The Fact-Checker, by Michael Dobbs

"First and foremost, An Inconvenient Truth presented thousands and thousands of facts."

The subtext here is clear: using a few debatable issues (addressed admirably here) in a broad spectrum of thousands of unassailable facts to evaluate the 'truthiness' of the whole is ridiculous. As Gore is well aware, such tactics are the bread and butter of the right wing Obfuscation Patrol. It isn't, however, appropriate behavior for what is supposed to be an objective column called "The Fact Checker."

I repeat my prior point. Rather than debating how many Pinocchio's Gore's movie should get, you should be asking: can you give it NEGATIVE Pinocchio's?

too bad we are spending so much time (and money) 'defending our positions' instead of making real changes. i look forward to the time when this newspaper spends valuable time and print space chronicling the *climate changes* rather than debating the causes.

Excellent! A comprehensive, but not rambling, response. Kudos.

Wow, no-factchecker must be seeing a doctor after being ripped a new one.

Obviously 'Fact Checker' needs to get his facts right before writing the nonsense he wrote last week. Perhaps a scientific expert should have written last weeks fact checker column, or someone who actually knows something about the science. His ignorance on the subject was painful. Pity that this well informed response is not given as much prominence as the less well informed Fact Checks of last week.
I am beginning to feel that 'Fact Checker' should always be enclosed in quotes.

Nice comeback. Also good because it deals directly with the evidence, giving the scientific information that backs what the film says. Fact Checker seems to be more into the political arena, where slime and smear are effective weapons.

I believe the proper response to this rebuttal is, "OH SNAP."

Its been a rough couple hurricane seasons...

Ms. Kreider, You did a WONDERFUL job explaining the facts and how-not only the suit, but the spin to further distort realities, was based on false claims and unfortunately, again, politically motivated and driven by special interests.

Thank you.

Isn't this the point of a debate ("a broader and much-needed discussion and debate about solutions to the climate crisis") - to discuss all aspects, from all sides, of every argument. I think the fact checker played a valid role in pointing out the supposed inaccuracies so that they could be responded to and argued for and against. Whether you believe or agree with one side or the other, or fall somewhere in between, there should always be space for questioning all facts and questioning all supposed truths.

LOL, "SNAP" would have been much shorter to state the response. Agreed. :)

Pretty funny to see how a simple response by Team Gore generates so much enthusiasm and positive feedback. Thought this forum was called "fact checker" ? It's not because Team Gore calls it "facts" that we should all applaud and agree. I'm pretty sure that the NeoCon maffia can as easily produce a couple of "well known" scientists which will easily say the opposite. Hey we even have Nobel price winning scientists who claim that colored people are less smart then white people. Does that mean it's a "fact" ? The FACT that it comes from Team Gore, by definition implies that it needs to be approached with caution (as we should when it would come from the white house).

Personally I prefer the previous analysis by "fact checker" (version II) to be closer to reality. Overall the film is correct, a couple of generalisations, maybe one or two unproven (but likely) links

Please let "fact checker" check the facts, and not the involved parties.

Regards from Belgium

Just more useless, BORING, dribbles from the stiff.

Verdict still pending? You wish, fact-checker. You did a mean little hit-piece against Gore, WaPo-style, and were just eviscerated for it.

Of course the first thing the Gore acolyte does is imply that the judge is too busy and not qualified to make an informed decision, then proceeds to smear the plaintiff.

It shows how much Gore learned, under 8 years of the Clintons' tutelage, how to handle criticism.
.

"Fact" Checker got pwned! And perhaps should have been asking the motive for that British law suit to begin with. As we see, the funding for it came from the big oil companies. Didn't that give you any pause before you write the original shoddy piece? Or were you not aware of that? And if that's the case it might be time to go back to take a few refresher Journalism 101 classes.

Posted by: jbk | October 18, 2007 12:05 PM

I raised the same point yesterday and the Fact Checker sniffed that it wasn't relevant to the story or to the mission of the column.

Posted by: bilbosimca | October 18, 2007 11:40 AM

Hello Belgium! Are you still a country?

"It shows how much Gore learned, under 8 years of the Clintons' tutelage, how to handle criticism."

I'd change that to "It shows how much Gore learned, after 8 years of witless, deranged attack by a right-wing Congress and a right-wing media, when and how to expose critics as rich political hacks who are sincerely uninterested in the truth."

the right could only just stick to what was actually said.....

I think this whole 'Inconvenient Truth' is more like a convenient fear. The best way to motivate people is to make them afraid. Climate change has been happening for billions of year and there are so many factors involved that the best we can do is make partially informed predictions that don't often come true.

"...like a convenient fear. The best way to motivate people is to make them afraid."

Worked wonders in the 2004 election.

UK court says Gore is a fraud. August 2007 Update: Man-made Catastrophic Global Warming Not True. In order to be an intelligent reader you must have a basic knowledge. Please do your own homework; a starting point http://www.InteliOrg.com/ further, flawed NASA Global Warming data paid for by George Soros.

While admittedly the need for brevity limits thorough response I did find it interesting that the Team Gore rebuttal does admit that the movie significantly simplifed matters; that the real story is much more complex; and, that indeed, there are many other stressors that need to be considered. But isn't that the court's main point? That matters are not as simple as the movie would suggest nor are the expected consequences nearly so scary as it projects. The Judge's decision calls into question the movie's integrity and to the extent his findings are correct, puts the reliability of the entire message into doubt. And on the issue of credibility, isn't attacking the motivation and the of the plaintiff in the case rather beside the point? Surly the Team Gore isn't suggesting by this that the Judge too was on the take. It is also worth mentioning that in reading the actual decision (which I recommend to all) that the Judge based nearly all his findings on the admissions made by the Defense expert who, of course, was there to give evidence in support of the movie - which is perhaps why we see the broadsides aimed at the plaintiff rather than the person who actually made the findings and wrote the decision.

I wonder if the Fact Checker could explain why the Judge never used the word "error" without quotation marks throughout his opinion. The Post reporting and the Fact Checker's column both report the judge found errors. Are they not errors?

Yeah they won't "ascribe any single weather event to climate change"; unless they can get some political mileage out of it after the fact. BTW have they revised their revised forecast for this season yet? What is it now over two seasons Prediction 15, Reality 3?

Fact-Checker, what else have you been wrong about?

The right-wing/corporate state (see--I didn't say "fascist"!) attempts at debunking Al Gore, his movie and the issue of global warming (how did it now become "climate change"?) is straight from the Karl Rove Dirty Tricks Handbook.

Befuddle your opponent with hundreds of "debatable points" and watch the larger argument float out to sea!

IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT A POLITICAL MOVIE IS BEING INJECTED INTO ANY CLASSROOM.THE FACT THAT IT WAS EASY TO FIND INCONSISTANCIES IN THIS MOVIE MEANS THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE SHOWN TO CHILDREN AS SCIENCE BY ANY SCHOOL. THE NINE RESPONSES ARE VAGUE AND TYPICALLY POLITICAL. AL GORE HAS TAKEN A POTENTIALLY SERIOUS ISSUE AND TURNED INTO A CIRCUS TO MAKE MONEY.

About the Polar bears. Only one small area of Hudsons Bay is the population decreasing. The other group under threat are the ones that migrate to Greenland where there is no restriction on hunting. Swimming well that is what the bears do best. Davis Strait which happens to be one of the most ice free areas the bears are quite fat and happy. In the last 15 years the bear population has a whole doubled, they like it a little warmer. Hey the AGW industry is worth 60 billion. Gore knows how to get his bread buttered.

Someone ought to do a parody of climate change dissenters applying their "logic" to Ken Burn's "The Civil War" documentary. I wonder how many distinct "errors" they could discover in it to disprove the entire notion that the Civil War ever happened -- or if it did, it wasn't actually fought by Americans.

Another useful comparison might be with the methods of Holocaust deniers. Hearing them talk about Gore is roughly like listening to Iranian President Ahmadinejad discussing Israel.

While it's true that 9 bad facts out of 1000 isn't a bad record, this response is generally unimpressive. It basically states: "we didn't present the whole story because, who has time to do all that in a movie?" and acknowledges "unfortunate" wording.

That said, the film is part documentary and part political propaganda. It's trying to be persuasive. No one should expect objective films from politically minded people (think Michael Moore).

Um,..ronjaboy re hurricanes.
Interesting that you only look to the statistics for your part of the world.By that argument Global Warming doesn't count if it happens in another part of the world.
You might want to look up the statistics for the rest of the world, before showing your lack of understanding of hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons.
The number of these more or less remains constant globally. I have never seen any scientist make the claim that the frequency of these weather events is increasing. So if there are less in the Atlantic basin then there may be more over the Pacific and visa versa. These numbers, themselves, change on an estimated 40 year cycle. With scientists thinking that the cycle of increased Atlantic hurricane activity starting in 1996.
It is the intensity of the Hurricanes that seems to be increasing world wide. Some papers seem to back this up. Most scientists are noncommittal.
So please, please, please read more, and be informed before you make comments that make you look foolish.

Great response, Ms. Kreider. The only item you forgot was how many Pinnochios to award to Mr. Dobbs. ;)

I am impressed by the back-pedaling and temporizing made in this response. No doubt. its an environmentally-friendly back-pedaling bicycle. The real problem is that we have allowed this issue to become so politicized. I wouldn't trust anything that either side would say now, because I need to figure how their own agenda fits in to their argument. Its a great way for one person to make a living, but the rest of us lose iregardless of how the debate turns out.

John, what is wrong with the response that they did not have time to present the entire body of scientific knowledge in the movie? To me this seems so obvious that it is painful they are required to state it explicitly. If you want the full body of knowledge, go to school and read peer-reviewed journals and maybe in twenty years you'll be up to speed. But most people won't do that, will they? Which is precisely the raison d'etre of "An Inconvenient Truth."

You apply the pejorative term "propaganda" to the movie because it obviously attempts to motivate a response from the audience to the facts it outlines. But the use of that colored term implies that you disapprove of the attempt -- which, if 991 out of the 1000 facts it outlines are true, is hard to understand.

You have yet to address the issue of why the Post published the British judge's lay opinions the same day as the Nobel announcement.

It would be cute that the pollution industry shills are still acting like all five of them can form some kind of a scientific consensus simply by acting snotty if propagating idiocy weren't so very infuriating.

Kreider's response is insulting - full of inconsistencies, just like the movie. How interesting that so many left-wing radicals like Crater etc above jump to the conclusion that Gore is right and that the fact checker is wrong. How small minded.

Fact checker: Thank you for bringing this to a point where it can be debated. There are MANY MANY people out here and all over the country who think Gore is dishonest, and a hypocrite. Unfortunately, too many of your readers want to slander you or him or both instead of talking about the issue and debating it properly.

You do a service to us all.

Where are all the hurricanes that were forecasted for this year? If anyone with a centilla of sense can see, these are, at best, evasive rebuttals to the points that "factchecker" is outlining. Lake Chad, for one is silly. Read them over again. They are not rebutting anything!

Seems to me that "The Fact Checker" might have avoided a lot of controversy through simply rearranging the emphasis in the original article. Would it not have been more accurate for "The Fact Checker" to claim to be checking on the accuracy of the judges comments? After all, no efforct was made in the original column to discuss the hundreds of other facts presented in the movie, and all agree the judge in question was not an expert in the field. So, in choosing to focus on these specific nine points, there was either a selective bias or the intent was to examing the judge's opinion.

Unfortunately, the "Fact Checker" managed to grab the wrong end of the stick- and in the process, managed uncritcially to assume that the nine statements cited by he judge were the only ones worth discussing in the entire movie.
Of course, grabbing this stick by the proper end would have meant actually examining the nine points raised instead of doing a glorified version of block and copy.

It will be interesting to see what determinations "The fact Checker" finally makes. I hope there is sufficient intellectual integrity to note that the deteminations are based on a non-random sample of nine specific points. Absent such a clear, prominent explanation, the conclusions are in fact quite worthless for any purpose other than generating controversy.

The Gore response to FactChecker is a very good example of how to make a polite, factual, and intelligent rebuttal to an argument. No sensationalistic verbage, no ranting, no raving.

Kudos to the Gore team for not letting special interests (or lazy fact checkers) get in the way of their science-based message.

Wow, where to begin? I note that the first thing "Team Gore" does is attack the messenger. Guess he learned it from the masters during his time in office. If any info used to rebut the doomsayers comes from any organization with even the remotest ties to big business is used, that alone seems to serve to invalidate the facts, as far as the MSM is concerned. But what about the motives of those who will financially benefit from using lies, distortions, and hyped statistics to scare people? Certainly no former politician, having blown what appeared to have been a no-brainer for the most important job in the world, would stoop to these tactics to regain $$$, power, and fame. Nah. He's just doing it for our own good. And, his work is so beneficial to the world that we can all overlook the fact that he is easily the biggest hypocrite since Jim and Tammi Faye Baker. I also must note that Mr. Gore's defender mentioned IPCC studies to rebut(kinda-sorta) on 5 of the 9 points, but as for those points where the IPCC differs from Mr. Gore, well, we use other sources too... This would be know as cherry-picking to the nth degree, in scientific terms. Was sorry to hear about the decline in polar bears in Hudson Bay. Thankfully the population is growing in the rest of the world. Sure seemed to be a trend throughout the "rebuttal". anyone else notice it? Seems there are multiple reasons for many of the problems in the film. Coulda sworn those dang humans were the sole cause, but I only have read about the film, I'm sure it didn't leave that impression with any children.

