An Inconvenent Defense

Last week a British court ruled that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was a piece of propaganda. The British government plans on sending copies of the movie to every school. The court ruling means that teachers will have to give a warning first. Global warming skeptics cheered the news since it means that an independent party looked at the evidence and found that the multiple award-winning movie is nothing but alarmism.

The left is rushing to Gore's defense. Here is an example.

So, is there anything to this spirited defense of the Goracle? No, and here is why.

The first claim is that the court validated the basic message of Gore's movie and that "deniers" cherry-picked at minor details. The court was not making a ruling on the IPCC's report, it was ruling on Gore's movie. This is an important distinction. Gore wasn't just trying to educate people about warming, he was trying to scare people into action. The fact that the court accepted the IPCC report cuts both ways as we will see later.

Next, there is the smear that the plaintiffs are so far right that normal conservatives call them "fascists" and that they were financed by oil money. Even if any of this is true, it doesn't matter. No one has accused the judge of any of malfeasance. His ruling has nothing to do with who financed the plaintiffs and this is nothing but a cheap shot.

One of the more alarming statements in the movie is that the sea level will rise by 20. The judge says

This is distinctly alarmist, and part of Mr Gore's 'wake-up call'. It is common ground that if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, but only after, and over, millennia, so that the Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of 7 metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.

Note, the scientific consensus the judge is referring to is the most recent IPCC report. Gore's defenders are on very weak ground on this one. They point out that Gore does not actually say when the oceans will rise, just that they will. They ignore that Gore asserted in interviews that
the sea level change will happen by the year 2100, not 3000.

At one point Gore shows (separately) a graph showing world temperature rise and a graph showing CO2 rise. When presented this way the two graphs appear to be identical providing proof that CO2 causes warming. Gore's exact statement is

The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside.

Gore is not kidding when he says that the relationship is complicated. In fact, if the graphs were superimposed on each other they would show that the rise in CO2 followed the temperature rise. The judge says

In scenes 8 and 9, Mr Gore shows two graphs relating to a period of 650,000 years, one showing rise in CO₂ and one showing rise in temperature, and asserts (by ridiculing the opposite view) that they show an exact fit. Although there is general scientific agreement that there is a connection, the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts.

The judge is being kind.

The drowning polar bears is another case where the judge uses the IPCC's report against Gore.

In scene 19, Mr Gore says: "Coral reefs all over the world because of global warming and other factors are bleaching and they end up like this. All the fish species that depend on the coral reef are also in jeopardy as a result. Overall specie loss is now occurring at a rate 1000 times greater than the natural background rate." The actual scientific view, as recorded in the IPCC report, is that, if the temperature were to rise by 1-3 degrees Centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and widespread coral mortality, unless corals could adopt or acclimatise, but that separating the impacts of climate change-related stresses from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting, is difficult.

You can read the rest of the judgment yourself. The bottom line is that Gore's advocates could not present proof for several of Gore's more alarming claims. That's the real truth.