Why is climate science political?

Your version of feedback only works if water vapor is a positive forcer.

I see your understandings of feedback is as poor as the rest of your scientific understandings.


not just blog science, journal rejected drool spatters in which you seem to find images of puppies and butterflies.


So you feel that the fact (according to this paper's findings) that water vapor amounts to a small fraction of the warming forced by anthropogenic ghgs and that the authors of the paper don't draw any conclusions in their stating that it's not clear whether the water vapor changes are caused by a climate feedback or decadal variability:

...Our analysis focuses only on estimating the contributions of stratospheric water vapor changes to recent decadal rates of warming; additional contributions such as from solar variations (33), aerosols, natural variability, or other processes are not ruled out by this study.

...It is therefore not clear whether the stratospheric water vapor changes represent a feedback to global average climate change or a source of decadal variability. Current global climate models suggest that the stratospheric water vapor feedback to global warming due to carbon dioxide increases is weak...

No mainstream climate researcher that I am aware of ignores nor misattributes water vapor in their consideration of climate change issues
 
You sure venturing into models is where you want to go? Please, tell us what the models said about the 2011 hurricane season. Where are sea levels supposed to be based on 1990 predictions?

Maybe you want to take a step back and tell us how the locations of data collection are accurate? Yes, we know all about the heat sinks surrounding many stations.
 
You sure venturing into models is where you want to go? Please, tell us what the models said about the 2011 hurricane season. Where are sea levels supposed to be based on 1990 predictions?

Maybe you want to take a step back and tell us how the locations of data collection are accurate? Yes, we know all about the heat sinks surrounding many stations.
Save shit and post a link, asshole. Support your spam with some puckey.
 
You are a piece of shit that sings songs to yourself, while posting this smear, leaving a load of lines, between quote in quote in quote and your effete rants.

"Your "science" ". . . asshole, quit quoting yourself, while you spam the thread, with your fucktard rants! Use commas, where needed, for coherence. But Wally-rants don't need to be coherent, since Wally is so fuckin' magnificent. Oh, look. Wally the voodoo-bitch calls AGW 'Lysenkoism.'

It'll get hot enough for you, this Summer, Wally. And then it'll get hot enough for you to do something about it, or die, unless you are already too fucking old, then so what.






:lol::lol::lol::lol: And you're a loon that no one gives a crap about. I will no longer interact with you because I don't feed trolls. Goodby troll.



West bro........Im hoping this cheesedick stays around a long time. I love publically humiliating the k00ks, but the angry miserable ones amp up the level of personal entertainment a whole lot. This dope is one of those zero tolerance asshats who loaths his own existence and hates life........the profile define the far left in our society. West.........these are the meatheads to bullseye on these forums for the routine public pwn, thus, the curious who wander into this forum can get educated on what we mean by the true believer nutters.:rock:






I will have to disagree with you on this asshat Skooks. He is an example of the worst possible kind of troll. He has no brain, he is merely an Id. Pure reaction and hate against everything and everyone. If AGW were to be proven correct he would merely migrate over to some other subject to hurl his vitriol.

He is best left ignored to whither and die in his own dark prison of a room.
 
I think it's you and your kind who have no concept of the catastrophe that would follow if your goals were met.

Well, if the quality and character of your thinking were of relevence or significance, we probably wouldn't see you on these boards much.

Your policies if implemented would bankrupt the entire world within a generation. Societies would collapse and billions would die. You see, there really is no such thing as a "sustainable lifestyle".

Simply and utterly wrong, but I'm sure you know that already.



You are the one arguing that we conservatively must make do, tighten our belts, adapt to our own waste and pull ourselves up by our own gnawed through bootstraps. I'm trying to get people to invest in their future, produce less waste and take advantage of innovation, trade and international cooperation.



You keep wanting to repeat the same historic mistakes the rest of us learned from the first several times it was tried and failed.

The historical record is filled with examples of how prosperous the planet was when it has been warmer.

Humans have not been around in times warmer than it is currently.