Eric,
"Where are all the hurricanes that were forecasted for this year?"

Please read my response above. If you keep asking this question amongst knowledgeable people you are making yourself look very, very foolish.
If you want to find out why your question is not intelligent then you need to actually read and become informed. Maybe that's too much work.

Several GW "skeptics" have mentioned how the predictions for the last two hurricane seasons have been way off. They seem to cite this as proof that the GW proponents are thus wrong. However, researchers like Kerry Emmanuel have argued that GW may - and I emphasize MAY - increase the intensity of storms, not the frequency.

Meanwhile, the annual Hurricane forecast for the Atlantic Basin - important, the Atlantic Basin - is made by the scientists at Colorado State Univ. by a team led by William Gray, who are the leading GW skeptics and argue that they are the real scientists who understand the atmosphere and that the IPCC and researchers like Emmanuel are just computer modelers.

In other words, don't cite the errors of the hurricane forecasts, because that only calls into question the methods of the biggest GW skeptics who argue that the believers don't know what they are talking about.

Al Gore will always have naysayers and political enemies who will attempt to diminish his contribution to our understanding of Global Warming. While they are simply armchair critics who drive their big SUVs and invest in Exxon stock this contributing to the problem, Mr. Gore is a glowing example of one man who is working hard to find a solution to help mankind.

What is "political" about the message of the movie? Those who charge it is politically motivated don't make sense to me. Yes, I can understand distrust of Gore, a former (?) politician who ran an incompetent campaign in 2002, but he's the messenger, not the message. Besides, if he's not running for office, what's his "political" agenda? Gore's dumped on for doing it just for the money. And for living in a huge "wasteful" mansion. So he's not the Dalai Lama? So what does that have to do with the message? I ask again: what is "political" about global warming? Is it because conservatives view it as a threat to established fossil fuel interests? The fact is that the smart business people the world over are already investing huge bucks in non-polluting energy technology. How can people be "opposed" to climate change? Skeptical about what it means? Yes, absolutely. That's like being "opposed" to the HIV virus and denying the possibility of AIDS. The point is: something (Earth's climate) is changing out there pretty fast and we had better understand what it is (or isn't) PDQ and figured out what we can do about it. Let the science go forward and the debate rage!

Friend of Fred:"we use other sources too... "
Even my second-grade son knows that when writing a research paper, it is necessary to consult MORE THAN ONE source.

Posted by: Rick | October 18, 2007 03:42 PM

"polite, factual, and intelligent rebuttal..."

"...appears to have been funded by the very same fossil fuel interests who have sought to undermine the scientific consensus..."

Rick, I think these words do not mean what you think they mean...

How about humbling yourself with an apology on many of these points, Factchecker.

Why can't Gore and his friends just admit that he told few stretchers and get on with their crusade? So what if hundreds of Flat Earthers with Ph.D's object? "Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong!" Al is much better than Einstein! It took Einstein 21 years to get the Nobel Prize; Gore did it in less than two. He should also receive the P.T. Barnum Award for Rhetorical Excellence!

Now that Mr. Smirk and the Rapture-Rushers have stowed away on Ol' Fisheye's calliope, get ready for...THE RETURN OF THE ICE AGE!

Quoting Rep. Jefferson:

"Meltin' bucks brung Feds a-swarming!
Blame Al Gore an' global warming!"

I don't think the climate change issue has become politicized. True, the term switched from global warming to climate change, which is said to be less alarming and more neutral. But the term really came about because while the greenhouse effect does/is predicted to cause elevation of _average_ global temperatures, it doesn't cause warming everywhere. It's a lot more complicated than that. Anyway, I think the climate change debate is actually becoming less politicized. I remember hearing about the greenhouse effect since the '80s. But back then, if you took it seriously, you were an anti-American tree-hugging hippie, or something along those lines. More recently, climate change seemed to be a Red vs. Blue debate, until the recent IPCC reports. So climate change as an actual effect has certainly become mainstream. The (passionate) debates are now centered on what to do about it.

Arguably, the greatest force in motivating progress towards tackling climate change is the markets. And the indications to me are that the markets are moving in the right direction. When major companies (energy companies, even) are advertising their green products and lobbying for green policies, I feel just a little bit of optimism.

Gore is an idiot. He failed out of college and was a newspaper reporter before getting into politics using his father's name. Whatever he says is his opinion NOT fact.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased from around 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the 1830s to around 380 ppmv in now. That's an increase from around 0.03 % of the atmosphere to around 0.04%.

Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized at year 2000 levels, sea temperatures would continue to rise for the next one thousand years

Around 24 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year are released into the atmosphere by combusting fossil fuels. At the same time, around 220 billion tones of carbon dioxide per year are released by natural decay of dead plant and animal matter (and other events like volcanic eruptions, peat-bog fires in Indonesia, thawing of the Siberian permafrost etc).

This is already fact-checked info, but feel free to check it out. I am sure even a short documentary of 90 minutes could have informed its target audience of this.

Most scientists accept that climate change is underway. That's a no-brainer. A sub-set of this believe it is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases (not all do). A further sub-set of this sub-set believe the rate is so rapid that unless economic production is cut immediately (the only quick way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions available to policy-makers), we are all doomed. This is where China and India peel off to chart their own policies.

Fair and Balanced. If you loudly claim to be, you are probably a liar. Nonetheless, the concept of attempting to be fair and balanced has long been a cornerstone of liberalism. Unfortunately, some have learned to turn this ethical high road into a weakness, and too many liberals have failed to see that some attempts at being fair and balanced are based on faulty logic. Thus, the far right has consistently taken outrageous positions for the purpose of moving the "balanced" discussion their direction. Creationists have made hay from "debates" that pit one creationist against one evolutionist, creating the illusion that the fair and balanced position is perhaps midway between the two perspectives. As an example, if 90% of the data are consistent with one model and 10% with the other, the point of fair balance is not at the midpoint between the words of one proponent for each side. This is the central fallacy; if you don't understand it, think about it some more -- there will be an "a-haa" moment. It is time for the liberal media to understand how their well-meant intent to be fair and balanced is being manipulated to distort important stories.

On another point, a basic rule for journalists is that if contributors to a scientific story will not reveal the sources of their financial support, their contributions must be weighted with very high skepticism pending full disclosure and independent evaluation of their methods and data.

Nick writes: "About the Polar bears. Only one small area of Hudsons Bay is the population decreasing."

The most trivial fact checker, wikipedia tells me this is completely wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Bears#Conservation_status

"The World Conservation Union listed polar bears as a vulnerable species, one of three sub-categories of threatened status, in May 2006"

Fact checking in fact checker as it were.

