By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
October 12, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Critics of Al Gore believe that the former vice president should not receive a Nobel Prize for his efforts regarding global warming - including his film "An Inconvenient Truth" - but should perhaps get an award for his efforts as a climate change propagandist.

"The real 'inconvenient truth' is that Gore seems to have intentionally omitted it from his movie," Steve Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com, charged in a news release on Thursday. Instead, the film presented "false facts" and major inaccuracies that fit the Democrat's personal agenda, he said.

Milloy pointed to a ruling last week in a British court that "An Inconvenient Truth" contains at least nine material falsehoods and can be shown to students only if it is identified as containing "partisan political views" that promote only one side of the global warming argument.

"It is plainly, as witnessed by the fact that it received an Oscar this year for best documentary film, a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film," Judge Michael Burton said in his ruling.

However, "it is now common ground that it is not simply a science film - although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion - but that it is a political film," the judge added.

Then on Thursday, the BBC aired a report claiming that Gore knew his "alarmist" movie presented "false facts," because he feared any uncertainty in his film would only fuel opponents of global warming regulation.

"If this is true," said Milloy, "then Al Gore should win the Nobel prize for propaganda."

"The BBC report and the judge's ruling came as no surprise," he said. "Our YouTube video 'debate', entitled "Al Gore Debates Global Warming," between Gore and expert climatologists spotlights the false assertion by Gore that carbon dioxide drives global temperature."

Timothy Ball, a retired climatologist who leads the National Resources Stewardship Project, told Cybercast News Service he agrees that "An Inconvenient Truth" is a "wonderful piece of propaganda, but that's all it is."

Calling the film's scientific errors "huge," Ball said that the movie "would fail as a grade 10 science project," because it depends on "visual imagery and gimmickry" to make its point.

Ball also said it's a "travesty" that Gore is being considered for such a prize since "you can spin the lies but you can't spin the truth. I hope that one day soon, we'll be able to have a calm and rational debate about climate change."

The fact that the former vice president has refused to debate skeptics of manmade global warming was also on the mind of Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, who issued a statement that called Gore's candidacy for the Nobel Peace Price "a tribute to persistence."

"For 20 years, he has not changed his story: climate change is the most important issue confronting our planet, it should be the 'central organizing principle' for civilization, and it is caused by a conspiracy of a few greedy individuals," Michaels said. "He's like the proverbial nut that grew into a giant oak by standing his ground."

"We can only hope that he can parlay his prize into a run for the U.S. presidency, where he will be unable to hide from debate on his extreme and one-sided view of global warming," he added.

Michaels wasn't the only person wondering if winning a Nobel Prize might cause Gore - who was vice president during Bill Clinton's two terms in the White House and who narrowly lost the 2000 presidential race to Republican George W. Bush - to jump into the field of Democratic candidates for 2008.

A group called Draft Gore took out a full-page advertisement in Wednesday's New York Times calling on him to get into the race.

"You say you have fallen out of love with politics, and you have every reason to feel that way," the ad states. "But we know you have not fallen out of love with your country. And your country needs you now - as do your party and the planet you are fighting so hard to save."

"You have done a superhuman job of bringing world attention" to the issue of global warming, but "this effort needs to be raised to a higher level," the group said. "Only from the Oval Office can you wield the kind of influence needed to move countries, policies, and corporations to bring about meaningful change.

"Mr. Vice President, there are times for politicians and times for heroes," the ad continues. "America and the Earth need a hero right now - someone who will transcend politics as usual and bring real hope to our country and to the world.

"Please rise to this challenge, or you and millions of us will live forever wondering what might have been," the group concludes.

Even though the ad states that 136,000 people have signed the petition at draftgore.com, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said in a statement that the former vice president "truly appreciates the heartfelt sentiment behind the ad; however, he has no intention of running for president."

Milloy said he was focused on the claim that Gore knowingly included falsehoods in his film and was more interested in taking things off Gore's resume than adding to it.

"We call on the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the prize to a deserving candidate, rather than someone who plays fast and loose with the facts to advance his personal agenda," he said. "Also, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should revoke the Oscar 'An Inconvenient Truth' won for best documentary."

Neither the Nobel committee nor the AMPAS should "risk their brands on Al Gore's chicanery," Milloy added.

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What if everyone believes in global warmism only because everyone believes in global warmism? by HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

The Nobel Committee might as well have called it Al Gore's Inner Peace Prize, given the way it seems designed to help him disown his lifelong ambition to become president in favor of a higher calling, as savior of a planet.

