accomplishment such as Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service and a scientist with dazzling achievements. Under Connolley’s supervision, Wikipedia relentlessly smears Singer as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, and it has a code of civility. Those rules and codes don’t apply to Connolley, or to those he favours.

So given the level of contolling of the debate being utilised by "believers of the faith" elements of the media and other commonly used reference sources, is it any wonder many in the public believe all tha is thrust at them on this subject. Many would be unaware there is even another side to the arguement.

The Media On Climate Change - Part Three

But the issue is sometimes not how the article was written but how it was edited by the various media outlets.

Take as an example this article by Christopher Booker and Richard North, called “The Great Biofuels Con”, originally written for the UK “Telegraph” on the 12 July 2008. It appeared three days later and heavily re-edited in Melbourne's “The Age.” The re-editing made the article read very differently (despite not a word being changed) : Some extracts include:

Original text:

As damaging as anything to the belief that biofuels could help save the planet from global warming have been various studies showing that producing biofuels can give off more carbon dioxide than they save. So devastating has been this backlash that even the British Government, which prides itself on being the greenest of the green, commissioned a review, published last Monday, urging a slowdown in the move to biofuels. When this recommendation was endorsed by senior ministers, this put the UK directly at odds with a European Union policy to which it had already signed up. But the EU is firmly holding its line, saying it has no intention of lowering its target.

Re-Edited version:

As damaging as anything to the belief that biofuels could help save the planet from global warming have been various studies showing that producing biofuels can give off more carbon dioxide than they save.

So devastating has been this backlash that even the British Government, which prides itself on being the greenest of the green, commissioned a review, published last Monday, urging a slowdown in the move to biofuels.

When this recommendation was endorsed by senior ministers, this put the UK directly at odds with a European Union policy to which it had already signed up. But the EU is firmly holding its line, saying it has no intention of lowering its target.


Original text:

Stage Three began in 1992, when two developments coincided to move biofuels even higher up the political agenda. First, following a further oil price hike after the first Gulf War, Washington and Brussels believed that biofuels could be a way of using their then-massive crop surpluses to wean the United States and the EU off dependence on imported oil. The other came at the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when 100 world leaders and 20,000 environmentalists gathered to discuss mankind’s response to new environmental challenges, notably "global warming".

It was at this moment that the cause of biofuels, long championed by the UN for other reasons, became part of the "climate change" agenda. Over the next 10 years, the cause was driven by these two quite separate concerns. On the one hand, particularly in the US, a powerful lobby grew up among farmers who were encouraged by their governments to see biofuels as a lucrative source of income (in the US alone, annual biofuel production now tops nine billion gallons).

Re-Edited version:

Stage Three began in 1992, when two developments coincided to move biofuels even higher up the political agenda.

First, following a further oil price rise after the first Gulf War, Washington and Brussels believed that biofuels could be a way of using their then massive crop surpluses to wean the United States and the EU off dependence on imported oil.

The other came at the UN's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when 100 world leaders and 20,000 environmentalists gathered to discuss mankind's response to new environmental challenges, notably "global warming". It was at this moment that the cause of biofuels, long championed by the UN for other reasons, became part of the "climate change" agenda.

Over the next 10 years, the cause was driven by these two quite separate concerns.

On the one hand, particularly in the US, a powerful lobby grew up among farmers who were encouraged by their governments to see biofuels as a lucrative source of income (in the US alone, annual biofuel production now tops 9 billion gallons).

“The Age” in their editing not only split apart paragraphs but blended others together to totally change the emphasis given to certain parts in the original article. Of which their Melbourne based readership was unaware.

The re-editing of articles doesn’t end there. In April 2008 the BBC’s environment reporter Roger Harrabin changed a story he had written entitled “Global temperatures to decrease”, reporting some information received from the World Meteorological Organisation that in its original form supported the observation that there has been no warming since 1998. Why then did he change the story? Because he was being continuously emailed by environmental activist Jo Abbess to do so:

The result was that after much harassment by Abbess including threats like:

I would ask : please reserve the main BBC Online channel for emerging truth.

Otherwise, I would have to conclude that you are insufficiently educated to be able to know when you have been psychologically manipulated. And that would make you an unreliable reporter.

I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.

He finally relented to her demands and changed the article. Deleting sentences like:

But experts have also forecast a record high temperature within five years.

And replacing them with this:

But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C.

While NASA, the US space agency, cites 2005 as the warmest year, the UK's Hadley Centre lists it as second to 1998.

Researchers say the uncertainty in the observed value for any particular year is larger than these small temperature differences. What matters, they say, is the long-term upward trend.

Other minor changes were also made. But not to the posts date time stamp which remained at 00:42 GMT, Friday, 4 April 2008 01:42 UK in both versions. Therefore, the general public were unaware of any changes or updates.

The Media on Climate Change - Part Two

To show how the BBC has been influenced in the way it now views climate change: Dr. David Bellamy, a botanist, conservationist, author of 35 books and host to approximately 400 nature programs on the BBC was unceremoniously dumped by the BBC after stating some doubts about the effectiveness of wind turbines as methods of power generation, when as a guest presenter on the networks “Blue Peter” children’s program:

WHEN I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn't believe what we were being told about global warming, I had no idea what the consequences would be. I am a scientist and I have to follow the directions of science, but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my opinions.

The sad fact is that since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming, I've not been allowed to make a television program.

It is also not just that the levels of reporting have become unbalanced but so to has the way it is reported:

Many in the "science is settled" camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy -- that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over. – Lawrence Solomon (executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute, a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation.)

I myself have also noted a certain formula to the writing by individuals being printed by the media, and I believe it tends to follow this pattern:

1. Use the word “Deniers” instead of “Sceptics “when talking about any climate change opposition.

2. Quickly link these deniers to tobacco industry or holocaust to establish mistrust in their opinion.

3. Claim that all research into denying climate change is funded by “Big Oil”.

4. Show a couple of notable sites like “George C. Marshall Institute” and “Heartland Institute” that have drawn part of their funding from Exxon to prove linkage.

5. Explain that climate variation is normal, but exclaim “ Global Warming is Real!” to reinforce message.

6. Try to discredit the now famous Oregon Partition by claiming “most of the 31,000 graduates have nothing to do with climate science.” (Avoid mentioning about the 2500 that were used by the IPCC - especially that less than 10% were of climate speciality and some of the unusual profession some signers had) Thus creating the illusion that the climate scientists are only on the side of AGW believers.

7. Use a dubious quote from and unnamed source to discredit a world renowned scientist.

8. Tar the political opposition as “the party of climate change deniers”, (despite the government probably having many in their ranks too).

9. Finish off article with a scare that there are “No areas to hide on the planet” or the like when it comes to climate change.

Take as an example this article: Who is behind climate change deniers? by David McKnight written on 2nd August, 2008 and published in all the Fairfax papers:

It is almost a perfect example of writing an alarmist article to a formula. Not really surprising it appeared in "The Age" then is it?