A High Court judge today ruled that An Inconvenient Truth can be distributed to every school in the country but only if it comes with a note explaining nine scientific errors in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film.
The Government had pledged to send thousands of copies of the film to schools across the country, but a Kent father challenged that policy saying it would “brainwash” children.
A judge was asked to adjudicate between Stewart Dimmock and the Department of Children, Schools and Families. Mr Justice Burton ruled that the film could be sent to schools, but only if it was accompanied by new guidlines to balance the former US vice-president’s “one-sided” views
The judge said some of the errors were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration” in order to support Mr Gore’s thesis on global warming.
He said that while the film was dramatic and highly professional, it formed part the ex-politician’s global crusade on climate change and not all the claims were supported by the current mainstream scientific consensus.
He went on to list those errors:
Error one
Al Gore: A sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”.
The judge’s finding: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ”wake-up call“. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia.”
Error two
Gore: Low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls are already “being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.”
Judge: There was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.
Error three
Gore: The documentary described global warming potentially “shutting down the Ocean Conveyor” - the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe.
Judge: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it was “very unlikely” it would be shut down, though it might slow down.
Error four
Gore: He asserted - 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”.
Judge: Although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, “the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts”.
Error five
Gore: The disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to global warming.
Judge: This “specifically impressed” David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, but the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.
Error six
Gore: The drying up of Lake Chad was used in the film as a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming, said the judge.
Judge: “It is generally accepted that the evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution. It is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.”
Error seven
Gore: Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans to global warming.
Judge: There is “insufficient evidence to show that”.
Error eight
Gore: Referred to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears were being found that had actually drowned “swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the ice”.
Judge: “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." That was not to say there might not in future be drowning-related deaths of bears if the trend of regression of pack ice continued - “but it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description”.
Error nine
Gore: Coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors.
Judge: The IPCC had reported that, if temperatures were to rise by 1-3 degrees centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and mortality, unless the coral could adapt. But separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution was difficult."
Much is made of the melting of Ice in Greenland and surrounds - for a long time now it has been mainly snow and Ice but once people farmed there and lived there, BECAUSE THE WORLD WAS WARMER MUCH WARMER...
There are two written sources on the origin of the name, in The Book of IcelandersÍslendingabók), an historical work dealing with early Icelandic history from the 12th century, and in the medieval Icelandic saga, The Saga of Eric the Red (Eiríks saga rauða), which is about the Norse settlement in Greenland and the story of Erik the Red in particular. Both sources write: "He named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name." (
At that time, the inner regions of the long fjords where the settlements were located were very different from today. Excavations show that there were considerable birch woods with birch trees up to 4 to 6 meters high in the area around the inner parts of the Tunuliarfik- and Aniaaq-fjords, the central area of the Eastern settlement, and the hills were grown with grass and willow brushes. This was due to the medieval climate optimum. The Norse soon changed the vegetation by cutting down the trees to use as building material and for heating and by extensive sheep and goat grazing during summer and winter. The climate in Greenland was much warmer during the first centuries of settlement but became increasingly colder in the 14th centuries with the approaching period of colder weather known as the Little Ice Age." and 15
It alarmed me to hear so many commentators conveniently use the day of dust as some sort of proof or warming which is an unnatural warming. I wonder how on earth the earth survived at all because right down the great dividing range in Australia there were in ancient times many volcanoes which were constantly smoking or erupting and this was happening world wide. Life existed...and just a few of those volcanoes put out more CO2 into the air than all the cows farting and belching, than all the industry etc does today. I do believe major moves to clean up the industries which emit toxic chemicals from the smoke stacks of industry need to be addressed and as a priority - but how will a tax on us make that happen. I think some people have had just a bit too much fluoride in their water if they think our Government either Federal or state can be trusted to put the money they will take from us all with the new taxes.... (which will be on top of the GST...) to any worthwhile cause. What doesn't get eaten up in the towering and top heavy tiers of bureaucracy which seem to be endemic these days...will disappear as have the GST . In NSW it costs between 3 and 4 dollars a day to "feed" public patients...and you should see the sickening crap they feed them. But it costs $11 to package and transport that so called food. The Garling enquiry which i took part in found that over half of NSW public hospital patients were malnourished and some were starving. I have personal knowledge of this fact... taxes into the black hole of no accountability. Once our lotteries funded our hospitals and we had the world's best in the 1960's and early 70's... that money seems to just get swallowed up by a voracious system which shows no accounting at all. Now our hospitals are in dire straits -
When I was having Melissa in 1974 - I worked in the kitchen of Newcastle hospital...The meals were cooked in the kitchen under the wards only a short time before mealtime. Potatoes, pumpkin etc and real meat/chicken, fresh eggs, and plenty of it - were prepared, put onto ceramic plates...cups of tea were served in ceramic mugs or cups...real knives and forks...
it was environmentally much more an aware way than the tonnes of packaging that every hospital produces with all the take ways packaging, cutlery, cups etc which serve up frozen and barely thawed inedibles...the freezing and transport also is very environmentally wasteful.
We all talk about the environment today as if we have so much more understanding that the poor old rednecks from the 60's...but when I got the groceries for mum with her string bags, the flour and sugar etc was put into brown paper bags - which were reused for lunch bags - the milkman picked up the empty bottles for reuse... a holiday meant a visit to relatives not a polluting plane trip to some place where they are poorer than us and so we can get bargains..
The bastardry which stuffed up too much of the farmland often came not from the dairy farmers etc...but was advocated by educated boffins from the department of agriculture who advised DDT and deildrin etc to be used if you wanted your crops to be acceptable by the new supermarkets which began to spring up...my own dad handled with bare hands the poisoned carrots for killing rabbits - no warnings at all that this stuff was 245t a major ingredient in Agent orange... Its a given too many trees were cleared but when the understanding was made that this land can't be farmed like Europe because of the thin soil and the lack of rain...farmers in the '70's began to change themselves because the farms meant something to them - they were home...not a business. The good changes seldom come from up top...the good changes usually come from the ordinary people...pollies never act - they react. What they are reacting to these days has all the danger and fervour of zealotry
Garrgh... I get so bloody annoyed when such a normal for inland people event as a dust storm has those commentators most of who live in the comfortable coastal cities wringing their hands and crying Apocalypse.
I feel a bit better now