The inconvenient truth in the eponymous movie lies not in the suppression of truth by the "vast right wing conspiracy" but in the distortion of such truths by the Michael Moore's of this world.

Maybe Moorelywood could make a more accurate movie based on Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" novel; at least that work of FICTION provides links to the NOAA databases that substatiate its contention that Global Warming is at best overstated.

Friend of Fred,
Yes, I noticed it, too. Not only is it cherry picking - cw's second grade son's expert knowledge notwithstanding - it is called 'let's pick out those things we agree with and discard anything that doesn't agree with our thesis.' It's dishonest. Gore is dishonest.
And fact checker has nothing for which he should apologise. Thank goodness he has the guts and the honesty to bring in points of view which may differ with "conventional wisdom." You may not agree with those points of view, but they do exist. Good job, fact checker.

After what the press did to Gore in 2000
should I expect anything better?

They argued for two years that voters shouldn't vote for Gore because he was a liar and Bush was so cool and trustworthy.

You guys made up quotes, events and rewrote Gore's history over and over again even after your original "story" was shown to be bogus.

So why not apply the same standard?
You lied about him so often you lost all your credibility. I don't need the WaPo
or the NYT to know things about the guy, thank you. I will do my own research.

If it was not so dangerous, the sheer backwardness and ignorance of Americans would be hilarious.

When dealing with "slick" politicians it is important to remember that the end justifies the means. Recall the Grist interview last year when Gore said that it was justified to "over-represent" (i.e. lie) in order to get people stirred up and active. The URL for the interview is: http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/index.html

As for Gore's response, for the most part it is old hat and has been around the block many times. Recently, the New York University student newspaper took on Gore's major boo-boos and presented a concise response. In the short space available in this Comment section there is not much more that can be said. The URL for that article is: http://media.www.nyunews.com/media/storage/paper869/news/2007/10/16/Opinion/Inconvenient.Propagandist.How.Al.Gore.Distorts.Facts-3034968.shtml

I don't know what the polls in the U.S. are but it was interesting today to read that 56% of the British public don't buy into the global warming hysteria. Sounds like we should spend more time in pubs.

Forgetting for the moment that the science that Gore relies on does not support his argument even with the most extreme spin, what is his goal? Statistics show that more die from cold snaps than hot spells. What, therefore, should be the ideal temperature that we should shoot for, if it were possible to significantly affect climate? Gore wants a very high priority assigned to this impossible task at great expense to the world economy but does not provide any justification. In short this is the same position he was in when Kyoto popped up and is one of the reasons that the Clinton administration never submitted the Kyoto agreement for ratification to the Senate.

Fortunately, just like the global cooling hysteria of (about) 1978, this will gradually fade away as the climate continues its never ending change. Our children will look back and snicker as we look back at the global cooling nonsense. By then I suspect that climate change models will have been perfected and be able to explain why temperture decreased from about 1945 to 1970 (don't have my charts with me) while carbon dioxide levels increased or why temperature has been realatively stable for the past 8 years while carbon dioxide levels increased or why during the big ice age 450,000 years ago the carbon dioxide level was 30% higher than today or why temperature has been increasing on average since about 1850 when the last minor ice age ended or why earth's temperature is highly correlated with solar activity or why Greenland is called Greenland or why the Medieval Warming period was warmer than today although the carbon dioxide level was lower or ...

tisjusme,

Over-presentation does not mean lie or exaggeration. But you do lie here.

If you read the actual interview you will see Gore said that in response to the question whether it made more sense to talk more about he solutions rather than the problem.

Most of the movie deals with the introduction of the problem and only at the end can you see proposed solutions. That's what Gore was talking about
and your attempt to take his words out of context and spin them in your way is pathetic.

And by definition factual presentations are not lies or exaggerations.

thank you for your clarification Kalee - it's a shame the media "beat up" the decision. That the case took place at all is down to those who think "The Great Global Warming Swindle" represents real science - and the companies who fund the climate deniers.

Let's be clear. Big business funds the sceptic line because the very same businesses produce the most fossil fuels - which cause global warming.

This whole case has nothing to do with science - and everything to do with politics.

I would like to see the "fact checker"
check all the administrations statements for nuanced misrepresentations. Sometimes a little history of what has been done and said will help us choose the next candidate wisely. How bout it checker? Guts?

So, tisjusme, my understanding was that climate models do explain why the middle of the last century was cooler. Particulate matter in the atmosphere is known to have a dimming effect, and the air was much dirtier then. By enacting clean air standards, we've become healthier, but hotter. I think most of your other claims are misleading. Global climate patterns are due to a variety of effects including CO2, CH4, aerosols, particles, solar output, and perhaps even the tilting of the solar system out of the galactic plane. Supposing the strongest forcing at the moment is CO2, as is widely claimed, the full effect would not be expected to be seen for several centuries. By enhancing the heat trapping ability of the atmosphere, the equilibrium temperature is increased. But just like it takes time for your engine block to warm up after you start the car, it takes time for the atmosphere to reach its new equilibrium temperature. That's the weakness of climate science. It's a highly complex, highly non-linear system with more variables than we can count and a characteristic time longer than most of our lives. It took millenia for the previous warm periods to take hold. It should be alarming that there's been a measurable increase in temperatures in a matter of decades. In conjunction with other human activities that threaten the biodiversity of the planet (which provides resilience and adaptability to the biosphere) one might see a serious problem.

Thanks for the link tis. I had read it but forgot how exactly Gore justified his exaggerations. "Overrepresent". LOL. I would, maybe, say that overrepresenting would allow for, say, doubling the size of a threat. Maybe. But 10 times? His co-award winner at the UN says 23 inches by 2100. Al used 20 FEET, without giving a time frame(next year? 5 years? oh my!). How any poster can be suprised that an Oscar/Nobel winning blowhard's obvious lies could be a topic here at fact-checker is beyond me.

Sarbo, India:

Your comment that natural CO2 emissions are about ten times that of anthropogenic emissions is technically correct, but it leaves out that this is about net flux, not just emission. The earth can reabsorb much of the carbon that is emitted by decaying plant matter, as it can with volcanic and anthropogenic emissions. But, the observed rise in CO2 content combined with the observed changes in carbon isotope ratios show that the earth can not absorb the extra 24 gigatons we are adding to these natural cycles. About half of that 220 gigatons that you cite is simply released and reabsorbed by the ocean, and the other half is reabsorbed into plant matter through photosynthesis. We are adding to the emissions side of this equation without balancing it with reabsorption, and therefore forcing this balanced system to find a new state. The earth will be fine, it's just a question of how hospitable it will be for us.

Of course there are unknowns, but you have to weigh risks and benefits and act on them. Cutting economic activity is not what this is all about, it is about funding innovations that can allow us to continue our economic activity in a sustainable manner, which is better economic policy in the long term. The focus on short-term gain is the problem.

