Convenient Untruths
Update 10/18/07: We are very disappointed that the Washington Post has declined to run an op-ed placing the alleged 9 'errors' in a proper scientific context, despite having run an extremely misleading news article last week entitled "UK Judge Rules Gore's Climate Film Has 9 Errors".
Last week, a UK High Court judge rejected a call to restrict the showing of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) in British schools. The judge, Justice Burton found that "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate" (which accords with our original assessment). There has been a lot of comment and controversy over this decision because of the judges commentary on 9 alleged "errors" (note the quotation marks!) in the movie's description of the science. The judge referred to these as 'errors' in quotations precisely to emphasize that, while these were points that could be contested, it was not clear that they were actually errors (see Deltoid for more on that).
There are a number of points to be brought out here. First of all, "An Inconvenient Truth" was a movie and people expecting the same depth from a movie as from a scientific paper are setting an impossible standard. Secondly, the judge's characterisation of the 9 points is substantially flawed. He appears to have put words in Gore's mouth that would indeed have been wrong had they been said (but they weren't). Finally, the judge was really ruling on how "Guidance Notes" for teachers should be provided to allow for more in depth discussion of these points in the classroom. This is something we wholehearted support - AIT is probably best used as a jumping off point for informed discussion, but it is not the final word. Indeed, the fourth IPCC report has come out in the meantime, and that has much more up-to-date and comprehensive discussions on all these points.
A number of discussions of the 9 points have already been posted (particularly at New Scientist and Michael Tobis's wiki), and it is clear that the purported 'errors' are nothing of the sort. The (unofficial) transcript of the movie should be referred to if you have any doubts about this. It is however unsurprising that the usual climate change contrarians and critics would want to exploit this confusion for perhaps non-scientific reasons.
In the spirit of pushing forward the discussion, we have a brief set of guidance notes of our own for each of the 9 issues raised. These are not complete, and if additional pointers are noted in the comments, we'll add them in here as we go along.
- Ice-sheet driven sea level rise Gore correctly asserted that melting of Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea levels 20ft (6 meters). In the movie, no timescale for that was specified, but lest you think that the 20 ft number is simply plucked out of thin air, you should note that this is about how much higher sea level was around 125,000 years ago during the last inter-glacial period. Then, global temperatures were only a degree or two warmer than today - and given that this is close to the minimum temperature rise we can expect in the future, that 20 ft is particularly relevant. The rate at which this is likely to happen is however highly uncertain as we have discussed previously.
- Pacific island nations needing to evacuate Much of Tuvalu is only a few feet above sea level, and any sea level rise is going to impact them strongly. The impacts are felt in seemingly disconnected ways - increasing brine in groundwater, increasing damage and coastal erosion from tides and storm surges, but they are no less real for that. The government of Tuvalu has asked New Zealand to be ready to evacuate islanders if needed, and while currently only 75 people per year can potentially be resettled, this could change if the situation worsened.
In the movie there is only one line that referred to this: "That's why the citizens of these pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand", which is out of context in the passage it's in, but could be said to only be a little ahead of it's time. - Climate impacts on the ocean conveyor The movie references the Younger Dryas event that occurred 11,000 years ago when, it is thought, a large discharge of fresh water into the North Atlantic disrupted the currents, causing significant regional cooling. That exact scenario can't happen again, but similar processes are likely to occur. The primary unresolved scientific issue regards how quickly the circulation is likely to change as we move forward. The model simulations in the latest IPCC report show a slowdown in the circulation - by about 30% by 2100 - but there is much we don't understand about modeling that circulation and future inputs of freshwater from the ice sheets, so few are willing to completely rule out the possibility of a more substantial change in the future. Further discussion on what this really means and doesn't mean is available here and here.
- CO2 and Temperature connections in the ice core record Gore stated that the greenhouse gas levels and temperature changes over ice age signals had a complex relationship but that they 'fit'. Again, both of these statements are true. The complexity though is actually quite fascinating and warrants being further discussed by those interested in how the carbon cycle will react in the future. We've discussed the lead/lag issue previously. A full understanding of why CO2 changes in precisely the pattern that it does during ice ages is elusive, but among the most plausible explanations is that increased received solar radiation in the southern hemisphere due to changes in Earth's orbital geometry warms the southern ocean, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, which then leads to further warming through an enhanced greenhouse effect. Gore's terse explanation of course does not mention such complexities, but the crux of his point–that the observed long-term relationship between CO2 and temperature in Antarctica supports our understanding of the warming impact of increased CO2 concentrations–is correct. Moreover, our knowledge of why CO2 is changing now (fossil fuel burning) is solid. We also know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that the carbon cycle feedback is positive (increasing temperatures lead to increasing CO2 and CH4), implying that future changes in CO2 will be larger than we might anticipate.
- Kilimanjaro Gore is on even more solid ground with Kilimanjaro. In the movie, the retreat of Kilimanjaro is not claimed to be purely due to global warming , but it is a legitimate example of the sort of thing one expects in a warmer world, and is consistent with what almost all other tropical mountain glaciers are doing. There is indeed some ongoing discussion in the literature as to whether or not the retreat of ice on Kilimanjaro is related to the direct effects (warming atmospheric temperatures) or indirect effects (altered patterns of humidity, cloud cover, and precipitation influencing Kilimanjaro's ice mass) of climate change, and that argument isn't yet over. But these arguments would be of more relevance if (a) we were not witnessing the imminent demise of an ice field that we know has existed for at least the past 12,000 years and (b) most of the other glaciers weren't disappearing as well.
- Drying up of Lake Chad It is undisputed that Lake Chad has indeed shrunk rapidly in recent decades. While irrigation and upstream water use are probably contributing factors, the dominant cause is the reduction of rainfall across the entire Sahel from the 1950s to the 1980s and with rainfall today still substantially below the high point 50 years ago. There is substantial evidence that at least a portion of this drying out is human-caused. A few recent papers (Held et al, PNAS; Chung and Ramanathan and Biasutti and Giannini) have addressed causes ranging from Indian Ocean changes in sea surface temperature to the increase in atmospheric aerosols in the Northern hemisphere. Gore uses this example to illustrate that there are droughts in some regions even while other areas are flooding. Unfortunately this is exactly what the models suggest will happen.
- Hurricane Katrina and global warming Katrina is used in the film as a legitimate illustration of the destructive power of hurricanes, our inability to cope with natural disaster, and the kind of thing that could well get worse in a warmer world. Nowhere does Gore state that Katrina was caused by global warming. We discussed this attribution issue back in 2005, and what we said then still holds. Individual hurricanes cannot be attributed to global warming, but the statistics of hurricanes, in particular the maximum intensities attained by storms, may indeed be.
- Impact of sea ice retreat on Polar bears As we presaged in August, summer Arctic sea ice shattered all records this year for the minimum extent. This was partially related to wind patterns favorable to ice export in the spring, but the long term trends are almost certainly related to the ongoing and dramatic warming in the Arctic. Polar bears do indeed depend on the sea ice to hunt for seals in the spring and summer, and so a disappearance of this ice is likely to impact them severely. The specific anecdote referred to in the movie came from observations of anomalous drownings of bears in 2004 and so was accurate. However, studying the regional populations of polar bears is not easy and assessing their prospects is tough. In the best observed populations such as in western Hudson Bay (Stirling and Parkinson, 2006), female polar bear weight is going down as the sea ice retreats over the last 25 years, and the FWS is considering an endangered species listing. However, it should be stated that in most of the discussions about polar bears, they are used as a representative species. Arctic ecosystems are changing on many different levels, but it is unsurprising that charismatic mega-fauna get more press than bivalves. In the end, it may be the smaller and less photogenic elements that have the biggest impact.
- Impact of ocean warming on coral reefs Corals are under stress from a multitude of factors; overfishing, deliberate destruction, water pollution, sea level rise, ocean acidification and, finally, warming oceans. The comment in the movie that rising temperatures and other factors cause coral bleaching is undoubtedly true. Bleaching episodes happen when the coral is under stress, and many examples have been linked to anomalously warm ocean temperatures (Australia in 1998 and 2002, all over the Indian Ocean in recent years). Corals are a sobering example of how climate change exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in eco-systems, potentially playing the role of the straw that breaks the camel's back in many instances.
Overall, our verdict is that the 9 points are not "errors" at all (with possibly one unwise choice of tense on the island evacuation point). But behind each of these issues lies some fascinating, and in some cases worrying, scientific findings and we can only applaud the prospect that more classroom discussions of these subjects may occur because of this court case.
15 October 2007 at 10:57 PM
Wow! You are really trying to help the guy out on this one aren’t you! Can’t you concede that AIT is a tool to convince people to follow an action plan and thus is not subject to typical conventions such as complete and total truth. Mr. Gore made some very good points in the film and he screwed a few up. He did this to get people motivated. Telling straight facts is rarely enough to motivate people to act so all leaders push the edge of the envelope.
I would have expected a site as well written as this to take a more binary response and simply point out where Gore was wrong and where the judge was wrong. Instead it feels like you are doing a political spin on the judgment which is a little disappointing. I think you should leave the spin for Mr. Gore and stick to just the facts.
