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Deconstructing Al Gore’s ‘Truth’

CCD Editor’s Note: Kristen Byrnes is “articulate and intelligent” and has a Web site, much to the “dismay” of climate alarmists. She knows her facts, provides references, and isn’t afraid to go up against Al Gore’s bloated rhetoric. All this, and Kristen’s only 16. Maybe she’ll go on a school lecture tour to neutralize the current invasion of greenies trying to indoctrinate high school students. As Gore has shown, it only takes one voice to make a difference, for better or for worse. And Kristen is definitely making a difference.


Five months after this essay was published, the British High Court ruled that the movie contained “alarmist” errors and ordered that the movie cannot be shown to British schoolchildren without also presenting a competing viewpoint. Many of those errors, as well as many others that were not argued in court, are presented in this essay.

While the judge only allowed 11 errors to be argued in court, the expert that defended Al Gore’s movie admitted to 9 errors. The following day, Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming.

We all know Al Gore, “the ex-next President of the United States, ” the man who scarcely lost his election to George Bush in 2000. Most people also know that he served as Vice President with Bill Clinton for 8 years. What you might not know about him is that his father also was a politician; he was a U.S. Representative and senator of Tennessee for 32 years.

With his father’s busy life, Al Jr. was born in Washington D.C, but also spent a lot of time being raised in Carthage, Tennessee on his family’s farm. He went to college at Harvard and graduated in 1969, soon after he volunteered to go to Vietnam as a news reporter for the U.S Army. After he came back from Vietnam he attended Vanderbilt University Divinity and Law School but won a seat in Congress before he got a degree. As for his political life, I can imagine that you know the story.

http://clinton1.nara.gov/White_House/EOP/OVP/html/Bio.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/al-gore

http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=9316028

Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth does indeed have some correct facts, but as he even says himself, sometimes you have to over-exaggerate to send the message to people:

Q. There’s a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What’s the right mix?

A. I think the answer to that depends on where your audience’s head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately, we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/ (Interview with Grist Magazine’s David Roberts and Al Gore about An Inconvenient Truth)

Al Gore said this, so how are we supposed to know fact from fiction in the global warming debate? The following paragraphs will inform the reader of the false claims, the facts, the selective facts, and tactics to scare and advertise.

Throughout the film, he made inferences about his personal and political life, which has nothing to do with global warming. When he wasn’t lecturing about his personal life, he was lecturing about how global warming is man-made.

With these lectures, he only considered one point of view and did not consider the other side of the story (warming being natural), which would have made his movie a little more believable.

Not only did he not look at both sides, he always assumed that every harmful phenomenon (extreme weather, rising sea levels, and horrible diseases) was correlated or associated with global warming and due to “man-made” emissions.

Now, let’s start at the beginning of the movie, and see what has and has not been misinterpreted.

Beginning with Gore’s introduction of the film, he sounds calm, eloquent, and gloomy. His voice and tone in the introduction grab the watcher’s attention. It also makes him look as if he loves nature, and that he really wants to protect his “only home.” Message: Al cares. I believed that Al cares until I learned that Al Gore’s home did not have any solar panels, windmills, geothermal system, or any other “green power.” His utility bills for his home and pool house were $29, 268 last year when he released his movie.

UPDATE: Almost 1 year after this essay was published, Al Gore announced to CBS 60 Minutes that he finally installed solar panels on his house.

Not too long after he presents a picture of “Earth Rise,” he claims that 18 months after this picture was taken, the modern environmental movement began. Greenpeace did open its club in 1971.

But in “1892 – Sierra Club was founded on May 28 with 182 charter members. John Muir was elected first President. In its first conservation campaign, Club leads effort to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park.”

“June 30, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias to the State of California, as an inalienable public trust. This was the first time in history that a federal government had set aside scenic lands simply to protect them and to allow for their enjoyment by all people.”

Al does not seem to consider that his generation was not the first to love and want to protect the Earth.

http://www.sierraclub.org/history/timeline.asp

http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/index.htm

http://www.ecotopia.org/ehof/timeline.html

Farther into the movie, Al explains the greenhouse gas effect. He presents a graphic that shows the sun’s rays heating the Earth’s surface resulting in infrared rays going from the Earth’s surface and back into space. His graphic suggests that some of the outgoing radiation is reflected from the top of the atmosphere and back to Earth.

This idea is the basis of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming theory. He fails to mention that this effect has never been measured, only calculated, and by scientists on one side of the debate. This is one of the most hotly debated issues in the global warming debate.