There is more of an issue than just global warming. We are burning finite fossil fuels at an ever faster rate. Our diets and lifestyle are contributing to major health issues, and infinite growth model is unsustainable in a finite world where money is created as debt. The people running the show are making a fortune from misinformation, but there is no great conspiracy just general ignorance of what we are, where we came from and where we are going.

Human emissions are only a few % of the natural ones, but natural carbon sinks cant handle the extra CO2 in the air. Feedback loops could easily make the situation worse, and the reports are just likely to be conservative as they are alarmist.
Not knowing for sure is not an excuse not do do anything!!
Floods in Asia, droughts in US & Australia... La la la its not happening

So, on one side we have facts and a nobel prize winner, and the other side we have a smear campaign and a chimp. Gosh, you start to wonder about people sometimes...Maybe, instead of drinking wine made from sour grapes, we could actually start *doing* something about Climate Change. Also, Kudos to you, Miss Krieder!

Go Big Al--way to give the Post a much deserved smackdown. I only wish he'd been that confident and aggressive in 2000, because the world would have been a much better place as a result.

Sorry to hurt your feelings, but this is most certainly not a refutation of the English case. An Inconvenient truth is farther from the scientific Consensus he so brags about than are the absolute deniers.

For only one example sea level rise has been running 10-20 cm a century for thousands of years, with no human caused global warming. When I read the latest IPCC report it looked like a rise of 23 cm was on the high end of their reasonable estimate for this century. Are you seriously trying to claim 7 meters is closer to 23 cm than 20 cm is?

The IPCC is most certainly not a conservative body. Many of the top climatologists have left the process or been forced out of it because they refused to go along with the distortion insisted on by government and environmentalist organizations.

I encourage you to do as they ask and check out Realclimate.org. It is amazing how they answer all the objections of the Skeptics without ever actually scientifically answering any of the objections. I could do better myself and I'm kinda skeptical.

Here's why it's so important to understand what your average second-grader can grasp: consulting multiple sources that are in general agreement in kind but that differ in degree is not cherry picking. Cherry picking is combing the intelligence services for the single individual who will tell you what you want to hear when the vast majority of your own people are telling you the evidence is questionable.

the saddest thing in the miscellaneous denialists comments here, is the extent to which they reveal an utter determination to naysay Gore and AIT, regardless of any sort of devotion to truth or reason. tisjusme links to an opinion piece in a student newspaper -- misrepresenting the piece, incidentally, as something other than a polemic expressing Simon Basseyn's semi-informed opinions -- and uses space considerations to dodge any analysis of the opinions expressed therein. well. let's have a look.

Case 1: Basseyn says Al Gore claims, "Global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, hurling all of Europe into another full-blown ice age."

Basseyn responds that government experts (unidentified) assert: "The very notion of such a phenomenon is, inherently, scientifically implausible. Not only is the Gulf Stream not the reason Europe stays moderately warm in the winter, but it flows because of wind, not currents." Basseyn goes on to say that, "Even Al Gore would admit that global warming can have no impact on wind. In other words, the Gulf Stream is perpetually safe, at least from the 'threat' of climate change. Lie"

First of all, if Al Gore were to admit that global warming can have no effect on wind, Al Gore would be a bigger idiot than Mr. Basseyn seems to think. Of course global warming could have some such effect, although I don't know whether the models indicate one. But that's a small matter. This is a bogus argument that is made, either out of ignorance or cynical disregard for truth, which is that the Gulf Stream as defined by scientists is not the same as the Gulf Stream as colloquially understood by us regular folks. There IS, in fact, a warm current of water that circulates up from the central Atlantic, that is driven by complex interactions of wind and tides acting on temperature and salinity gradients, that contributes to Europe's moderate climate, and that may, in the worst-case scenarios, be shut down by a flood of cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic. This current is referred to as The Gulf Stream by almost every person in North America who knows that it exists and who is not an oceanographer or meteorologist. Rather than cite some know-nothing undergraduate bloviator, perhaps tisjusme should read something written by people who know what they're talking about: realclimate.

Case 2: Basseyn says Gore claims, "Human emission of carbon dioxide will cause most of Greenland's 630,000 square miles of ice to melt by 2100, causing an increase in sea levels of over 20 feet in a mere 90 years."

Basseyn argues: "The United Nations' review of global warming found that it will take millennia for that amount of ice to melt, according to the policymaker's summary. The rise in sea level in 2100, moreover, will be somewhere between 8 and 17 inches."

In fact, what the IPCC review found was that we don't have good enough models to predict the rate of ice melt. So, in keeping with a policy of conservative estimates -- a policy based on political, rather than scientific, concerns -- the IPCC simply left out all consideration of Greenland's ice melt from it's sea-level calculations. Since the day the report was issued, we have seen a flood, as it were, of observations and analysis telling us that Greenland's ice is melting, that it's melting faster than even the alarmists had thought it would, and that the result of its melting will be a catastrophic rise in sea levels.

Etc.

Note that I'm not even taking issue with SB's claims about what Gore actually claims. Maybe his representations are accurate, and maybe they are not. Given the vacuity of his actual arguments, I'm not optimistic.

I will observe that tisjusme's characterization that the "the science that Gore relies on does not support his argument even with the most extreme spin," is plainly, simply, and obviously false.

But then, someone else already observed that tisjusme deliberately mischaracterized Gore's statement concerning "over-representation". So the casual observer shouldn't have too much trouble assigning a credibility-score to the rest of tisjusme's statements.

It's odd, but under your link called "Arts and Living" there is not subtitle "Art".
As an artist, there is no interest here.

Yes the earth may be warming, but to think that humans have caused it or can control it?
An ego check may be in order.

That's right "Fact Checker" try to fault-find with people on the side of the scientists after a multi-decade campaign to suppress the science. Where was the "fact-checking" then? Now comes the quest for "rational objectivity".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Dissenting_statements

The real issue with Gore's "inconvenient Truth" is his choice of language. Gore claims that each of these issues are caused by global warming, not "may" or even "have a high degree of probability, he says they are facts, which are not proven. Indeed, they may be proven in the future, but it is dangerous for a man of his influence to go around saying these are cause and effect examples of global warming when these are not facts within the scientific community. As a linguist, I find this video to be a powerful piece of rhetoric, but could easily be dissected into very few pieces of useful information and hardly should be accepted as factual information.

Who cares what Al Gore thinks? The world's leading scientists have expressed serious concerns about global warming. They originated the facts, not Al Gore. Anyone who fails to understand what they are getting at, and sees this as a trivial battle between Democrats and Republicans, should have their head examined.