I do think you post some good counter arguments to the judge though (even if some of them are obviously spin). I will tell my readers of my site http://www.globalwarming-factorfiction.com about your article and suggest that they come and read so that they have both sides of the story. I will have caution them as to which answers I think are spin though.
15 October 2007 at 11:05 PM
Sean, could you detail specifically where the Real Climate folks got it wrong?
Thanks in advance.
15 October 2007 at 11:26 PM
Indeed, on the science, a full examination of the evidence backs up the Gore movie and book assertions. While he might not have given Charles Keeling full due, frankly, both the movie and book seem to distill much of the science into palatable popular form. Gore for president….
15 October 2007 at 11:52 PM
First time visitor to your site and picked the Polar Bear point to start reading. This puzzles me:
“As we presaged in August, summer Arctic sea ice shattered all records this year for the minimum extent.”
If you click through, the records only go back until 1979, which is well within the 30 or so year cycle in which everyone agrees the world has warmed.
So when you say records are shattered, don’t you think you’re being a little excitable?
For what it’s worth, I have read several books about Britain’s search for the NW passage in the 1800s, and they often mention years when the Arctic waters were largely ice free. Canada’s wooden-hulled St.Roche reported the same thing in navigating the passage in the 1940s.
15 October 2007 at 11:54 PM
So, after all the court foofaraw, the bottom line is what they actually provided for the teachers; RC readers may want to review this.
For context, and then 2 links deeper is the 56-page guidance
http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/sustainableschools/news/news_detail.cfm?id=172
I haven’t gone over it in detail, but on the surface, I’d say it was …
terrific material … going to to a whole lot of students. I don’t know what materials US schools in general are using (and I’m sure they vary mightily), but I’d be interested in comparisons / opinions, especially with those who have kids in school.
And ironically, I think the very minor tweaks from the court case made this STRONGER, and of course, gave it even more publicity.
16 October 2007 at 12:00 AM
RE #1
Sean, see yourself here:
http://www.cpi.cam.ac.uk/gore/about/news_and_events/inconvenient_truth_court_rulin.aspx
The main “inaccuracies” the court found were that AGW and some x (hurricanes, lake chad, polar bears, coral loss, etc) are inextricably linked. In fact, while Gore may have kind of emotionalized it a bit with katrina and such, I cannot recall him making a definitive link so these “inaccuracies” don’t hold much ground, especially when the effects on corals, heat waves,droughts, (and with some less confidence) hurricanes is extremely well documented (See AR4 WG2). Moreover, we know a lot of analogous events will occur in a warmer climate with high confidence. A bit like playing dice: double-threes might come up by chance, but if I load the dice I might make double-threes more likely. If I played a game vs. you and I win by rolling double-threes is it all natural variability or did I help? Would you be happy with me? At the same time, I think RC has been careful enough to show that one event cannot be linked to GW or AGW or that matter with certainty.
As for sea level rise, they are going up like an inch a decade and we don’t have a plausible way to get 23 feet vertical in a few decades, but it is possible in centuries. To some people, a few more generations might not be a “long way away” (really no criteria by the judge for what ’soon’ is). We might lose summer ice this century in the arctic though, and glacial melt is very fast so it is of big concern and Gore illustrates this. You crank up CO2 a bit and you have something similar to the 125 kya event, crank it up to like 4x and you have the steamy, iceless cretacious. The implications for these future climates in maybe just a couple hundred years (still being wary of higher end projections) is nothing trivial, and I think Gore gets this across.
The thing with the ocean conveyor is we cannot yet quantify a numerical amount of fresh water flux for a shutdown, and although it is unlikely (IPCC
16 October 2007 at 12:23 AM
Regarding 2 from J.S. McIntyre
Unfortunately, I find it too hard to write long dissertations in comment boxes. I put up a post on my site http://www.globalwarming-factorfiction.com to discuss the issue. The post won’t be live for another hour or so but it will be the top post on the site for at least a day or two so it should be easy to find.
BTW, I don’t say that RC is wrong! I am just pointing out that they are putting spin on the answers to defend the movie. Mr. Gore took literary license several times in the film to make a point. He made that point incredibly well but that doesn’t mean that the movie wasn’t political in agenda which is what the judge found.
An Inconvenient Truth had a goal of influencing others. People believed it had the goal of telling the truth (especially with that name). To influence people Mr. Gore chose to only give parts of the answers or one version of a hypothesis. Some of these were pointed out by the judge.
I just wish that RC, which has such a great reputation as a scientific site, would have clearly said that Gore was 100% correct or 100% wrong on each issue - instead they spin their comments and use phrases like “representative species” and “legitimate illustration”. If Mr. Gore would have used those phrases then RC can use them to defend but that isn’t what the film says and to reinterpret the fraudulent statements is uncalled for in a site that prides itself on scientific and factual discussion.
16 October 2007 at 12:38 AM
The judge’s use of the word “error” was an unfortunate choice of language and apt to mislead (as indeed it has looking at the media reports about it) so it is good to see your clarification of these points.
Looking at the unusual approach the court took to the proceedings the “errors” would have been better termed “nine departures from the latest IPCC report and the opinions of the expert called by the UK government”. The findings are perhaps due to the limited evidence the judge appears to have had before him. Gore was not a party to the litigation or called as a witness so the scope of the inquiry was quite limited.
In rejecting the application to ban the film or order it be recalled from schools the judge seems to have impliedly rejected the evidence of the climate change sceptic, Bob Carter, who appeared for the claimant. That gets only a passing mention in the judgment (at paragraphs 22 and 23).
Sifting through the convoluted manner in which the judge gave his reasons it is easy to miss the point that the “nine errors” he identified were not findings that the film was actually wrong, merely that (in the judge’s view) it departed from the mainstream scientific consensus reflected in the latest report of the IPCC and the opinions of the expert called by the UK government, Dr Stott.
The judge pointed out (at paragraph 23) “it was essential to appreciate that the hearing before me did not relate to an analysis of the scientific questions, but to an assessment of whether the ‘errors’ in question, set out in the context of a political film” infringed UK law.
The judge’s convoluted approach and choice of language laid the groundwork for the misreading of the judgment that has occurred so it’s good to see your critique.
16 October 2007 at 12:39 AM
“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot..,”
CHARLES DICKENS, Oliver Twist, chapter 51, p. 489 (1970 edition).
16 October 2007 at 12:42 AM
I resent you saying mega-fauna are more charismatic than bivalves!
gw as always.
16 October 2007 at 12:43 AM
re: Sean O ( A software salesman; I think for Oracle in Cincinnati)
1) link-spam
Sean pops up in climate blogs, writes a few words, usually isomorphic to “I wrote about this in my blog….” and links to his blog.
Google: globalwarming-factorfiction
2) Others can assess the quality of the blog, to consider how much original content is offered and of what quality, if they want to spend the time. It does have some ads.
As a sample: of the recent Schulte-Oreskes silliness, Sean writes:
“I think that Mr. Schulte said it correctly: “If unanimity existed in the peer-reviewed literature between 1993 and 2003 - which I have reason to doubt - it certainly no longer exists today.”
This was AFTER Tim Lambert @ Deltoid proved conclusively that Schulte:
- was a plagiarist (of Monckton’s use of Peiser’s erroneous work)
- was incompetent (didn’t notice the errors)
- and then, had the letter containing this published on the same website as Monckton’s @ SPPI! Really, really smart.
Days later, Sean was still defending Schulte.
(Anyway, no need to publish this, it’s more for RC’s FYI).
16 October 2007 at 12:49 AM
You won’t publish my quote, but I’ll make my point anyway. We are talking about children here, not attorneys pouring over printed transcripts! Quibbling over insinuations or verbal omissions in this case is shameful. Gore clearly used fear of climactic disaster to further his political ends in much the same way he accused the Bush Administration of doing with regard to Saddam Hussein and 911. Bangladesh, Tuvalu, New Orleans and other places like them are perilous places to make a home in the best of climates. The human race has stopped trying to adapt to its environment - but to adapt its environment to itself instead. To adapt, we should move people from the lowland coastlines in any case. It is, and has been for many years, a civil engineering problem. .
16 October 2007 at 1:13 AM
I think the whole film is a load and is taking advantage (MONEY) of a real situation. How ever i do know the following
• Ice-sheet driven sea level rise
“No time scale was specified” what the hell type of excuse is that. This is to be used in schools you can’t just assume that there is no time frame? Irresponsible he knew exactly what he was doing. Selling a movie.
Pacific island nations needing to evacuate:
the point about Tuvalu and the visas to NZ are an absolute Load of rubbish. No such agreements exists the visas are working visas/labour mobility visas to work on farms so they can send money back home due to lack of employment on the island. The fact is these islands are a long way from going under. Why is their a requirement for “environmental” visas now?
• Kilimanjaro: gore associates the situation in Kilimanjaro with climate change and nothing more.
• Hurricane Katrina and global warming “Individual hurricanes cannot be attributed to global warming, but the statistics of hurricanes, in particular the maximum intensities attained by storms, may indeed be” well said realclimate.com
• existing vulnerabilities in eco-systems, potentially playing the role of the straw that breaks the camel’s back in many instances.