As far as scientific and space research goes I have allways been and will allways be in favour of GOOD scientific research. What the AGW crowd has done however is not good scientific research, it is an example of the worst case of Lysenkoism the planet has seen in decades.

There is no science or compelling evidences that support your beliefs, no wonder you find little use in such issues of reality.






Refer to everyone of your little missives and feel free to prove any of my points wrong. I find it laughable that you think that humans havn't been around during any of the previous warmings of this planet. You MUST be a creationist. Your opinion only has merit if the planet were indeed created 6,000 years ago.

You really, REALLY, need to look at paleo climate and of course reading some of mans written history would probably be illuminating to a religious person such as yourself. I suggest the Domesday Book as a good start for you. tax records are pretty complete and show things being grown in the North of England that could only be grown in a greenhouse today.

Your continuing myopia is remarkable for someone who claims to be interested in science.
The Vatican is more interested in real scientific enquiry than you are.
 
Your version of feedback only works if water vapor is a positive forcer.

I see your understandings of feedback is as poor as the rest of your scientific understandings.


not just blog science, journal rejected drool spatters in which you seem to find images of puppies and butterflies.


So you feel that the fact (according to this paper's findings) that water vapor amounts to a small fraction of the warming forced by anthropogenic ghgs and that the authors of the paper don't draw any conclusions in their stating that it's not clear whether the water vapor changes are caused by a climate feedback or decadal variability:

...Our analysis focuses only on estimating the contributions of stratospheric water vapor changes to recent decadal rates of warming; additional contributions such as from solar variations (33), aerosols, natural variability, or other processes are not ruled out by this study.

...It is therefore not clear whether the stratospheric water vapor changes represent a feedback to global average climate change or a source of decadal variability. Current global climate models suggest that the stratospheric water vapor feedback to global warming due to carbon dioxide increases is weak...

No mainstream climate researcher that I am aware of ignores nor misattributes water vapor in their consideration of climate change issues






Show me a single computer model that addresses water vapor.
 
Your version of feedback only works if water vapor is a positive forcer.

I see your understandings of feedback is as poor as the rest of your scientific understandings.

not just blog science, journal rejected drool spatters in which you seem to find images of puppies and butterflies.

So you feel that the fact (according to this paper's findings) that water vapor amounts to a small fraction of the warming forced by anthropogenic ghgs and that the authors of the paper don't draw any conclusions in their stating that it's not clear whether the water vapor changes are caused by a climate feedback or decadal variability:

...Our analysis focuses only on estimating the contributions of stratospheric water vapor changes to recent decadal rates of warming; additional contributions such as from solar variations (33), aerosols, natural variability, or other processes are not ruled out by this study.

...It is therefore not clear whether the stratospheric water vapor changes represent a feedback to global average climate change or a source of decadal variability. Current global climate models suggest that the stratospheric water vapor feedback to global warming due to carbon dioxide increases is weak...

No mainstream climate researcher that I am aware of ignores nor misattributes water vapor in their consideration of climate change issues

Water Vapor

This 2008 information notes, lower clouds are on the increase, relative to high clouds. This means warming is to be expected. A lot of variance is evident, in the several models, none of which predict, based on the carbonic acid-carbonate exchange or on released sequestered methane, which will see the planet in hell, by 2050.

Models hone picture of climate impacts : Nature News & Comment

--This is about an upcoming model project, which will try to eliminate past bias:

Climate-impact models combine projections of change in physical climate with data on population, economic growth and other socio-economic variables. For various emissions scenarios, they forecast climate-driven changes in crop yields, vegetation zones, hydrology and human health (see ‘The browning of the planet’). But they often leave out important elements: for example, models of health impact often neglect the role of social factors in spreading disease; and models of water run-off may not account for changes in water loss from plants. Researchers have built dozens of models, but have never systematically compared their performance. As a result, say critics, the literature on climate impacts is as inconclusive as it is encyclopaedic.