Climate change is coming as sure as the US came to Southeast Asia, & usual conservative denials & fear of change will not change that. Whether AG's lapsed a bit on facts or not doesn't matter at all.

cw, that is a pretty poor example you chose to illustrate cherry-picking. "..combing the intelligence services for a single individual.." LOL. Which intelligence services? Certainly not the French, their services believed Saddam was hiding/producing WMD. The Russions? Nope, they also believed. Perhaps the Germans? Nah, they were believers too. English, Australians, the UN etc. Exactly which intelligence service didn'y believe cw? If want want to talk finding an individual, who proclaimed loudly what a great threat Saddam was, shall we start w/Bill Clinton, or his wife? Madeline Albright? John Edwards? All stated, often pre-George Bush, that they were believers. And please don't start w/the they were tricked/lied to by President Bush. The bipartisan panel selected by Congress to evaluate the run-up to the war found these legislators recieved threat reports that were toned DOWN compared to the reports the President recieved, yet your heroes took to the floor of the House and Senate proclaiming Saddam a greater and more immediate threat than the President ever did. But now, with support for the war much less than at the time of their vote, these same people, in an attempt to gain/hold political power, publicly call the President a liar. Think America's standing in the world has gone down? Was gaining holding political power worth it? Makes me sad, it's sickening, yet is only possible with the complicity of the MSM. A curse on them as well, history will judge them all very harshly, IMHO.

If Gore & company are right, and they almost certainly are, you can rest assured we'll all be paradoxically drowned or drought-starved LONG before politicians, or all the other people who don't want to be inconvenienced, do anything about it.

How was that summer, huh? Sure was hot... Oh, wait, it's STILL GOING ON even though it should be practically winter. You people that try to cast doubt on facts as simple as checking a thermometer need your heads examined.

Excuse me, but is the main counter arguement here,"I'd explain the science behind our statements but you're too stupid to understand it?" Sorry, but the official rebuttal is making me feel more skeptical, not less. There are far too many "could be" "we belives" and "many scientists" (who are not named or referenced in the rebuttal) for me to take this as any more than a PR piece.

Contrary to what the agenda-driven left is desperately pushing on the world, the verdict is still out on global warming. In the future, we will need to address these issues:
1. That there is global warming. I would be surprised if there isn't. Millions of years of geological data indicate that the world's average temperature fluctuates in a cyclic manner, and we are supposedly on the upswing. But still, I want to see more proof than a contrived and heavily-speculated average of 3/10 of a degree increase over the past three hundred years.
2. That humans are causing it. Admittedly, I'd like to think that we could control this. I mean, all of our factories and cars and paper mills have to have SOME effect. However, I'd still like to see more number-crunching. The numbers I've run (and seen run) show that the earth's atmosphere is so incredibly vast that it would take hundreds of years of uncontrolled pollution to have an effect.
3. That it's a bad thing. It's amazing how many so-called liberal 'intellectuals' have thronged to the belief that the earth is so fragile that a half-degree change in average temperature will instantly change EVERYTHING into a burning desert. Laughable. Not everything will turn into a desert. Sea levels will rise and forests will die, but there will also be new forests where there were deserts, and the Sahara will benefit greatly by the altered ocean converances. QUESTION: Would you rather see the glaciers advancing or contracting? (you can't say neither: no matter how conservative you are, you can't ignore the fact that IT WILL CHANGE).
All this doesn't mean that we shouldn't recycle, and cut back on pollution, and design more efficient cars. It's insulting that this small group of leftists are trying to lie to the world merely to advance their political ends. Recycle because it's right - not because it's left.

Let's see anyone out there create a movie that contains what they think are all facts, and see how well it stands up being picked apart. Having nine issues out of the many presented is a pretty good record, especially when it's science, which changes rapidly today. If the judge thought the movie was incorrect, he would have said "no movie". Instead he said "these few issues are not proveable yet". Let's not concentrate on such minute issues, but rather concentrate on what needs to be done to save our planet. In the end, we all have to live here. There are no second chances if we screw this up. If we choose to say "we aren't doing this", then that's something we'll just have to live with and pass the buck on to our children and future generations. Or we can say "we might be impacting our planet, so let's see if we can lessen that possibility." How about not ignoring the message, and think ahead to what's next? Is the issue really that there are a few things that haven't been proven yet? Is it so important to put a political spin on this that it overshadows any thought that we might be excusing what we're doing to the planet we all live on? Really, it's time to move ahead, and do what we can "just in case" we're really screwing up the world we live in.

What bothers me about the Gore people is that they want to stiffle debate and raise the lever of FEAR. They immediately say that anyone that doesn't drink their coolaide is either in the pocket of big oil or delusional. Since weather prediction is tremdously complex and we can't accurately know how much man made co2 affects the weather, lets not stop open minded research and debate. That doesn't mean we shouldn't control pollution agressively but lets not assume that it will change the weather.

Here's a short message for the pessimistic Religious Right: "And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come... and that thou... shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth." - Revelation 11:18. "Them which destroy the earth" in our days should refer to the fossil fuel magnates responsible for global warming.

Amazing how a response to questions about facts first starts off by trying to address the motives of the person questioning the facts. Why address whether or not the facts are correct, because they aren't correct so we must say the person who is correct is wrong because their motives are against us. Duh!

Amazing how people can justify altering truth is ok if it leads people to agree with us. Let the truth speak and don't fluff it with white lies and exagerations.

"Climate Change"

The climate is always changing. There is no such thing as "Climate Static". Regardless of the effects that humans may or may not have in the dynamic climate, we adapt to the changes and move forward.

The changes through the eons have benefited some areas relative to the inhabitants and caused problems for others. Just like now.

The problem is when some want to impose their "solutions" on others in the form of new taxes, laws and regulations.

Those of you that want to buy carbon credits, use a bicycle as your primary transportation, etc., do so. Just don't force the rest of the world to follow you.

What hogwash! They never addressed the most obvious lie of the film about sea levels rising 20 feet in this century when in fact the IPPC Report clearly states a worst case of 23 inches. The film is a joke! And the glaciers on Mt Kilimanjaro have been retreating since the 1700s! And now that the GISS temperature data has been corrected, the 7 warmest years of the 11 warmest years in the US occurred before 1955. Gore is taking you for a ride. He's not a scientist. He is destroying the scientific method and leading us into the dark ages of science and plucking your wallet as he goes.

Thanks for the link, tisjusme. Amazing that these chimps will actually still follow this Gore bozo, even after he makes startling remarks like: ". . .I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."

See for yourself: http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/index.html

So . . . it's OK to lie.

Monstrous.

It is shocking how so many people fail to understand that the underlying problem is pollution. To say there is no man-made pollution would be a lie. To say man-made pollution will not someday threaten our existence is an even bigger lie.

I like what Robert Klein said 30 years ago in his comedy routine ... "let's see an Exxon executive wrap his lips around his car's exhaust pipe and see what one man can do, my friend" LOL anyone who denies that we are putting poison into the air at a faster rate than can be absorbed by our planet, air water or land, is in denial. That said, I don't think the movie should be shown to school children as science. Maybe as entertainment on recess time! :-)

Bill in NY:
"... anyone who denies that we are putting poison into the air..."
.........