16 October 2007 at 1:36 AM
Thanks folks. Your responses to the 9 issues fits closely to what was my initial reaction. The polar bear thing is particularly egregious. If the Arctic sea ice shrinks dramatically, it is tautological that polar bears will be impacted dramatically. That stands on first principles and does not require population studies, which by definition, cannot have been undertaken yet. Catch-22.
16 October 2007 at 1:58 AM
#2
Well Steve if your remark isn’t agenda-driven obsessiveness I don’t know what is.
16 October 2007 at 2:32 AM
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/u/register/teaser.php?ref=2007.11-arctic-global-warming
There is a really good article by a Canadian professor here. Just the first 500 words of a 10,000 word piece. IMPORTANT.
Danny Bloom, the ”Polar Cities” blog guy (google the term)
16 October 2007 at 2:57 AM
Having watched the film many times during the past few days, having read all those for and against the AIT, I still find the film to be as true as one can get it, today. I truely believe that the school governor is biased, when it comes to climate change, and that the judge is wrong find these so called errors. Errors can be found anywhere, is all down to how one reads the script. This attitude is very clearly shown when one visits blogg sites or HYS sites, where the discussions are climate related. The vast majority of comments on these sites dont believe there is any climate change or G,W. happening, and most of these comments mix weather happenings, and climate change. Developments in the Arctic and the Antarctic, are changing as each week goes by. Only a year or two ago, scientists were predicting that the Arctic summer sea ice could disappear by 2050. This summer approx 50% has melted, opening the NW passage as well as the eastern passage. With more water area open the sea temperature will rise, speeding up the melt of the sea ice, after all it is only 1 meter thick. The complete melt of the Arctic sea ice will have no effect whatsoever on sea levels. What is more worrying, is the fact that the Greenland ice cap is melting at an astonishing rate, the ice cap is receding away from the sea exposing even more land area, which in turn warms up, melting even more ice and so on. The process escalates for every year. Even the maritime glaciers of Norway are melting quicker than ever, this is something that scientists had not expected, but its happening.
16 October 2007 at 2:58 AM
For a couple of reactions in the British press to the judge’s ruling (and Nobel prize), from the ridiculous to the informative see:
“Nobel Prize ignores inconvenient untruths to reward Gore”
by GERALD WARNER, Scotland on Sunday, 14th Oct at:
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1641212007#new
and “Revealed: the man behind court attack on Gore film”
The Observer, 14th Oct, at:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2190770,00.html
16 October 2007 at 3:34 AM
Hello,
Thanks for the review of this legal judgement. This is a copy of a letter I sent to our local newspaper, The Dominion Post, Wellington, New Zealand, in response to an article about this judgement in the paper.
The letter was published in the paper today.
When I watched the film I had some reservations about these very matters that were part of the court judgement. Whilst I don’t criticise Al Gore too much, perhaps, knowing the sort of opposition this film would engender with vested interests and global warming deniers and contrarians, some sort of caveat or brief explanation of the debate about the time frames involved would have been sensible and would have rendered the film less open to such criticism. Having said this, I am sure Al Gore was much nearer what will turn out to be the truth of all these matters than Mr Justice Burton. As I say in my letter, the whole exercise was absurd, and I am ashamed to think that it took place in the UK, whilst I might expect such nonsense in the USA, with its long tradition of such legalistic inanity. If Lewis Carroll were alive now, I think he’d make use of this case in his revised version of Alice in Wonderland.
16 October 2007 at 3:55 AM
2nd bullet in your post: Pacific island nations needing to evacuate
Well, Gore just looked in the wrong place: In December 2006, The Independent reported from an inundated Indian island (Lohachara in the Gulf of Bengal) from which 10,000 people had to be evacuated.
See:
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2099971.ece
16 October 2007 at 4:16 AM
I have the impression that the ultimate goal allows for exaggerations and half truths?
If the “errors”, where Al Gore suggests things beyond what the IPCC and mainstream science says are not errors, are they deliberate deviations, to give a certain impression (thus deliberate lies)?
One doesn’t need to tell direct lies to convince people of some disaster. Just impressive, suggestive pictures will do the job, especially when one doesn’t tell relevant details. Like in the case of the 650,000 year ice core, where Gore suggests that CO2 drives temperature. Of course he didn’t say that, but 99% of the people watching the movie will be convinced that that is the case. The same for the Greenland melting. The same for Katrina and New Orleans (which was not directly caused by wind - the hurricane landed in Mississipi, not in Louisiana), where the disaster was caused by levies which were not heightened, despite several warnings. The same for Tuvalu, where the increase of sea level in the past 30 years is virtually zero…
If I had been a US citizen, I probably would have voted Gore for president. Now that I have seen his film and his own carbon footprint (do what I say, but don’t see what I do?), I should have regretted my vote.
16 October 2007 at 4:27 AM
“Secondly, the judge’s characterisation of the 9 points is substantially flawed. He appears to have put words in Gore’s mouth that would indeed have been wrong had they been said (but they weren’t).”
I’ve seen Gore quoted, in press reports, as having erroneously stated in the film that the ice sheets would raise sea level by 20ft in the “near future”. Apparently this is not the case. I think what happened here was that the judge accepted what the plaintiff’s “expert” witness said that Gore said.
An “error” in his judgement? It would appear that minor oversights happen to the best of us…
16 October 2007 at 4:40 AM
Re #6,
There is some more nuance about that story at Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohachara_Island
16 October 2007 at 4:45 AM
With regard to the ninth point, on coral reefs, says “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 adapt or acclimatise, but that separating the impacts of climate change-related stresses from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting, is difficult.”
I am not a coral reef scientist, but I do pay attention to what they say, and it is certainly the case that they and others with a well-informed view agree that reefs face a combination of stresses. But very few indeed, if any, think that coral reefs could adapt or acclimatise to a temperature rise of as much as 3 degrees Centrigrade in the 21st century. The 3 C figure in the IPCC 4AR is more about political consensus than scientific one.
16 October 2007 at 5:25 AM
Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t sea level a worldwide thing? How can the sea level rise in the area of some Indian islands without its being noticed, say, around England or New York? Could the flooding of low lying islands not equally be due to tectonic plate activity? Of course, the latter can’t really be blamed on man, so it won’t get much publicity. While I am writing this, exactly how do we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas? There isn’t a hell of a lot of it in the atmosphere - 0.036% of the global atmosphere - so how does this minuscule proportion affect the global temperature? And as human exhalation accounts for 38 billion tonnes of CO2, and animals probably the same again, what remedies do the warmers have in mind for this? Mass genocide?
16 October 2007 at 6:45 AM
re. #1
I’m with J.S. McIntyre (re. #2) on this one. Sean, do you have arguments that counter what Gavin and Michael have presented from relevant, comprehensive, well-reasoned scientific analysis, consensus, perspective? If so please post with references.
I am not at all disappointed in Gavin and Michael’s analysis of these points. I think it is rather obvious that Al Gore did a decent job of presenting a relevant perspective to our time and our reality. He used imagery to portray reality and potential on multiple points that have strong scientific basis in the vast majority of points made in the film.
As pointed out by Gavin and Michael, Al Gore is likely ahead of his time on his statement: “That’s why the citizens of these pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand”. It is certainly still reasonable to see that this evacuation is in the cards in the future (while the exponential acceleration and melt rates are still debatable, the debate seems largely around the time factor, not the likelihood).
16 October 2007 at 7:06 AM
Oh Gosh, I forgot the plants. There are apparently 1877 billion tonnes of biomass, half of which is carbon. Virtually all of this is presumably expressing CO2 during the hours of darkness, and oxygen in daylight, due to photosynthesis. What’s the green answer to that? Cut down all the forests?
16 October 2007 at 7:27 AM
It has always been a bit of a stretch to model the YD purely on circulation. As I’m sure you know, a NAS Team recently concluded that one or more meteorites or comets have probably caused the big freeze and even before that, many ocean circulation experts (including people like Rahmstorf) said, that very likely external factors accounted for the YD’s extreme shifts.
As to the rest of Gore’s Film, I do see a certain danger in the way he presents science. Especially children tend not to listen to the exact word or phrase. They will draw a direct line from climate change to spectacular disaster. And if disaster won’t come, they’ll tend to dismiss the whole idea rather than mere aspects of it. If the next years won’t see disastrous hurricanes, drowning polar bears and sinking islands, you and me know that it means nothing. But will the kids know or will they conclude that Gore simply didn’t know what he was talking about?
16 October 2007 at 7:27 AM
Re #6, Gore would have had to be mad to use Lohachara as an example of global warming in An Inconvenient Truth - not because the Independent reports the island as having disappeared after the film was made but because its disappearance had little or nothing to do with global warming. The island actually disappeared in the 1980s. The main factors appear to have been mangrove destruction, which increased erosion, and reduced silt deposition (probably in part because of inland dams and embankments): the Hoogly washed it away. If rising sea levels did play a part - well, how much of that would have been due to global warming? The entire coast of Bengal is sinking (under the weight of up to 20km of sediment) at least twice as fast as the world’s seas are rising.