“Impact research is lagging behind physical climate sciences,” says Pavel Kabat, director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, which is to coordinate the fast-track programme jointly with the PIK. “Impact models have never been global, and their output is often sketchy. It is a matter of responsibility to society that we do better.”

The programme, dubbed the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), involves more than two dozen modelling groups from eight countries, and they have set themselves a tight deadline. At the kick-off meeting at the PIK, the researchers agreed to complete a comprehensive set of model experiments within six months. All the simulations will cover the globe at the same resolution, and will be based on the same set of climate data from state-of-the-art climate models, driven by the latest greenhouse-gas emission scenarios (R. H. Moss Nature 463, 747–756; 2010).

The comparison should reveal systematic biases that lead models to give widely differing results. etc.

http://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C07/E2-26-18.pdf

This is a 2012 paper, but I couldn't get it to load, so you guys look at it, if you have time. That trick you do with letting 10 lines go before you write something after quote in quote in quote sure does suck, Wally. With quoting yourself and your other punk moves, you should eat shit and die, you miserable, narcissistic bitch.
 
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:lol::lol::lol::lol: And you're a loon that no one gives a crap about. I will no longer interact with you because I don't feed trolls. Goodby troll.



West bro........Im hoping this cheesedick stays around a long time. I love publically humiliating the k00ks, but the angry miserable ones amp up the level of personal entertainment a whole lot. This dope is one of those zero tolerance asshats who loaths his own existence and hates life........the profile define the far left in our society. West.........these are the meatheads to bullseye on these forums for the routine public pwn, thus, the curious who wander into this forum can get educated on what we mean by the true believer nutters.:rock:






I will have to disagree with you on this asshat Skooks. He is an example of the worst possible kind of troll. He has no brain, he is merely an Id. Pure reaction and hate against everything and everyone. If AGW were to be proven correct he would merely migrate over to some other subject to hurl his vitriol.

He is best left ignored to whither and die in his own dark prison of a room.



Actually West........as Ive said on here numerus times and being in the field of psychology, its actually not at all an intelligence thing for these people. Its a thought processing disorder. There is a big difference. That latter is fixable if the setting screws are reset and the only way to do that is with a pharmachological aid and Im dead serious. These people are ODC with this stuff West.......an offshoot of a more general depressive disorder. The effect is to completely dismiss any other information because the brain wont allow it. This guy Bob-O gets hysterical about this shit..........he's sitting home waiting for some weather event to set off a apocoliptical spiral downward and there is nothing you, I or anybody else in the world is going to be able to say to facilitate a different thinking process. In other words, the dots will never be connected until the serotonin levels are adjusted in the brain. Its quite that simple.


Meanwhile however, what we can do is highlight this level of fuckedupedness in the thinking to the few who end up coming in here searching for answers on this debate..........those that are seeing that the "consensus" isnt at all a consensus and that the "consensus" is being used by very clever people who are mega-profiting in the world of green energy. Then there are the scientists who benefit enormously from perpetuating the angst. Its all about special interests but the OCD's cant at all see it. They see special interests only in certain areas and not others. These are people who implicitly trust government.


Essentially West.........its a brain fuck up thing...............and I revel in highlighting it to all...................:coffee:


Plus.........its great to come to a place where all you do is win. No matter what these nutters say, I win. They lose. Every single day. A huge majority of the public doesnt give a rats ass about all the science shit these dolts talk about on here. They are nutty enough to think they are going to create a groundswell from this Godforsaken corner of the internet.:lol: Fine by me. Making fun of fools is what I do best..........been doing it for decades.:eusa_dance:
 
It had a brief run at the movies here, too, and may have been on TV at some stage.

Likewise the Michael Moore movies do get a run in theatres, but for most people they just aren't particularly relevent outside US borders.

PS - thanks for the compliment! Much appreciated! I did live in New Zealand for a while, so that helped!



For me, the reason that Gore is a good poster child for this topic is that he was either deeply uninformed or was running a swindle. His science was trash, his conclusions were baseless and the film was both disingenuous, to be generous, and unvarnished propaganda.