Complete baloney! CO2 is not a poison. CO2 is a molucule necessary for life on this planet. Go gulp some more kool-aid.

Perhaps if Americans were better educated (particularly with regard to science), such issues wouldn't devolve into political blather. Wouldn't it be nice not to have to abdicate responsibility for your own decisions about scientific evidence to likely equally scientifically illiterate journalists, politicians, and judges? In the mean time, perhaps the members of the IPCC are more credible than Mr. Dobbs is on this issue (and probably many others).

Good jouralism requires that you should see what climate scientists have to say about the state of climate science.

Real Climate (which is run by climate scientists who are frustrated with the media lies that prevent the truth from getting out) has a very fair analysis of Gore's movie here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/convenient-untruths/

One reason the news business is in decline is that you have allowed the advertisers to decide the facts for you. You have come a long way from the glory days of real investigative reporting.

This attack on the greatest messenger of our age is a new low.

I am still curious why Mr Dobbs, in his own voice, chose to characterize the "9 errors" as significant. He has very little reputable company in this opinion.

I guess big Al discovered global warming as well as invented the internet. Both have been around or known of since the 50's. If Al were to live like Ed Begley Jr. and distribute his film at no profit he would deserve more respect.

Gore is now Dan Rather all over again. "The underlying proof may be shoddy, but the message is true!"

Let's face it - Al Gore is riding this gravy train in his private jet all the way to the bank.

Sincerity -
http://sbartsch.blogsome.com/2006/07/10/is-he-sincere/

If a man tells me that "for the sake of the ecology" I must reduce my use of natural resources, and between paragraphs sips from a container of bottled water from Evian, I doubt his sincerity.

If a man tells me I must drive less, and consume fewer fossil fuels, before hopping into a limousine or an SUV that will take him to the airport, to ride a private jet to another city to make his next public appearance, I doubt his sincerity.

If a man promulgates a movie to theatre complexes, requiring me to drive there to see it, rather than distributing it via public broadcast which would allow more people to see it without driving anywhere, but the message of the movie is "drive less, use fewer resource," I doubt his sincerity.

UPDATE: If a man buys carbon offsets from himself, and proposes you buy them from him too, while living in lavish luxury using 20 times more energy than the average American, then I doubt his sincerity....

Sincerity is not "belief in an ideal." Sincerity is "acting on an ideal." A man such as described above is not sincere. He's a hypocrite.

What a shameful back-tracking and parsing of words. If only the exaggerations and outright falsehoods made by Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" had been presented with such nuance in his movie. But then again, this would defeat the movie's ultimate goal of scaring people into drastic, unnecessary action.

The assertion that "particular points had to be truncated and shortened from the original research" to fit in a 90-minute movie does not justify lying about or severely misrepresenting the facts. Moreover, claiming "We acknowledge that the wording of the film here is unfortunate" is a classic deflection of personal responsibility. The words didn't appear by themselves; Gore chose the words he used, and he chose them deliberately.

More importantly, in the numerous examples of false and misleading assertions documented by the British High Court, Gore's spokesperson (rather than Gore himself, who refuses to personally accept responsibility for his exaggerations and falsehoods) tries to justify the exaggerations and falsehoods by explaining that some scientists might be able to interpret certain events in a way that would be consistent with Gore's assertions. Well, if that is the case, they why didn't Gore say this in the movie, rather than deliberately convey the impression that the science is settled and all respectable scientists agree with him? The answer is that Al Gore deliberately chose to distort the science and champion baseless propaganda rather than engage in an honest and open discussion of what sound science has revealed.

Shame on you, Al Gore, for your initial decision to deliberately distort sound science and for your ongoing decision to parse words and deflect responsibility for your exaggerations and lies.

Reading all the sceptics posts here is like reading a 5 year olds reasoning as to how they KNOW Santa exists. As in:

"I dont care that you're more knowledgeable than me on this subject, or that you can cite from an almost inexhaustible supply of credible sources to back up your claims - I DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE WHAT YOU'RE SAYING AND THATS THAT!
And besides, my friend Billy's parents told him Santa DOES exist, so there!"

Well said, Stan B.

Last year, EarthTimes.org did a comparison between Gore's mansion and Bush's ranchhouse. Gore's mansion is a typical American mansion - probably about as efficient as my own (much smaller) house. Bush's, however, had it's own water-recovery system, additional recycled insulation, expensive but eco-friendly lighting fixtures, and a garden of regional, low-maintenance plants.

You do the math.

Criteria of the AFSC Nobel Peace Prize Nominating Committee:
1. The candidate's commitment to nonviolent methods.
2. The quality of the candidate as a person and of her/his sustained contribution to peace.
3. The candidate's work on issues of peace, justice, human dignity, and the integrity of the environment.
4. The candidate's possession of a world view and/or global impact as opposed to a parochial concern.
.....................................

I must have missed where it contained "Truth". "Pleading to Authority" has always been among logical flaws used - and here Gore has been shown to be no exception.

I enjoy that a judge in England made scientific judgements of the movie. Sur the judge is entitle to "judge," he attended years of school and worked years to get where he is. But I seriously doubt that he has years and years of scientific training. I just read Steven Milloy's article (foxnews.com) about the ruling and it was quite comical. It became even more comical when I read about who Steven Milloy actually is, a former tabacco lobyist. HA!

The bottom line: In a scientific study that is this complicated, it is extremely easy to use an "opinion" to poke holes in it and generate doubt to its validity. It is NOT easy to do years and years of research and formulate these hypothesis based on facts.

On October 18, an anonymous poster wrote: "Gore is an idiot. He failed out of college and was a newspaper reporter before getting into politics using his father's name. Whatever he says is his opinion NOT fact"

According to Wikipedia: "In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, the only university to which he applied. He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row[10] and, after finding himself bored with his classes in his declared English major, Gore switched majors and found a passion for government and graduated with honors from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government. [9] After returning from the military he took religious studies courses at Vanderbilt and then entered the university's law school. He left Vanderbilt without a degree to run for an open seat in Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District in 1976."

Hmmmmm.

It's a pretty simple question:
If those that deny climate change are wrong - what do we get? Since we won't do anything about new energy sources whoever's left living on this god forsaken planet will be living the scenes from Mad Max fighting for the last truck of oil.

If those that say we need to start now towards clean renewable energy are wrong - wow!!! look what happens: We don't depend on Middle east oil anymore, the air is clean and the climate is still the same. Horrible, Horrible Ending!!@!!!!!!