The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn't for "science." In fact, a Nobel has never been awarded for the science of global warming. Even Svante Arrhenius, who first described the "greenhouse" effect, won his for something else in 1903. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

How this honor has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on "availability bias," roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: "Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascade" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he's playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: "The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona."

Here's exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

 

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

With politicians and lobbyists, of course, you are dealing with sophisticated people versed in the ways of public opinion whose very prosperity depends on positioning themselves via such cascades. Their reactions tend to be, for that reason, on a higher intellectual level.

Take John Dingell. He told an environmental publication last year that the "world . . . is great at having consensuses that are in great error." Yet he turned around a few months later and introduced a sweeping carbon tax bill, which would confront Congress more frontally than Congress cares to be confronted with a rational approach to climate change if Congress really believes human activity is responsible.

Mr. Dingell is no fool. Is he merely trying to embarrass those who offer fake cures for climate change at the expense of out-of-favor industries such as Mr. Dingell's beloved Detroit?

Take Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist working with Kleiner Perkins, a firm Mr. Gore joined last month to promote alternative energy investments. Mr. Khosla told a recent Senate hearing: "One does not need to believe in climate change to support climate change legislation. . . . Many executives would prefer to deal with known legislation even if unwarranted."

Mr. Khosla is no fool either. His argument is that the cascade itself is a reason that politicians can gain comfort by getting aboard his agenda.

 

Now let's suppose a most improbable, rhapsodic lobbying success for Mr. Gore, Mr. Khosla and folks on their side of the table--say, a government mandate to replace half the gasoline consumed in the U.S. with a carbon-neutral alternative. This would represent a monumental, $400 billion-a-year business opportunity for the green energy lobby. The impact on global carbon emissions? Four percent--less than China's predicted emissions growth over the next three or four years.

Don't doubt that this is precisely the chasm that keeps Mr. Gore from running for president. He could neither win the office nor govern on the basis of imposing the kinds of costs supposedly necessary to deal with an impending "climate crisis." Yet his credibility would become laughable if he failed to insist on such costs. How much more practical, then, to cash in on the crowd-pleasing role of angry prophet, without having to take responsibility for policies that the public will eventually discover to be fraudulent.

Public opinion cascades are powerful but also fragile--liable to be overturned in an instant when new information comes along. The current age of global warming politics will certainly end with a whimper once a few consecutive years of cooling are recorded. Why should we expect such cooling? Because the forces that caused warming and cooling in the past, before the advent of industrial civilization, are still at work.

No, this wouldn't prove or disprove a human role in warming, only that climate is variable and subject to complicated influences. But it would also eliminate the large incentive for politicians to traffic in doom-laden predictions--because such predictions would no longer command media assent and would cease to function as levers to redistribute resources.

Mr. Gore would have to find a new job.

Mr. Jenkins is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal on Wednesdays.

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Former Vice President Al Gore's new global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," warns in emphatic terms that the world is facing a "planetary emergency" unless America curbs its penchant for fossil fuel pollution.

Despite widespread coverage of Gore's cinematic debut, however, the press has declined to mention a few inconvenient truths about the ex-veep's own environmental record.

One of the most glaring tidbits, for instance, is the pollution Gore and his family caused by maintaining their own toxic waste dump on their farm in Carthage, Tennessee.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Nashville's CBS network affiliate WTVF broadcast video of the Gore dump after the then-vice presidential candidate denied the story was true.

The film featured aerial shots of the debris, and included close-ups of dripping oil filters, toxic aerosol spray cans, unrecycled aluminum pesticide containers, used tires and all manner of environmentally unfriendly refuse.

"It wasn't a pristine environmental haven, it was an ugly, dangerous dump -- and it could have leached into the [nearby] Caney Fork River," one Gore critic complained at the time.

During Gore's 2000 presidential bid, the Fox News Channel unearthed and re-aired the dump clip, but the mainstream press otherwise ignored the startling news that the nation's leading environmentalist was himself a Class A polluter.

According to EPA regulations cited by the Washington Times, the pesticide dumping alone could have netted Gore over $25,000 in fines.