OT: I looked into this a while back and was puzzled by a statement in a Bangladeshi study of the Sunderbans. Can anyone help? The study said that the depth of sediment in the Bay of Bengal meant that gravity was slightly weaker there than elsewhere. (I get that bit.) It then said that this weaker gravitational pull meant that the sea level was slightly lower in the Bay than elsewhere. (I have occasionally understood that bit but would welcome permanent enlightenment.) Finally, it said that the weaker gravity meant that the sea level in the Bay of Bengal would rise at a slower rate than elsewhere in the world. How can that be? My brain fries whenever I try to think about it.
16 October 2007 at 8:07 AM
Re. 7 from Helmut.
I question your reference. While there is no doubt that the sea level has risen slightly in the last century it does not appear that Lohachara was the victim. Rather, it appears that this “island” was nothing more than a sandbar in a river and, as is typical with this type of land mass, the river eroded it away. While it appears that this was ultimately caused by man (over harvesting of mangroves which kept the land intact) it is unfair to say that it was caused by global warming.
If Mr. Gore would have used this reference, he would have been stretching the truth - which it appears that he did several times.
http://mc-computing.com/qs/Global_Warming/NewsPapers/Lohachara.html
16 October 2007 at 8:24 AM
Re. 9 from Mr. Mashey
Not that it is relevant what I do for a living, but your background information on me is faulty.
16 October 2007 at 8:36 AM
> Kilimanjaro
What do they teach in grade school these days? Rainier, Fuji, and other notable cone-shaped snow-capped mountains losing their snow are also volcanos. It’s easy to look up and find there has been no change in the vulcanism in recent history.
Vinny, water actually piles up thicker over areas where gravity is a bit stronger — this is gravity from a “mass concentration” that makes a bump over it, not the average gravity of the planet but a slight variation from average. And in an area where gravity is a bit weaker, where the mass below is a bit less dense, water doesn’t pile up.
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/education/images/geoid.gif
Remember the water on the planet piles up in line with the Moon and the Sun too, and those high spots travel around the planet. It’s not that the Moon and Sun actually drag that lump of water around as the planet turns of course. The water near the point in line with the Moon or Sun gathers together and thickens up a bit higher, by the amount of the tidal change.
Yet it’s a tiny difference, you don’t notice a rock fall any slower when the Moon’s overhead and the tide is high, but the Moon’s mass is gathering the ocean’s water near you together enough for the tide to rise.
16 October 2007 at 8:41 AM
#10: I just don’t see how Gore used fear of climatic disaster to further an agenda.. It is one thing to say we have to live with natural disaster and adapt. The operative word there is “natural.” It is a completely different issue to be altering the natural state of things to our detriment and then saying “it’s ok, just move to higher ground.” Of course if sea level is rising, the only thing to do is to get out of the way. But if this anthropogenic sea level rise is preventable, it is irresponsible to not take action to prevent it. Scientist, lawyer, fireman or yoga instructor…
So I ask again, how is Gore’s movie taking advantage of fear to further a political agenda?
16 October 2007 at 8:44 AM
“Fuel and mining magnate backed UK challenge to An Inconvenient Truth”
Is The subtitle of the Observers
Revealed: the man behind court attack on Gore film
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2190770,00.html
16 October 2007 at 8:48 AM
David Kelsey asks:Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t sea level a worldwide thing?
True, but there are local conditions which mask the effects including subsidence or rising of land at the water’s edge, tidal effects, etc. It is not a trivial thing to measure average global sea level changes.
16 October 2007 at 8:50 AM
Unfortunately the Court rules on the arguments (good and bad) laid before it and there will always be miscarriages of justice when there are opposing views and if the facts are not well presented on one side. Gavin and Michael correct some of the misconceptions that seem to have influenced some of the statements made in the Court in this ruling.
The film “An Inconvenient Truth” has probably got the message about global warming / climate change across in a way that the scientific process alone was failing. Scientific evidence, debate, reasoning and an emerging consensus alone has failed to convince a large part of the population, and some scientists, of the reality and significance of man-made global warming / climate change.
People tend to believe what they witness and experience for themselves and for most the evidence for global warming / climate change still remains scant. Yes there are pictures of melting sea ice, there have been some milder winters, some hotter summers, some wetter summers, some stronger winds - but this could down to the vagaries of the weather or part of a natural cycle? Until more people are affected in more immediate, regular, and direct ways by a warming earth and changing climate the scepticism will remain.
Al Gore’s film, for all its flaws, has helped to catalyse a wider debate (into the Courts in the UK) and has raised a more general awareness of the issues involved. In public perception terms, the Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize are seen as establishment endorsement and the sharing of the Nobel Peace Prize with IPCC as an acknowledgment of the role of IPCC and the many unsung scientists around the world, ON ALL SIDES OF THE DEBATE, who work to sift out the facts.
Global warming / climate change is complex with many unknowns, uncertainties, challenges, and probably surprises still remaining. The subject, however, is now firmly established at the top of the scientific and political agenda allowing research and debate to continue and develop so that we move closer to a more complete understanding and the solutions we all desire. Scientists and activists alike deserve the credit they are receiving for achieving this.
Gareth
16 October 2007 at 8:59 AM
23 David Kelsey - We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas becaue of laboratory experiments that establish that it absorbs radiation in the infrared part of the spectrum. This is late 19th century physics. Please feel free to win yourself a Nobel Prize by writing a paper that refutes it.
As to your point that it constitutes only “0.036% of the global atmosphere” well you could probably say the same about many toxins such as arsenic. The LD50 for pure arsenic is “763 mg/kg (by ingestion)”, which means it only needs to constitute 0.000763% of your body mass in order to have a 50-50 chance of killing you.
Consequently I conclude that trace quantities can have a disproportionate impact.
Finally, you claim that respiration (by humans and animals) is a net source of CO2. This is false. All of the CO2 from animal/human respiration comes from carbon eaten by those animals from plants and the plants took that carbon out of the atmosphere. Consequently there is a balance in the amount of carbon. (However we can upset that balance by cutting down forests)
It is well established that the rise in CO2 levels is due to fossil fuel burning (carbon that was buried millions of years ago).
I hope that you can accept these logical arguments that are backed by an overabundance of evidence. I hope that you are not merely clutching at straws in an attempt to avoid having to think about what we *do* because of this threat.
16 October 2007 at 9:02 AM
Sorry, forgot to multiply by 100. The LD50 for arsenic implies it needs to be 0.0763% of your body mass to… etc. (Still only twice the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and there are far more toxic compounds/elements)
16 October 2007 at 9:12 AM
Also highlighted in court arguments was Al Gore’s admission in Grist Magazine that, “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it [global warming] is.”
16 October 2007 at 9:29 AM
Apparently, the guidance came out pretty garbled on the CO2/Temp. rise connection in reponse to the judge’s ruling. Seems the judge did some harm here.
See William’s comment on Micheal Tobis’s blog here:
http://ninepoints.pbwiki.com/an-exact-fit
16 October 2007 at 9:30 AM
Vinny Burgoo and David Kelsey, the sea level follows an gravitational equipotential, and since Earth is not a perfectly flat sphere, that equipotential is not spherically symmetric at the surface. A weaker graviational force means water will “flow downhill” following the stronger pull. Now add more water–the same thing will happen, so you will get less additional water where the field is weak. The new sea level must follow the new equipotential.
David, in addition to this effect, you also have to consider prevailing winds, currents and a variety of other effects. Ever see the Panama Canal? There’s a reason why they have to take the boats through multiple locks–the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are at different levels.
16 October 2007 at 9:38 AM
re 7
“Unfortunately, I find it too hard to write long dissertations in comment boxes.”
When my replies are lengthy, I normally write it in Word, and then C&P. You might consider that going forward. Obviously, that seems to be what others do. In short, that really isn’t much of an excuse, and I think we both understand this.
“I put up a post on my site ”
I understand. But you made your comments here, and I don’t think it too extreme to expect you to substantiate them here. If nothing else, it strikes me as good manners.
“BTW, I don’t say that RC is wrong! I am just pointing out that they are putting spin on the answers to defend the movie.”
If I may be somewhat forward, I would suggest that what you were doing was making unsubstantiated (at least, in your initial post) remarks regarding RC’s intent. This is at best infamatory and at worst disengenuous.
You made the claim here. Defend it here.
“I just wish that RC, which has such a great reputation as a scientific site, would have clearly said that Gore was 100% correct or 100% wrong on each issue - instead they spin their comments and use phrases like “representative species” and “legitimate illustration”. ”
Again, you resort to what appears to be spin of your own, inferring something without substantiating it.
16 October 2007 at 9:47 AM
“Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t sea level a worldwide thing? How can the sea level rise in the area of some Indian islands without its being noticed, say, around England or New York?”
Because if your shoreline rises fairy steeply say to at say 5 or 10 feet, a three inch rise is not going to show much. On the other hand if you live on an island that is not more than a foot or two above sea level, it will be very noticeable.
Even in steeper areas if you live on the water you notice it, as things like docks that were built just above high-water mark, now spend much of their time underwater.
16 October 2007 at 9:50 AM
re 12
“Gore clearly used fear of climactic disaster to further his political ends in much the same way he accused the Bush Administration of doing with regard to Saddam Hussein and 911. Bangladesh, Tuvalu, New Orleans and other places like them are perilous places to make a home in the best of climates.”
