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.