Unfortunately "An Inconvenient Truth" lost credibility in my eyes when Gore started talking about the 2000 election!! I thought this was a movie to discuss GLOBAL WARMING??? I watched the rest of it with skepticism. Wasn't Gore the goofball that said "HE PLAYED ON OUR FEARS!!!!!" about Bush?? Kind of hypocritical of him since he wants us to fear Climate change so much. I can do anything. . . I bought Carbon Offsets!!!!

One of you climate change denialists please explain why GE, Alcoa and over 30 Utility companies are now onboard and working towards clean energy solutions, carbon caps, and forming think tanks to create a cleaner tomorrow. I guess fortune 500 companies are filled with idiots who can't see what lies in the future.

Psst! While you humans were off bickering, my dang ice shelf--my home!--broke loose and is adrift and some scientists found that yeah, the food under this floe is plentiful, at least while this berg is big enough to stand on.

It's really too late for us down here and it's too late for you out there. This planet's climate is warming and it will soon force you to change location and fight over displacement and resources.

And there is NOTHING you can do about it, whether you believe you exacerbated matters or not.

Apparently, my drift will take me to Florida, where I hope to live on the beachfront just north of what was once Miami.

While you contemplate a world without polar bears (yea!), we penguins contemplate a world of only 3 billion humans...

Is Al Gore a propagandist? Well, let's see.

Al Gore: Global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, hurling all of Europe into another full-blown ice age.

Government experts: The very notion of such a phenomenon is, inherently, scientifically implausible. Not only is the Gulf Stream not the reason Europe stays moderately warm in the winter, but it flows because of wind, not currents. Even Al Gore would admit that global warming can have no impact on wind. In other words, the Gulf Stream is perpetually safe, at least from the "threat" of climate change. Lie.

Al Gore: Mt. Kilimanjaro's melting snows are clear evidence of the immediate impacts of global warming. England's government experts admitted that not only is there no evidence to support this claim, but it is blatantly untrue. Various other isolated, natural phenomena are wholly responsible. Lie.

Al Gore: Evidence from ice cores show that rising levels of carbon dioxide have caused increases in temperature over the last 650,000 years.

Government experts: Levels of carbon dioxide have preceded any trace of rise in temperature by at least 800 to 2,000 years. Elementary school reasoning can easily reveal the inconsistency in this proclaimed correlation. Lie.

Al Gore: By utilizing emotional and visceral photographs of Hurricane Katrina, he blamed the catastrophe on global warming.

Government experts: It is impossible to blame any single, anomalous event on climate change. Not only was this factually incorrect, it was utterly insensitive to those who suffered. Using such a tragedy for a blatantly false, self-serving purpose is simply morally disgraceful. Moreover, the same scientist whose findings Gore used to correlate the strength of hurricanes to global warming said himself that we cannot claim such a cause-and-effect relation. Lie.

Al Gore: Human emission of carbon dioxide will cause most of Greenland's 630,000 square miles of ice to melt by 2100, causing an increase in sea levels of over 20 feet in a mere 90 years.

This is alarming, almost as if someone decided to invent the fact out of whole cloth to frighten the world community into believing something untrue. The United Nations' review of global warming found that it will take millennia for that amount of ice to melt, according to the policymaker's summary. The rise in sea level in 2100, moreover, will be somewhere between 8 and 17 inches.

Al Gore overestimates - or, more appropriately, purposely exaggerates - the consequences by 2,000 percent. Gore's second-favorite example of melting ice is in Antarctica. Using his ever-impressive shrewdness, he presents evidence that only surveys ice sheets from the Western half and also only dates to 2002, a mere 5 years ago. Unfortunately for him, when scientists looked at the entire Antarctic from 1992, the evidence showed that the ice there is actually increasing. Lie.

Most climate change advocacy articles seem to make a big point of the fact that their opponents are being paid by someone. In their view, those paychecks damn their objectivity.

What about those scientists who are proponents of drastic global warming theories? Don't they get paychecks?

It is simple verifiable fact that an enormous industry has evolved from global warming, and hundreds of thousands of jobs (in just the USA) are directly dependent on global warming. A lot of "big businesses" are actually making a lot of money on global warming.

Companies like oft-demonized Exxon have no particular reason to pay people to fight the global warming craze. They know that people are not going to simply stop using oil, whether it is in cars or used to make plastics. The end use is pretty much irrelevant to them in the long run, and right now they make a bundle by selling specially-formulated "low-emission" fuels that sell at a higher profit margin.

Warming the climate a few degrees would actually be good for most multi-national corporations, including agriculture, construction, and mining. Open up all of Canada & Siberia to agriculture & industry, for instance.

And also note.. even so-called non-profit research institutes have to get money from somewhere.

Global warming proponents cannot honestly claim to be unbiased, especially not any scientist whose job and grants will disappear when the global warming hysteria calms down to a more rational level.

After reading ALL of these comments... I hope to heck that Gore is right and humanity becomes the cause of its own extinction. What a bunch of self-indulgent, greedy, know-it-alls. Yeah, pollution in general is a great thing... I highly encourage sucking as much of it down as possible. Smog? Smog is fantastic; please, by all means, go inhale a lung full. Global warming... Hah... most human pigs like being up to their armpits in sewage and toxic filth. I just wish we'd speed up the process of our own doom, so I'm not exposed to this drivel anymore.

Here is the Meat-head. Did you see oil reached a record $90 per barrel today. Let's "stay the course" as you would do, and let OPEC control our future and continue to let Big Oil rake it in Real great argument you have. Because the big picture you can't seem to see, is that if we embraced clean, renewable energy sources we could thumb our noses at OPEC. Oh, man a nice side line to this would be we won't have to have this argument.

The Gore Response Team is just that, the "Al Gore Response Team". This article does not refute one aligation of factual error, they dance around and dimish the errors.

They try to make the point, don't get lost in the facts, it is the principle of golbal warming that counts. Science in fact refutes the Global Warming theory (note it is a "theory", not a fact). Why are so many human beings so eager to follow the crowd and not really think things through?

We must be wise stewards of our environment, but please don't lie to me to try to get me to comply. That is simply wrong. Al Gore is s self-centered ego maniac who lost a presidential campaign and can't get over it. He produced this documentary to highlight himself and get on an agenda band wagon for his own enrichment. He doesn't even follow his own "principles". His carbon foot print is outrageous, yet he preaches to every one else about how they should behave.

History will show that Al Gore lied and many people died. So follow your leader, as for me, I will follow the truth regardless of popularity.

Oh, humanity. There's nothing like a good debate about the validity of a debate ... especially when one side is funded by special interests who need ignorance and apathy to make trillions off the rape of the Earth.
Here's a thought: manmade catastrophic climate change is not real - there is nothing to worry about expect those crazy liberals and their whacked out environmental causes. Manifest Destiny ya' all ... God gave us this planet to rape, pillage, and destroy. Man will always clean up the mess.

"ov