You know, I am getting rather tired of hearing this, particularly as it usually is nothing more than a hand-wave, an “everybody knows” statement.
Well, everyone does not know! If you are going to make the accusation, back it up! What political ends were furthered? Please be clear and concise.
Sure, there is a movement to draft him to run for President, but it is unlikely to the extreme. Are you somehow saying that because he wants to raise the alarm re AGW we should consider this a political move on his part?
Here’s the real problem: AIT has been labeled “political” by people who want to shape the debate. But it isn’t a political message. It’s a societal message, a human message, one that is saying, quite simply, “Wake up! Pay attention. Look into this. Something is happening.”
This is political?
The fact that the people who put it together tend to likely have a political leaning as private citizens is not enough proof to claim this movie was politically motivated. As I understand it, Gore was doing these lectures long before the movie was dreamed up. The lectures weren’t being attacked as a political “ploy”. So why, then, should the movie?
But here’s a thought: going back to the idea AIT was likely done by people with a liberal mindset, and it - and the idea of AGW - seem to be resisted by people with a decidedly conservative bent, what does this suggest to you about who is really playing politics with this problem?
16 October 2007 at 10:22 AM
I find it bizarre that this even reached a court. If the UK Government is so concerned about climate change (which we are assured they are), then education is surely a huge part of this.
I’m interested to see what the US education system has to offer in terms of debating the AGW issue, as nearly every group on facebook (not wanting to take the tone down, but bare with me as I think this is a valid point!) that declares AGW as fantasy, is set up and commented on by US high school students. It amazes me that so many young people in such an important GHG producing country can feel this way.
Is it my imagination or is fighting global warming more a college thing than a school thing in the US, and if so, any ideas as to why?
16 October 2007 at 10:25 AM
I cannot help thinking that RC have been a little creative regarding the MOC as I thought that I had read on several occassions here that there is little chance of the MOC actually stopping due in part to the wind and the unknown actual volumes of water that flow through the MOC.
So argument is not about it stopping but about it slowing down and decreasing in its intensity, ie; less water flowing on average I presume but as yet there is no evidence of this.
I also believe that it is James Hansen who has thrown the IPCC’s projections out of kelter regarding land ice melt claiming that a “rapid non linear collapse” of ice sheets is likely this century which will raise sea levels far more than the IPCC predicts or expects.
16 October 2007 at 10:29 AM
I’d like to see someone, anyone, who is 100% correct about any of these topics. In most of these cases, Gore is more “correct” than the Judge.
On a previous point, I don’t see the value of teaching children that it’s OK to do something as long as the total effect of your actions requires 1000 years to play out. Even that sets aside strong evidence that the sheets will disintegrate in centuries, but unfortunately no model to date understands the physics of the melting/discharge we are seeing today.
16 October 2007 at 10:42 AM
The core compliant by Mr Dimmock, who took the issue before the courts, agaist AIT, was that the film was “political indoctrination” so contary to the 1996 (UK)Education Act.
This is probably more interesting, and the arguments for and agaist, than the science itself.
The judge most usefully ruled that AIT was not “political indoctrination”.
I note on the judge’s summary that AIT is but one of four videos on Climate Change available to schools. I would be interested if anyone can locate these on the web, to see how RC folk rate these.
But back to Mr Dimmock. Yes, here in England we also have a bunch of right-wing climate sceptics. Mr Dimmock is a member of the New Party, an obscure political party that has few members but one massive funder - who is a quarry owner and dislikes greenies.
That being said, I find that AIT is a little bit too “Hollywood” for me, rather than sober eductonal documetary - in a way its slickness is a fault as an educational resource.
THeo
16 October 2007 at 10:59 AM
#25 and others -
David Kelsey,
You shouldn’t expect people to forgive your ignorance if you subsequently post allegations that you could easily have checked out beforehand.
Furthermore, please show us your calculation that human exhalation accounts for 38 billion tonnes of CO2 – I’ve done it and got 4 – 7 billion tonnes.
Anyway it doesn’t matter because you have shown that you don’t really understand the basic science – this human exhaled CO2, and that from animals, is just a small part of the normal carbon cycle.
The biggest, but not the only cause of our current phase of GW, is CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels.
16 October 2007 at 11:07 AM
Re $36: [As to your point that it constitutes only “0.036% of the global atmosphere” well you could probably say the same about many toxins…]
A better analogy might be to the films on low-E insulating windows. They’re a tiny fraction of the window mass (though I don’t know the exact number), yet produce a significant change in thermal properties.
16 October 2007 at 11:28 AM
RE: #25 and #27: Kelsey expects a world wide sea level rise and this is well-documented by dozens of studies in the peer-reviewed scientfic literature including the Bahamas (using Mangroves-and the Bahamas are amongst the most tectonically stable places on the face of the earth), New England, using salt marshes, from tide gauges all up and down the east coast, and those are only the ones that I’m familiar with.
In terms of plants…we have to differentiate between CO2 that is in the active part of the carbon cycle and that which is fossil. Any carbon in plants came out of the atmosphere recently (years to dozens of years) and goes back in. There is a balance. Where the excess is coming from is fossil fuels, which are “fossil” because for the most part they come from fossil plants that were buried (along with their carbon) tens to hundreds of millions of years ago. When we burn them, we are releasing this “fossil” carbon from storage and releasing it at a rate far greater than the active carbon cycle can pick it up.
I know I’m wasting my time presenting real science as it’s so inconvenient when it conflicts with political opinion, but it’s worth the try if only to answer Kelsey’s “points”
(from a geologist/college professor)
16 October 2007 at 11:28 AM
Ever see the Panama Canal? There’s a reason why they have to take the boats through multiple locks–the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are at different levels.
The Panama canal would have multiple locks even if the Atlantic and Pacific were at precisely the same level — the middle of the canal is higher than either end. A sea level canal would have been prohibitively expensive to dig.
16 October 2007 at 11:42 AM
Opinions are opinions.
16 October 2007 at 11:43 AM
I agree with Sean O (#1) that RC has spun this. I have no complaints with the factual information in their entry and in the background links. But given the facts, they’ve tried to cast Gore’s comments in the best light possible.
RC on ice sheets: “the rate at which this will happen is highly uncertain”. Spin-free comment: Gore omitted relevant information essential for understanding the threat.
RC on Pacific islands: “could be said to be only a little ahead of its time”. Spin-free comment: The statement is false, or at best an exaggeration.
RC on ocean conveyor: “few are willing to completely rule out the possibility of a more substantial change in the future”. Spin-free comment: Research since the making of AIT suggests that this danger is less likely than it was portrayed.
RC on CO2 in ice cores: “Gore’s terse explanation of course does not mention such complexities, but the crux of his point–that the observed long-term relationship between CO2 and temperature in Antarctica supports our understanding of the warming impact of increased CO2 concentrations–is correct.” Spin-free comment: The crux of Gore’s point was that any idiot could see that temperature goes up when CO2 goes up. If my notes from the movie are correct, he said something like “When there is more CO2, the temperature gets warmer.” His portrayal was misleading.
RC on Kilimanjaro: “a legitimate example” of a real, widespread phenomenon caused by global warming. Spin-free comment: a poor example of a real, widespread phenomenon caused by global warming.
RC on Chad: “Gore uses this example to illustrate that there are droughts in some regions even while other areas are flooding.” Spin-free comment: He also implies that this specific drought is caused by global warming, and that global warming was the primary cause of the vanishing of the lake. The final statement, given the variety of causes of both lake shrinkage and drought, is less defensible.
RC on Katrina: “Katrina is used in the film as a legitimate illustration of … the kind of thing that could well get worse in a warmer world.” Spin-free comment: AIT presented Katrina in the context of natural signs that global warming was already having a visible effect, not as a hypothetical example.
Polar bears: I agree with RC’s assessment that Gore’s description was accurate but oversimplified.
Coral reefs: I agree that Gore’s description was accurate and fair.
In my opinion, overall the science (in AIT and elsewhere) is quite robust enough to stand up to a spin-free discussion of it.
16 October 2007 at 11:44 AM
I would like to call attention to what I feel is a very serious psychological manifestation: Goreophobia. Yes, I know that politicians of all stripes tend to elicit a gag reflex among all right-thinking people, but the visceral reaction to this one particular politician seems to have severe debilitating effects on many individuals. Effects include: inability to accept conclusions backed by overwhelming evidence merely because they resemble talking points of Al Gore, foaming at the mouth, an overwhelming urge to engage in “debate” and make irresponsible wagers that the sufferer later forgets.
The cure for this malady is long and involved. It involves first and foremost accepting the need to address the issues of climate change. If enough of the sufferers do that, they will find that Al Gore doesn’t have a podium to stand on. Until then, he will be in their face constantly, and their prognosis will be grim.
16 October 2007 at 11:51 AM
Oh my, we seem to have attracted more than few posters who don’t seem to have even a basic grasp of the carbon cycle, let alone the physics of greenhouse gasses, but then threads about Al Gore and AIT tend to do that.
Re 4 chip: “For what it’s worth, I have read several books about Britain’s search for the NW passage in the 1800s, and they often mention years when the Arctic waters were largely ice free.”
