Convenient Falsehoods

A British judge ruled that Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," could not be presented as factual in British public schools because it contained nine material falsehoods. (In an interim ruling, he had identified eleven falsehoods, but combined several in his final decision.) Here they are:

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.

• The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.

• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age. The Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

• The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

A judge is not a scientific expert and a courtroom is not the proper place to resolve scientific disputes. However, it just takes an educated person and a little bit of research to see through Gore's propaganda. Thankfully, British standards call for checking the veracity of teaching materials used in their public schools if those materials are represented as factual. I doubt that has ever happened in the United States.

Children and adults everywhere are exposed to the blatant lies of Gore and other supporters of the view that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide must be stopped in order to "save the planet." The only danger the planet needs saving from are the global warming fear-mongers who seek to throttle man by hamstringing the industrial civilization our lives depend on.

I suggest that the Nobel Committee carefully review the judge's full decision. If the committee members have integrity, they cannot award Gore the Nobel Peace Prize unless they are able to convincingly refute with evidence the conclusion of the British High Court.