Not only does this issue involve complicated theoretical quantum physics, but water vapor absorbs infrared radiation. As is often the case in global warming presentations, he forgets that water vapor is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas at 3 to 4 percent of the atmosphere. And this is important because at most, man-made greenhouse gases are 1/10, 000 of Earth’s atmosphere.

With his description of greenhouse gases, he presented a cartoon clip of the innocent sunrays being beaten up by the Greenhouse Gases. But is water vapor really a bad thing?

Al also discusses the late Charles Keeling, a scientist who measured atmospheric carbon dioxide for many years. Al accurately describes how the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises and falls with the seasons and why. He shows how Dr. Keeling measured a steady rise in carbon dioxide as the years went by, a trend often called the Keeling Curve.

While some people still dispute the levels of man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, I do not. For many years, carbon dioxide has been measured in many places and by any means; the results are almost identical in almost every instance. http://gaw.kishou.go.jp/wdcgg/PlotData.php

Next, Al gets right to business showing some of the world’s receding glaciers. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, most glaciers around the world are receding. But when you look at scientific studies on individual glaciers you begin to understand that temperature is not always the cause and that all of the glaciers that Al mentions have been retreating for over 100 years.

Let’s start with Al’s first example, Mt. Kilimanjaro. Al might be benefited from the knowledge that Kilimanjaro began receding in 1880 before CO2 began increasing in the atmosphere (Molg et al. 2003a). Also, local temperature records show that there have not been increasing temperatures in the last 100 years (King’uyu et al., 2000; Molg et al 2003, Hay et al., 2002).

Additionally, the temperature on the mountain near the glaciers never gets above the freezing point (Georges and Kaser (2002). The glaciers on Kilimanjaro and other mountains in the area are shrinking due to a change in local precipitation. In 1880 the climate in the area changed from a very humid to a very dry climate resulting in less clouds and more direct sunlight. (Kaser et al. 2004).

Al’s second example is Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park. In this case, when you look at the pictures of receding glaciers, it is easy to say that a warming climate is causing the glacier to disappear. But like Kilimanjaro, these glaciers started melting over 100 years ago.

grinnelglacier.jpg

Grinnel Glacier, Glacier National Park. Dates and arrows show melt since 1850

Himalayas – Glaciers have been found to be in a state of general retreat since 1850 (Mayewski & Jeschke 1979). In this section, he also claims that 40% of the world’s population gets half of its water from streams and rivers that are fed by glaciers. This is an easily confusing claim. Rivers that are fed by the Himalayas get most of their run-off from the spring snowmelt. They also have many dams that ensure that water will be available during dry months.

Italian Alps – Since the end of the Little Ice Age (about 1850), the hanging Glaciers and firn fields have retreated continuously. http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/6/761/2006/nhess-6-761-2006.pdf

Swiss Alps – Abstract. Since the culmination of the Little Ice Age, Alpine glaciers have been in a state of general retreat. http://iri.columbia.edu/~amg/greene_grl_1999.pdf

Peru ‚Äì The current warming that is melting the Quelccaya glacier in Peru began in 1830 according to Al Gore’s friend, Lonnie Thompson (Thompson 2006) * NOTE: The recent data from this ice core may be contaminated by rainwater that seeped into the top 20 meters of the ice.  http://www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/Icecore/Abstracts/thompson_pnas_2006.pdf

And the same is true for all of the glaciers he mentioned. They all started retreating at the end of the Little Ice Age. Most glaciers around the world are retreating while some are not, mainly due to changes in storm tracks.

Many of the glaciers around the world slowed or reversed their retreats during the cooling period between 1944 and 1976 and began retreating again after that. Many glacier retreats have accelerated in recent years.

Al then begins a presentation about how temperatures during the last thousand years were relatively stable until the last one hundred years using a graph that looked like the one below:

hockey stick graph

The data for this graph is from a 2003 study by Al Gore’s friend, Lonnie Thompson, a well-known scientist who studies glaciers. The graph itself has the look of what is known as a “hockey stick” graph. It usually demonstrates that temperatures were stable for the last 1, 000 years but suddenly rose in the last 100 years.

While this particular graph is used by Al Gore to represent global temperature for the past 1, 000 years, the data is only taken from 7 locations in three mountain ranges. In fairness to Al, there have been several studies by scientists who used tree rings, etc. from all over the world who have come up with the same general trend.  http://www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/Icecore/Abstracts/Thompsonetal-climatic-change-2003.pdf

UPDATE: After this essay was published, a contributor to the blog “Climate Audit” discovered that the graph belongs to Michael Mann (MB98) and was presented in Lonnie Thompson’s study for comparison.

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