I suggest that you take a look here http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html
to get some idea of where the bulk of Arctic ice melt occurred this summer and how truly large a mass of ice melted. We’re not talking about the northwest passage, which runs through the more southerly channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago. We’re talking about the open Arctic sea to the north and northwest of the archipelago.
Re 7 Sean O: “I just wish that RC, which has such a great reputation as a scientific site, would have clearly said that Gore was 100% correct or 100% wrong on each issue”
That would have required that he be 100% correct or 100% wrong on each issue. Humans rarely attain that level of black and white perfection or error.
Re 13 cant say: “Ice-sheet driven sea level rise
“No time scale was specified” what the hell type of excuse is that.”
It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. Gore’s exact words were: “If this [West Antarctic Ice sheet] were to go, sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet.” How long it would take for it to melt depends on how hot it gets and how fast. What time scale would you have had him choose? Imagine the hue and cry if he HAD picked a time frame.
Re 25 David Kelsey
Let’s see, you question that CO2 is a even greenhouse gas, which has only been known and demonstrated experimentally since the 19th century, and assert that there is too little of it to matter in any case. Is it too much to expect that you would do even a rudimentary bit of research on the subject of greenhouse gasses before making such comments? Here’s a good place to start: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Then you go on to assert that human respiration is contributing to the rise of atmospheric CO2, complete with gratuitous and disingenuous comments about mass genocide. Did you come straight here from the comments section of Huffington Post? Perhaps you should do some reading on the carbon cycle, which can be found in any basic high school physical geography or earth science textbook.
Here’s one that’s real easy to grasp: http://www.geography4kids.com/files/cycles_carbon.html
And here’s one that’s more comprehensive on-line source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
Here’s another: http://visionlearning.com/library/module_viewer.php?c3=1&mid=95&l=1
16 October 2007 at 12:02 PM
Gavin and Michael wrote: “Individual hurricanes cannot be attributed to global warming, but the statistics of hurricanes, in particular the maximum intensities attained by storms, may indeed be.”
Certainly no one can say “this particular hurricane formed at this particular location at this particular time because of global warming.” Thus it would be unsupportable to say that hurricane Katrina, for example, was “caused by global warming.”
However, it is my understanding that the development of hurricane Katrina — which had weakened while passing over Florida from the Atlantic, and then strengthened to Category 5 and grew to enormous size over the Gulf of Mexico — can be directly attributed to the unusual warmth of the Gulf water in August 2005, and thus can be attributed to global warming.
In this sense I believe it is legitimate to “link” hurricane Katrina to global warming, not in the sense that global warming caused that particular hurricane to come into existence at that particular time, but in the sense that global warming directly contributed to Katrina’s growth into a highly destructive “mega-storm”. Thus the destruction and devastation that we have come to refer to as “Hurricane Katrina” can legitimately be pointed to as an example of what global warming has in store for us in the future in terms of more frequent development of such hurricanes as do occur into more powerful and destructive storms.
And Gore’s point about our lack of preparedness to deal with Katrina is very important. We — and I mean the USA, the richest and most technologically advanced society on Earth — are ill-prepared to deal with many of the likely effects of global warming; not only mega-hurricanes but droughts, floods and fires. Much of New Orleans and the surrounding region is still in ruins two years later. Most of the world is even less prepared and less well-equipped to deal with such disasters.
And as far as I can tell, all of the empirical evidence indicates that the disasters will be many, frequent, and bigger and sooner than anyone has anticipated.
16 October 2007 at 12:21 PM
Re globalwarming-factorfiction.com
This site seems to be little more than a platform for google ads, with little original content, and lots of false controversy borrowed from the wrong side of the media tracks. You can check it’s street cred by googling links to the site. Not a very powerful or plentiful harvest.
Please don’t feed the trolls.
16 October 2007 at 12:29 PM
#39 Sea level & gravity
Ray, your equipotential argument sounds very convincing to me.
However I do not think that a level difference between the oceans is the reason for locks in the Panama canal. As far as I know, you just have to get over the hill somehow. The Suez canal has no locks; apparently if the resistance of a canal is large enough it doesn’t matter that there is a little flow back and forth.
16 October 2007 at 12:39 PM
Re. 25 and 27, David Kelsey, you clearly have not read up on the subject. Try reading up on the carbon cycle and once you’ve read that, click the Start Here link on menu at the top of this page, and follow the links from there.
16 October 2007 at 12:47 PM
Re 25, 27 (human and plant respiration)
“Forgive my ignorance” was a good way to begin the discussion of genocide and deforestation as strawdog green policies.
All of the CO2 contributed to the atmosphere by plants, animals, and humans was originally removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis. As long as the inflow and outflow are in equilibrium, there’s no problem. Trouble only arises when there’s a net contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere, from burning forests or fossil fuels for example.
16 October 2007 at 12:50 PM
Re: 25 & 27, David Kelsey,
Not to pick on you Mr. Kelsey, but I’d like to use your comments as an example of what I find particularly exasperating in this and other scientific discussions among lay people (and, by the phrasing of your comments, I’m assuming you’re not a scientist):
The questions Mr. Kelsey raises are perfectly reasonable questions for a lay person to ask. It’s true CO2 is a trace gas, that anthropogenic additions to the total carbon cycle are small, and that living systems outgas CO2. Further, it’s true that, at first glance, these facts seem to run counter claims of AGW. But one would hope it would also occur to a lay person that it’s likely that the scientists who study climate change are aware of these facts and have taken them into condideration. Consequently, it’s likely that there’s a perfectly good explanation as to why they do not, in fact, refute AGW.
So in asking the questions, one would hope the phrasing were more congenial, rather than confrontational. In particluar, Mr. Kelsey’s comment #27 is phrased less like a question than a “gotcha!” It makes him look downright ignorant - not of the science, but of the competency of the scientific community. And it’s this attitude among a significant number of lay people, that is difficult to reason with. If you’re seriously posting a comment as basic as “biomass returns carbon to the atmosphere, so there!” on a blog run by and frequented by professional climate researchers, it’s clear you have no idea how much you don’t understand, and how much others do. It’s a complete lack of appreciation for the level of knowledge among the professionals - as though anyone could be a climate expert w/ just a few night courses at the local community college.
Sure, ask the questions, they’re not dumb questions. But give the community of thousands of researchers, working for decades, the benefit of the doubt.
16 October 2007 at 1:05 PM
Dick Veldkamp (52) — The Red Sea has a slightly higher stand than the Mediterranean Sea. The Suez cnal has led to an invaszive species problem in the easttern Mediterranean Sea.
16 October 2007 at 1:14 PM
Re. the CO2 lag in the ice core record, the guidance notes [PDF] for schools state:
Not exactly a clear explanation of the feedback mechanism! And no mention of the fact that that most of the eventual warming was GHG-induced.
Poor show.
16 October 2007 at 1:14 PM
Re Theo (currently #46): “The core complaint by Mr Dimmock, who took the issue before the courts, against AIT, was that the film was “political indoctrination” so contrary to the 1996 (UK)Education Act. This is probably more interesting, and the arguments for and agaist, than the science itself. The judge most usefully ruled that AIT was not ‘political indoctrination’.”
I agree that the political aspect is more interesting than the “errors” (though I think some of the “errors” were indeed errors) but that last statement is wrong. The judge didn’t rule that AIT isn’t political indoctrination; he ruled that no teaching material, no matter how controversial (he mentioned Nazi propaganda films), is itself politically indoctrinating. It all comes down to how materials are presented in the classroom.
Everyone in court - defendant, claimant and judge - agreed that the film is politically partisan: that it promotes a particular view of what we should do in response to climate change. If teachers didn’t point out these political aspects, that would be political indoctrination. The judicial review worked out a new set of guidance notes for teachers that would help them stay on the right side of the law and allow the film to be shown. No matter what Mr Dimmock’s intentions were (he is said to be a GW sceptic), by the time his complaint came to court, the science was secondary.
Vicki (#43), it came to court because whoever decides these things thought there was a real chance that the government’s initial distribution of the film was in breach of the law. And so it proved. There was initially a clearly stated intention to indoctrinate children. There was also a lack of guidance to teachers on how to treat those parts of the film that were political (and/or non-IPCC science).
(Thanks to those who provided explanations of weak gravity, low water. My brain is still sizzling slightly, but that’s my problem.)
16 October 2007 at 1:28 PM
Re 55. Tom - I am sorry that my site doesn’t fit your standards. I try to be fair and balanced and discuss both sides of the issue. The site is barely 6 months old so it only has a few thousand links (use the Google Webmaster tools not the link tool that you referred to). According to my feed stats, I have several hundred regular readers that must see value in the format that you deride.
You don’t have a URL tied to your posts. What is your site on the subject and how many external links does it have? I am wondering if a glass house analogy may not be in order.
Yes, I have ads on the site. The pennies that I get per click on an ad barely cover my hosting bill and come nowhere near my time and effort. Don’t disparage me because I am not independently wealthy and want to cover my costs.