The result? It was held up as a masterpiece by the Liberal Elite and he was awarded both an Academy Award over here and a Nobel Peace Prize over there.

It reveals him, the Liberal Elite and the Warmers for exactly what they are.

You may deduce what that is by the quality of the film and the research that went in to making it.

OK. Yap-yap. No specifics. Other than you believe that the vast majority of the scientists in the world belong to this "liberal elite".

Care to point out in detail where Al Gores film had major errors?



So your vast research into this has not revealed to you the depth of the lying and deception required to win an Academy Award and Nobel Peace Prize?

According to the court in Britain that ordered a disclaimer be added to the film, these are the nine departures from reality:

Gore's climate film has scientific errors - judge | Environment | The Guardian

<snip>
The nine points: fact or fallacy?

· The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring

· It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down

· Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"

· Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established

· The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"

· Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"

· Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm"

· The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult

· The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist"

· This article was amended on Friday October 12 2007. A panel in the article above listing the significant errors found by a high court judge in Al Gore's documentary on global warming was labelled The nine points, but contained only eight. The point we omitted was that the film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist". The missing point has been added.
<snip>
 
Climate change would be awesome! A change in the zone for plants would increase my sales of plant suited to the new zone and more irrigation systems to install. Growing seasons would be extended and more crops could be grown in my area. Fruits would be better priced and more local.



You install Irrigation systems?

Do you live in Indianapolis?
 
The nine points: fact or fallacy?

· The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring

· It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down

· Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"

· Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established

· The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"

· Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"

· Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm"

· The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult

· The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist"

· This article was amended on Friday October 12 2007. A panel in the article above listing the significant errors found by a high court judge in Al Gore's documentary on global warming was labelled The nine points, but contained only eight. The point we omitted was that the film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist". The missing point has been added.
<snip>

1. The Maldives are threatened;
2. The trade currents are threatened, in the same way the jet stream is getting weird;
3. Al also failed to endorse methane, concisely enough, or legal pot, or switchgrass;
4. Kilimanjaro has lost ice, but so what, 97% of the world's glaciers are receding;
5. Africa is over-populated, ad BP judge;
6. Katrina is a good example of a big storm, which will be more likely to occur;
7. I'm so sure judge BP could find all the polar bears, including the ones mating with Alaskan brown bears, now, so GIGO;
8. Reefs are predicted to fail completely, from carbonic acid distress, by 2050;
9. Judge BP doesn't know one way or another, so that is why they have locks on the Thames, now;

Sniff the Queen's farter, gawdsavus!
 
You sure venturing into models is where you want to go? Please, tell us what the models said about the 2011 hurricane season. Where are sea levels supposed to be based on 1990 predictions?

Maybe you want to take a step back and tell us how the locations of data collection are accurate? Yes, we know all about the heat sinks surrounding many stations.

2011 Hurricane predictions and climate issues nor based upon climate models, so I'm not really sure why this interests you, that said:

NOAA predictions for Atlantic Hurricane season
NOAA hurricane outlook indicates an above-normal Atlantic season

  • 12 to 18 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which:
  • 6 to 10 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including:
  • 3 to 6 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher)

2011 Atlantic storm record:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/summary_atlc_2011.pdf

  • 19 named storms

  • 7 became hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher)

  • 4 became major hurricanes (Category 3, 4, or 5; winds of 111mph or higher)

1990 sea level predictions by 2010 - between 2.25 cm and 4.5 cm above 1990 averages

Actual sea level rise from 1990 averages as measured in 2010 - approximately 7.5 cm.

Early IPCC predictions were based on a 1.9mm per year rise, the average over the last 22 years has been 3.4 mm/year and this is increasing.
 
The nine points: fact or fallacy?