Despite the smoking gun video of Gore's environmental violations, there's no record he was ever penalized for his pollution

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By Juliette Jowit 

One of the most controversial voices in the global warming debate believes too much emphasis is put on extinction fears for ecology's poster animals

The global warming sceptic Bjorn Lomborg, has sparked fresh debate about the dangers of increasing temperatures with new claims that polar bears are not on the brink of collapse and are more threatened by hunting than by climate change.

In a new book called Cool It, Lomborg says many of the predicted effects of climate change - from melting icecaps to drought and flood - are 'vastly exaggerated and emotional claims that are simply not founded in data'.

Based on this 'hype', international leaders are spending too much time and money trying to cut carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, rather than spending cash on policies that would help humans and the environment more effectively - such as stopping the hunting of polar bears, he argues.

'This does not mean that global warming will not happen, or that it will not predominantly have negative impacts,' writes Lomborg. 'But it is important to get the facts right: exaggeration will not help us select the right priorities.'

His book comes at a highly charged time for the climate change debate. Last week a British High Court judge, Mr Justice Barton, ruled that Al Gore's Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth was guilty of 'alarmism and exaggeration' in making several claims about the impacts of climate change, including the plight of polar bears.

Claims in the film that the animals were drowning because they were being forced to swim greater distances due to disappearing ice were unfounded, the judge said. There was only evidence that four polar bears had drowned and that was due to storms.

The judge did go on to say there was good support for the four main hypotheses of Gore's film: that climate change is mainly caused by human-created emissions, that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that unchecked climate change will cause serious damage, and that governments and individuals could reduce its impact. On Friday, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work.

Lomborg's analysis has in turn been attacked by international polar bear experts saying that he has used out-of-date statistics to make his case and play down the plight of the world's biggest carnivores.

Lomborg made his name with an earlier book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which claimed fears about man-made climate change were overstated, and followed this up with Global Crises, Global Solutions, in which economists assessed the best ways of spending $50bn to improve people's lives, and put tackling global warming low on the list. Environment groups were outraged, but Time magazine listed him in the 100 most influential people in the world.

In his latest book Lomborg turns to the impacts of climate change, and says the story of the polar bears 'encapsulates the problems with many of the other scares - once you take a look at the supporting data the narrative falls apart'.

He claims that in this case many fears about polar bears being driven to extinction as global warming melts the ice floes they depend on to hunt and wean their cubs can be traced back to research published in 2001 by the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union, the IUCN. It looked at 20 populations of polar bears in the Arctic, a total of about 25,000 bears.

That report, says Lomborg, found only two bear populations that were in decline, and two were showing an increase in numbers. It said the declining populations were in areas where temperatures were getting colder, and the flourishing populations in areas where temperatures were rising.

Other research referred to in the book shows that since the Sixties global polar bear numbers have increased from 5,000, says Lomborg.

More specifically, he challenges frequently repeated claims that the population of polar bears on the western coast of Canada's Hudson Bay fell from 1,200 in 1987 to 950 in 2004. The research actually goes back to 1981, when there were only 500 bears in that area, since when, he says, numbers have 'soared'. And, based on these figures, Lomborg calculates that legal hunting of 49 bears a year accounts for most of the recent decline in Hudson Bay, rather than climate change.

Finally, Lomborg says even though it is 'likely disappearing ice will make it harder for polar bears to continue their traditional foraging patterns', many can turn to the lifestyles of brown bears, 'from which they are evolved'.

'They [polar bears] may eventually decline, though dramatic declines seem unlikely,' he concludes.

He tries to explode other 'myths' too: it is too soon to say that Greenland's ice is melting fast and the threats of catastrophic sea level rise, extreme weather, drought and flooding have all been over-hyped, he says.

Last night Lomborg was accused of the same misuse of statistics which he levels at other scientists, environmental groups and the media.

Dr Andrew Derocher, chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, said Lomborg's book was based on outdated statistics because the group had published an updated report in 2006, which showed that of 19 populations five were declining, five were stable and two were increasing; and for the remaining six there was not enough data to judge.

Derocher said data from before the Eighties was considered 'very questionable', that hunting was considered a 'minor concern in some populations', and that the decision by the IUCN to classify polar bears as 'vulnerable' was based on the unanimous advice of his committee of 20 members from the five 'polar bear nations' in the Arctic, including the only previous dissenter, a scientist quoted by Lomborg in his book.