16 October 2007 at 1:36 PM
Dick Veldkamp. No, there are many reasons for locks in the PC. Gravitational differences are not one. Wind and currents are. The Pacific sea level is different than that of the Atlantic–mainly due to prevailing winds. As I said, a lot of things contribute to local sea level. The gravity reference was specific to Vinny’s question.
16 October 2007 at 1:37 PM
Sean O. Oh dear, another “fair and balanced” site. So tell me, Sean, how do you balance the fact that all the evidence is on only one side?
16 October 2007 at 1:57 PM
Sean O’s wish that RC would provide “100 %” answers, and claim to presenting “both sides” of questions, shows he’s not writing about science in his “fact or fiction” page. RC gets a lot of people posting their sites blogflogging. Setting “nofollow” might avoid pagerank benefits, if it’s an option you can elect per site.
16 October 2007 at 2:15 PM
Gavin and Michael, this
http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=34106
…is just a news story, but glacier guy P. Mote seems pretty adamant that the Kilimanjaro thing CAN’T be blamed on GW.
[Response: Ray Pierrehumbert, our resident atmospheric water vapor expert, has clearly articulated here before an argument for why the imminent demise of Kilimanjaro likely is related to anthropogenic climate change. This was from before Ray was a regular here–the article was posted as a guest article by our resident glaciology expert Eric Steig. -mike]
#4 The St. Roche spent several months on its first arctic run stuck in the ice. The second, shorter run still took 86 days. Conditions were hardly “ice free”.
16 October 2007 at 2:35 PM
[[Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t sea level a worldwide thing? How can the sea level rise in the area of some Indian islands without its being noticed, say, around England or New York?]]
Sea level is not the same everywhere in the world. It varies with local gravity, temperature, salinity, currents, and winds.
[[ Could the flooding of low lying islands not equally be due to tectonic plate activity?]]
No, probably not.
[[ Of course, the latter can’t really be blamed on man, so it won’t get much publicity. While I am writing this, exactly how do we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas? ]]
Because John Tyndall demonstrated that it was in the lab in 1859.
[[There isn’t a hell of a lot of it in the atmosphere - 0.036% of the global atmosphere - so how does this minuscule proportion affect the global temperature?]]
For a precis, try John Houghton’s “The Physics of Atmospheres.” And the 384 ppmv of CO2 in the air amounts to 5.88 kilograms for every square meter of the Earth’s surface, which is plenty to affect radiative transfer.
[[ And as human exhalation accounts for 38 billion tonnes of CO2, and animals probably the same again, what remedies do the warmers have in mind for this? Mass genocide?]]
Animal and plant respiration is balanced in a natural cycle. The vast majority of CO2 produced every year is taken up by natural sinks. Human burning of fossil fuels raises the source levels enough that the total in the atmosphere keeps accumulating.
16 October 2007 at 3:04 PM
Re 39. What do you take this statement to mean and what was the claim in the court arguments about it? Are you implying that “over-representation” somehow equates to “falsification” or am I mis-interpreting your reason for posting this statement?
16 October 2007 at 3:17 PM
# 70
looks like it can be, but, the vast majority of glaciers are retreating world wide and humans are having a great deal of influence on this. When Lonnie Thompson said a few more years before it’s gone, I don’t think Kilimanjaro cared too much- but it is like the dice game in my comment 6 — Chris
16 October 2007 at 3:18 PM
[[Oh Gosh, I forgot the plants. There are apparently 1877 billion tonnes of biomass, half of which is carbon. Virtually all of this is presumably expressing CO2 during the hours of darkness, and oxygen in daylight, due to photosynthesis. What’s the green answer to that? Cut down all the forests?]]
Where did you get the idea that photosynthesis reverses itself at night? If your model were correct, plants would get no nutrition and would all die.
16 October 2007 at 3:36 PM
[[ I am sorry that my site doesn’t fit your standards. I try to be fair and balanced and discuss both sides of the issue.]]
Do you address both sides of the issue of white supremacy, slavery, or the Holocaust?
Sometimes it has been established by massive amounts of evidence that one side or the other is WRONG. So giving equal play to both sides is like giving equal play to a real physicist and a crackpot who claims he can disprove relativity.
16 October 2007 at 3:37 PM
Yes, sea level rise is a relative phenomena, as many coast lines on the globe are rising in response to isostatic rebound (from glacial unloading as the ice sheets melted during this interglacial, and it is still occuring in many parts of the northern hemisphere). Tectonic uplift of coast lines around the Pacific Rim (ring of fire) is also common. These uplift effects are many times 3 to 5 times more rapid than sea level rise due to ice melt over the last century or so, many are 10mm per year. There are also coast lines that are subsiding due to downwarping of the earth’s crust by rapid sediment loading, such as the deltas of the Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, etc. and due to rapid fluid withdrawal. So Mr. Gore’s gross exaggerations on ice melt drowning the world are total misrepresentations of the scientific facts for political gain. Why any true scientist could endorse his distortions and half truths is beyond my comprehension and ethical understanding of what science should stand for in society. However, it also tells me some scientists are willing to compromise their professional ethics to salve their environmental motives and use any means to justify their ends.
16 October 2007 at 4:05 PM
A bit generous with Mr Gore, I think : maybe even partial, particularly with the Pacific
Islanders.
But having said that, Mr Gore has actually stood up and been counted.
I didnt think that the Judge in the case did at all badly : he is clearly almost as
switched on as most of the posters on RC. I particularly liked his comments on ‘balance’,
which the media might like to read and take to heart.
The prime issue for me is not temperature increases, which looks like a slam dunk, and its
evident effects on marine and land based life and land based agriculture, whilst not forgetting
the impacts of extreme weather events, mass migrations and the rest, but on sea level rise
which is a known unknown (if I may put it like that).
I keep reading the science stuff on this as recommended by your excellent selves
and then I read some of Mr Hansen’s stuff and it does all fit. The problem seems to be that
we dont know how it fits because the detailed science hasnt yet caught up with the informed
and educated intuition.
Starting from base, I would doubt that there is a respectable climate scientist/modeller who
would bet against a more than 1m rise by the end of the century. I suspect that the futures
market is insufficiently developed for that time frame, so we shall never know.
But 1m does seem to be the base number, hunches included
But if the base is 1m then how do the bets shape up for 2m or more. One metre is bad
enough, perhaps a major disaster, but 2 and then three looks to me like a
mega disaster in the making.
Returning to the Hansen et al 2007 paper which tried to be positive about controlling
temperature to 1C, sea level rise popped up again.
I dont know how organised the science community is with respect to ice sheet study but
does it make sense to keep a running commentary at 6 monthly rests in one easy to read
document, on : mass balance, melt water flows, glacier movement, glacier calving, quakes
and/or whatever is important ? A bit like a doctors report on the patient’s progress.
It seems important enough to me, but is it, and if it is then who would do it?
16 October 2007 at 4:39 PM
Off topic of course, but the “recent comments” and “with inline responses” lists on the main page don’t seem to be working. I miss ‘em.
[Response: Sorry. We are having database overload issues and the recent comment searches are particularly unfriendly. Any experts in mySQL and php who want to help can email me! - gavin]
16 October 2007 at 4:48 PM
Re 55 / 66
I gave your site a second look. There’s more material than first meets the eye, but I don’t see the balance to which you aspire.
For example, I chose the Getting Warmer-Human Fault category, and looked at the first few links. The first four, while they report on pro-AGW developments, all have AGW-skeptical editorial comments. On the other hand, the Not Getting Warmer category’s first few posts are presented without criticism, even though they come from what I would consider to be extremely dodgy sources and contain flaws which have been repeatedly pointed out elsewhere. I see a distinctive anti-AGW slant to your content; the tone reminds me of Tech Central Station.
I would like your site better if you did one or more of the following:
- abandon the pretense of balance (or get some balance; balance does not mean equal quantities )
- go meta, i.e. continue reporting on developments in the popular media, but just keep score on which side is winning, rather than treating the product of lobbyists as science
- go deeper, tracing skeptical and other arguments back to reasonable sources in the science literature
There’s plenty of noise out there, so GW sites need to serve as filters, not repeaters.
16 October 2007 at 5:14 PM
re 79. “but I don’t see the balance to which you aspire. ”
I think you are confusing balance with something else. In the first place, the ’skeptical’ arguments you refer to ARE sourced, the problem is that those arguments are simply very weak. That is why the climate science community has largely agreed with the IPCC findings; there are no substantive counter-arguments. Ths discussion points now are revolving around 1. how bad will it get 2. what can be done.
16 October 2007 at 5:14 PM
Dr. J stated: “So Mr. Gore’s gross exaggerations on ice melt drowning the world are total misrepresentations of the scientific facts for political gain.”
Not so. There is ample evidence that during the previous interglacial, the Eemian around 134,000 years ago, the sea stand was about 4 meters higher that it is now. This is attributed to higher temperatures in at least Greenland and possibly also West Antarctica.
Mr. Gore did not state how long it would take for the sea stand to rise this far. No one knows, although Dr. James Hansen has recently stated that it might be much sooner than previously estimated.
With mis-statements such as yours, I suppose our descendants will find out…
16 October 2007 at 5:32 PM
[[Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t sea level a worldwide thing? How can the sea level rise in the area of some Indian islands without its being noticed, say, around England or New York?]]