· The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring

· It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down

· Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"

· Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established

· The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"

· Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"

· Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm"

· The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult

· The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist"

· This article was amended on Friday October 12 2007. A panel in the article above listing the significant errors found by a high court judge in Al Gore's documentary on global warming was labelled The nine points, but contained only eight. The point we omitted was that the film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist". The missing point has been added.
<snip>

1. The Maldives are threatened;
2. The trade currents are threatened, in the same way the jet stream is getting weird;
3. Al also failed to endorse methane, concisely enough, or legal pot, or switchgrass;
4. Kilimanjaro has lost ice, but so what, 97% of the world's glaciers are receding;
5. Africa is over-populated, ad BP judge;
6. Katrina is a good example of a big storm, which will be more likely to occur;
7. I'm so sure judge BP could find all the polar bears, including the ones mating with Alaskan brown bears, now, so GIGO;
8. Reefs are predicted to fail completely, from carbonic acid distress, by 2050;
9. Judge BP doesn't know one way or another, so that is why they have locks on the Thames, now;

Sniff the Queen's farter, gawdsavus!




back on topic please............


Science discussion highly gay on this thread............:gay:


For the fourth request on this tread............ where can a single k00k display for me that the science is mattering?
 
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For me, the reason that Gore is a good poster child for this topic is that he was either deeply uninformed or was running a swindle. His science was trash, his conclusions were baseless and the film was both disingenuous, to be generous, and unvarnished propaganda.

The result? It was held up as a masterpiece by the Liberal Elite and he was awarded both an Academy Award over here and a Nobel Peace Prize over there.

It reveals him, the Liberal Elite and the Warmers for exactly what they are.

You may deduce what that is by the quality of the film and the research that went in to making it.

OK. Yap-yap. No specifics. Other than you believe that the vast majority of the scientists in the world belong to this "liberal elite".

Care to point out in detail where Al Gores film had major errors?



So your vast research into this has not revealed to you the depth of the lying and deception required to win an Academy Award and Nobel Peace Prize?

According to the court in Britain that ordered a disclaimer be added to the film, these are the nine departures from reality:

Gore's climate film has scientific errors - judge | Environment | The Guardian

<snip>
The nine points: fact or fallacy?

· The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring

· It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down

· Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"

· Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established

· The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"

· Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"

· Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm"

· The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult

· The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist"

· This article was amended on Friday October 12 2007. A panel in the article above listing the significant errors found by a high court judge in Al Gore's documentary on global warming was labelled The nine points, but contained only eight. The point we omitted was that the film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist". The missing point has been added.
<snip>

Gore's climate film has scientific errors - judge | Environment | The Guardian

Mr Justice Barton yesterday said that while the film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change, he identified nine significant errors in the film, some of which, he said, had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's views on climate change.
 
RealClimate: Convenient Untruths

Last week, a UK High Court judge rejected a call to restrict the showing of Al Gore&#8217;s An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) in British schools. The judge, Justice Burton found that &#8220;Al Gore&#8217;s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate&#8221; (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 &#8220;errors&#8221; (note the quotation marks!) in the movie&#8217;s description of the science. The judge referred to these as &#8216;errors&#8217; 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, &#8220;An Inconvenient Truth&#8221; 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&#8217;s characterisation of the 9 points is substantially flawed. He appears to have put words in Gore&#8217;s mouth that would indeed have been wrong had they been said (but they weren&#8217;t). Finally, the judge was really ruling on how &#8220;Guidance Notes&#8221; for teachers should be provided to allow for more in depth discussion of these points in the classroom. This is something we wholehearted support &#8211; 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&#8217;s wiki), and it is clear that the purported &#8216;errors&#8217; 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.
 
PM 'rejects' Tuvalu on sea level - National - theage.com.au

TUVALU, the Pacific island nation in danger of going under if sea levels rise, was rejected by Prime Minister John Howard when it last sought a meeting on the topic, according to senior officials there.

Ian Fry, adviser to the Tuvalu Government's Environment Department, told The Age that Tuvalu Prime Minister Maatia Toafa requested a meeting with Mr Howard at last October's Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji to discuss the looming climate-change crisis facing the island, but was denied.
 

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