Derocher, a professor in biological sciences at the University of Alberta in Canada, also criticised the idea that polar bears can adapt to the sort of life lived by the brown bear because they need to eat vast numbers of seals, which are also threatened by the changing ice. 'The changes of sea ice are evident to local people living in the north,' he said. 'Over the last 25 years that I've worked in the Arctic the changes are astounding. Polar bears are adaptable, but there are limits to this.'

Derocher said the author had not tried to contact him: 'Lomborg choosing not to ask for accurate information or using outdated information reflects a lack of scholarship.'

Speaking to The Observer, Lomborg said he concentrated on the 2001 report because it was so influential in promoting polar bears as an icon of climate change, but added: 'I would have liked to have known there was a new one.'

However, he said the latest research did not detract from his key argument: that the best way to protect polar bears was not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but to cut or ban hunting. This is recently estimated to account for between 300 and 1,000 deaths annually. 'Shouldn't we stop shooting at least 300 polar bears a year before we spend trillions of dollars trying to save one polar bear a year through the Kyoto protocol?' he said.

Lomborg argues that international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases are too slow and expensive to solve the problems that climate change will bring. Instead money should be spent protecting threatened communities, tackling other threats, and investing in zero-carbon technology to reduce long-term emissions, he said.

'We constantly believe the only answer to any question is cut carbon emissions; very often it's one of the least efficient solutions,' he told The Observer

This is less controversial. But for many scientists it is not a question of either reducing greenhouse gases or adapting to climate change, but doing both, said Asher Minns of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. 'The idea of adaptation to climate change is very old and there's as much work around adaptation as there is around mitigating greenhouse gases and coming up with low carbon technologies.'

· 'Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming' is published by Cyan-Marshall Cavendish, £19.99

Article Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/14/climatechange.conservation

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Schools will have to issue a warning before they show pupils Al Gore's controversial film about global warming, a judge indicated yesterday.

The move follows a High Court action by a father who accused the Government of 'brainwashing' children with propaganda by showing it in the classroom.

Stewart Dimmock said the former U.S. Vice-President's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.

He wants the video banned after it was distributed with four other short films to 3,500 schools in February.

Mr Justice Burton is due to deliver a ruling on the case next week, but yesterday he said he would be saying that Gore's Oscar-winning film does promote 'partisan political views'.

This means that teachers will have to warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film.

He said: 'The result is I will be declaring that, with the guidance as now amended, it will not be unlawful for the film to be shown.'

The outcome marks a partial victory for Mr Dimmock, who had accused the 'New Labour Thought Police' of indoctrinating youngsters by handing out thousands of Climate Change Packs to schools.

Mr Dimmock, a lorry driver from Dover with children aged 11 and 14, said at the outset of the hearing: 'I wish my children to have the best education possible, free from bias and political spin, and Mr Gore's film falls far short of the standard required.'

His solicitor John Day, said yesterday that the Government had been forced to make 'a U-turn', but said it did not go far enough.

He said 'no amount of turgid guidance' could change the fact that the film is unfit for consumption in the classroom.

The case arises from a decision in February by the then Education Secretary Alan Johnson that DVDs of the film would be sent to all secondary schools in England, along with a multimedia CD produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs containing two short films about climate change and an animation about the carbon cycle.

David Miliband, who was Environment-Secretary when the school packs were announced, said at the time: 'The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over.'

But during the three-day hearing, the court heard that the critically-acclaimed film contains a number of inaccuracies, exaggerations and statements about global warming for which there is currently insufficient scientific evidence.

The Climate Change Resource Pack has now been sent to more than 3,500 schools and is aimed at key stage 3 pupils - those aged 11 to

Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said last night: 'The judge's decision is clear that schools can continue to use An Inconvenient Truth as part of their teaching on climate change in accordance with the amended guidance, which will be available online today.

'We have updated the accompanying guidance, as requested by the judge to make it clearer for teachers as to the stated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change position on a number of scientific points raised in the film.'

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"In the very same week that Gore launched a $300 million public relations campaign to convince Americans that "together we can solve the climate crisis," prominent climate alarmist Tom Wigley essentially endorsed President Bush’s approach to global warming while criticizing that of Gore’s co-Nobelist, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC." -  Foxnews.com

See we have one man in the goverment on the side of realty.  Read the full story here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,345969,00.html

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"And as we're talking today ... the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated," Gore said on NPR (while being interviewed about the paperback release of his book "The Assault on Reason"). "And last year a catastrophic storm last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China -- and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."

Next it will be the China Earthquake.  Read More Here

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