You need to learn physics. Two forces, at least can make this so. One is that water expands when heated. If warmer ocean currents are shifted then they rise more than colder ones. El Nino raises its tongue surface height by at least 15 cm (or about 1/2 of a foot).
Second reason, some places like New England are still rebounding from the last ice age…yes, they are rising after the weight of the ice…but that is taken into account.
Some places in Australia actually had no real sea level rise over the last 50 or so years…you need averages, averages averages….not single cherry pickings.
All this is not really radical.
The peer review system (Fourier), although it was hard to accept for the times, indicated that humans might be able to change local surface climates even in 1827.
http://www.cicero.uio.no/media/182.pdf P.21.
The basics have been hashed out pretty well by world scientists since 1827.
16 October 2007 at 5:35 PM
Same for me Tamino. The web site was down for part of the weekend and maybe it hasn’t fully recovered yet?
16 October 2007 at 5:38 PM
Ah… just for some levity…
http://tinyurl.com/3bcupx from “The Daily Mash”:
GORE FILM IS ‘INCONVENIENT BOLLOCKS’ SAYS JUDGE
Excerpt:
He said the former US Presidential candidate’s assertions that all dolphins had melted and that elephants were being forced to make footballs for Nike in India for slave wages were also, “a lot of cock”.
Justice Brubaker said: “According to Mr Gore climate change has forced monkeys to install air conditioning in their jungles and led to snakes growing arms so they can hold one of those personal electric fans. I don’t think so.
“Anyway, if it is that bad why doesn’t he try turning off a few lights in his own mansion before telling the rest of us we have to recycle our own turds to stop our children from catching fire.”
However, the judge said the film could still be viewed in British schools as long as the head teacher stood up before each showing and said: “This is a flammed up can of old shite. Ignore it.”
16 October 2007 at 5:39 PM
Re 76 Dr J: “So Mr. Gore’s gross exaggerations on ice melt drowning the world are total misrepresentations of the scientific facts for political gain.”
Please define gross exaggeration in this case.
What is exaggerated or half true about the statement: “If [the West Antarctic ice sheet] were to go, sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet?”
Or the statement: “If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in Florida?”
It’s easy enough to calculate if those statements are factual or not, is it not? And is it or is it not a fact that sea level has been that much higher in the past at times when temperatures were only 1-2ºC higher than they are today, as Gavin and Michael stated?
It was you, Dr J, who used the phrase “drowning the world,” not Gore. It seems to me that it is you who is exaggerating and misrepresenting what Gore said for political gain.
16 October 2007 at 5:51 PM
Well, this just reconfirms it to me that Gore is much closer to the conservative “science” side of the discussion than the “environmentalist” side. Too bad. I don’t blame him, the way the denialists have snuck into to the discussion with a forceful vengeance and railroaded it over somewhere between denialists’ “we need 99% or 101% certainty” and scientists’ “we need 95% certainty,” totally pushing out the victims’/potential victims’ position of wanting to avoid harm. I just wish someone would stand up a bit stronger for the victims and potential victims, and just ignore the denialists.
16 October 2007 at 5:56 PM
In geological circles it is well understood that coral islands develop on volcanic sea-mounts which may or may not reach sea level. It is also known that the weight of the volcanic edifice, and the coral structures developed on it, cause subsidence since the underlying oceanic crust yields to the weight. Volcanic activity can re-commence, lifting the whole edifice. This is demonstrated on many coral islands by the coral ‘terraces’.
So, apparently rising sea-levels on coral islands are much more to do with local subsidence than an overall global rise in sea-levels. How can it be so difficult to miss this obvious point?
We should also acknowledge that coral islands have a self-correcting mechanism to deal with subsidence. Coral is an active organism, and it grows to reach the surface. If the island sinks a little, the coral grows a little to compensate.
I think you will get much further in understanding the issues relating to sea-level rise on coral islands if you look at the politics of the situation. Many coral island based nations are losing population due to the lack of a viable local economy. An example I am familiar with is the island nation of Niue which has only 1500 local residents, but a population of 20,000 expatriates living mostly in New Zealand, but also in Australia. Niue is keen to find ways to restore the local economy so that it can welcome many of the expatriates back home.
It is not surprising that some of the small island nations are capitalising on the AGW situation in an attempt to secure funding support.
16 October 2007 at 7:18 PM
Re. 79
Tom - thank you for taking another look. I followed the links that you referred to (I am not going to reproduce them here since I was called a link troll here today and that was not my goal). I have to politely disagree with your characterization of the 10 posts at each category. While I was probably harder on Mr. Gore (whom I think created a sham movie) and carbon trading (which I think is counter-productive to the goals of appropriate energy usage), I have been chastised much harder for my comments against the skeptics (I don’t think that Imhofe’s people will ever talk to me again).
Oh well, thank you for at least being open minded enough to take a look.
Re. 69 Hank - Nofollow is already set for RC. It is a Wordpress blog and nofollow is automatically set for WP blogs unless the administrator explicitly turns it off. My comments here were not a link trolling expedition but rather pointing out that Gore took liberties with the truth and RC wimped out by not calling him on it.
16 October 2007 at 8:16 PM
Re. #88, Sean O, other than possibly “Pacific island nations needing to evacuate”, I don’t see what evidence you have that AIT “took liberties with the truth”. It over-simplified at times (most documentaries do), and in one case (sea level rise) it departed from the scientific consensus by implication, but that’s not the same thing as taking liberties with the truth. With only minor tweaks and qualifications (such as using a different illustration of glacier retreat rather than Kilimanjaro) his film could have stuck to the consensus and yet made exactly the same points. Fundamentally the AIT film is accurate (unlike the Swindle film, which the AGW deniers are trying to promote as a counterpoint to AIT, and which is fundamentally dishonest).
Also, in a documentary film which mentioned hundreds of facts it is not surprising if it got a small number of them wrong and over-simplified others. It’s main points were all scientifically accurate, again in stark contrast to Swindle.
Even in the case of the evacuation issue, there seems little doubt (and the IPCC AR4 WGIII report confirms this) that the balance of probability is that huge numbers of people (probably tens of millions) worldwide will be displaced during the coming century as a result of sea level rise, so although his specific illustration was misleading, the point he was making was accurate.
Having said that, I do wish Gore had had the film’s transcript peer reviewed before release - that would have prevented it from becoming a relatively easy target for the AGW deniers. It could have made the same points just as effectively, with better illustrations and more qualifications, and would have been better for it. But fundamentally it seems an honest film to me, unlike Swindle, and I see no evidence to back your implication that it this isn’t the case.
16 October 2007 at 9:37 PM
I’ll second Sean (#1) with a little twist. I do think you’re looking carefully for obscure loopholes that correctly conclude that Gore did not say exactly this or that, when the perfectly clear implication from the movie is to get people to believe all those things that Gore did not actually say. That said, I think the original court case was making much todo over nothing, let alone trampling all over freedom of expression (which I don’t know if it has the same legal weight in England.) If the courts assessed all textbooks and media with the same guidelines, students would have nothing to read or watch. Most things have an error here and there, and, as RC cogently states, “….people expecting the same depth from a movie as from a scientific paper are setting an impossible standard.” I’m on the skeptic side of things and disagree with Mr. Gore on a number of things, and think he skewed a few things in the movie; but there is no good reason under the sun that it should not be able to be distributed and shown in schools or any place else. Nor should it be obligated to be shown with a “truth-in-lending” disclaimer — that’s downright silly.
I congratulate Mr. Gore on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but I have no idea what his stance on global warming has to do with wars, conflicts, disarmament, armies, peace, and such. Academy Award? Well, it was at least a movie, and for all I know the best of the category. More congrats.
16 October 2007 at 10:22 PM
I was somewhat disappointed that Gore’s film didn’t go far enough with the harms — like leaving out a discussion of possible runaway warming or hysteresis — positive feedbacks of our initial warming causing nature to emit more GHGs, causing more warming, causing nature to emit more, and so on up to massive extinction and tremendous human genocide. That’s a lot of bang for our GHG emissions. However, on the AIT DVD in the extra info section he does mention it a bit.
I think any classroom in which AIT is shown should make it a point to discuss the high end harms, which though less likely are something we need to keep in mind. Cautious claims are for scientists and ultra-cautious claims for denialists with politico-economic agenda. Those concerned about avoiding serious threats to our life-support systems in the near and distant future should not require high certainty to address these issues. Would a life-loving person take poison because there was only a 70% chance it would kill them, even 30% chance? Yes, of course, many people do eat and drink things that harm them, but it is unconscionable to bring death and destruction upon other people, upon our progeny.
16 October 2007 at 10:41 PM
Comment by Sean O — 16 October 2007 @ 7:18 PM
… While I was probably harder on Mr. Gore (whom I think created a sham movie) …
MR JUSTICE BURTON:
I have no doubt that Dr Stott, the Defendant’s expert, is right when he says that:
“Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate.”
16 October 2007 at 11:08 PM
Re. #90, Rod B:
Are you really serious that you have no idea? See here, for example. It really isn’t rocket science!
17 October 2007 at 1:40 AM
truthout, here’s a response from somewhere deep inside a geologic circle (sometimes a hole!).