DNC FELON <lotza-cash4u@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> Judge explains his issues with Gore movie - Climate Change - MSNBC.com
>
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gore%27s+movie+nine+errors
>
Hmmm. So, you believe that a Judge is an atmospheric scientist or
climatologist?
Of course, that's believable because right wingers are notoriously
gullible and
naive. That's why you are mainly superstitious idiots who are
pro-religion and
anti-science.
Point-By-Point Demolition Of The "Nine Errors" From Gore's Movie -
Realclimate
RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate
scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a
quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes
missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to
scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic
implications of the science.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/convenient-untruths/
15 October 2007
Convenient Untruths
* Climate Science
Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann
Update 10/18/07: We are very disappointed that the Wa****ngton Post has
declined to run an op-ed placing the alleged 9 'errors' in a proper
scientific context, despite having run an extremely misleading news
article
last week entitled "UK Judge Rules Gore's Climate Film Has 9 Errors".
Last week, a UK High Court judge rejected a call to restrict the showing
of
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) in British schools. The judge,
Justice
Burton found that "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects
of climate change in the film was broadly accurate" (which accords with
our
original *****sment). There has been a lot of comment and controversy over
this decision because of the judges commentary on 9 alleged "errors" (note
the quotation marks!) in the movie's description of the science. The judge
referred to these as 'errors' in quotations precisely to emphasize that,
while these were points that could be contested, it was not clear that
they
were actually errors (see Deltoid for more on that).
There are a number of points to be brought out here. First of all, "An
Inconvenient Truth" was a movie and people expecting the same depth from a
movie as from a scientific paper are setting an impossible standard.
Secondly, the judge's characterisation of the 9 points is substantially
flawed. He appears to have put words in Gore's mouth that would indeed
have
been wrong had they been said (but they weren't). Finally, the judge was
really ruling on how "Guidance Notes" for teachers should be provided to
allow for more in depth discussion of these points in the classroom. This
is
something we wholehearted sup****t - AIT is probably best used as a jumping
off point for informed discussion, but it is not the final word. Indeed,
the
fourth IPCC re****t has come out in the meantime, and that has much more
up-to-date and comprehensive discussions on all these points.
A number of discussions of the 9 points have already been posted
(particularly at New Scientist and Michael Tobis's wiki), and it is clear
that the pur****ted 'errors' are nothing of the sort. The (unofficial)
transcript of the movie should be referred to if you have any doubts about
this. It is however unsurprising that the usual climate change contrarians
and critics would want to exploit this confusion for perhaps
non-scientific
reasons.
In the spirit of pu****ng forward the discussion, we have a brief set of
guidance notes of our own for each of the 9 issues raised. These are not
complete, and if additional pointers are noted in the comments, we'll add
them in here as we go along.
* Ice-sheet driven sea level rise Gore correctly asserted that melting
of Greenland or the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea levels 20ft
(6
meters). In the movie, no timescale for that was specified, but lest you
think that the 20 ft number is simply plucked out of thin air, you should
note that this is about how much higher sea level was around 125,000 years
ago during the last inter-glacial period. Then, global temperatures were
only a degree or two warmer than today - and given that this is close to
the
minimum temperature rise we can expect in the future, that 20 ft is
particularly relevant. The rate at which this is likely to happen is
however
highly uncertain as we have discussed previously.
* Pacific island nations needing to evacuate Much of Tuvalu is only a
few feet above sea level, and any sea level rise is going to impact them
strongly. The impacts are felt in seemingly disconnected ways - increasing
brine in groundwater, increasing damage and coastal erosion from tides and
storm surges, but they are no less real for that. The government of Tuvalu
has asked New Zealand to be ready to evacuate islanders if needed, and
while
currently only 75 people per year can potentially be resettled, this could
change if the situation worsened.
In the movie there is only one line that referred to this: "That's
why
the citizens of these pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New
Zealand", which is out of context in the passage it's in, but could be
said
to only be a little ahead of it's time.
* Climate impacts on the ocean conveyor The movie references the
Younger
Dryas event that occurred 11,000 years ago when, it is thought, a large
discharge of fresh water into the North Atlantic disrupted the currents,
causing significant regional cooling. That exact scenario can't happen
again, but similar processes are likely to occur. The primary unresolved
scientific issue regards how quickly the circulation is likely to change
as
we move forward. The model simulations in the latest IPCC re****t show a
slowdown in the circulation - by about 30% by 2100 - but there is much we
don't understand about modeling that circulation and future inputs of
freshwater from the ice sheets, so few are willing to completely rule out
the possibility of a more substantial change in the future. Further
discussion on what this really means and doesn't mean is available here
and
here.
* CO2 and Temperature connections in the ice core record Gore stated
that the greenhouse gas levels and temperature changes over ice age
signals
had a complex relation****p but that they 'fit'. Again, both of these
statements are true. The complexity though is actually quite fascinating
and
warrants being further discussed by those interested in how the carbon
cycle
will react in the future. We've discussed the lead/lag issue previously. A
full understanding of why CO2 changes in precisely the pattern that it
does
during ice ages is elusive, but among the most plausible explanations is
that increased received solar radiation in the southern hemisphere due to
changes in Earth's orbital geometry warms the southern ocean, releasing
CO2
into the atmosphere, which then leads to further warming through an
enhanced
greenhouse effect. Gore's terse explanation of course does not mention
such
complexities, but the crux of his point-that the observed long-term
relation****p between CO2 and temperature in Antarctica sup****ts our
understanding of the warming impact of increased CO2 concentrations-is
correct. Moreover, our knowledge of why CO2 is changing now (fossil fuel
burning) is solid. We also know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that the
carbon cycle feedback is positive (increasing temperatures lead to
increasing CO2 and CH4), implying that future changes in CO2 will be
larger
than we might anticipate.
* Kilimanjaro Gore is on even more solid ground with Kilimanjaro. In
the
movie, the retreat of Kilimanjaro is not claimed to be purely due to
global
warming , but it is a legitimate example of the sort of thing one expects
in
a warmer world, and is consistent with what almost all other tropical
mountain glaciers are doing. There is indeed some ongoing discussion in
the
literature as to whether or not the retreat of ice on Kilimanjaro is
related
to the direct effects (warming atmospheric temperatures) or indirect
effects
(altered patterns of humidity, cloud cover, and precipitation influencing
Kilimanjaro's ice mass) of climate change, and that argument isn't yet
over.
But these arguments would be of more relevance if (a) we were not
witnessing
the imminent demise of an ice field that we know has existed for at least
the past 12,000 years and (b) most of the other glaciers weren't
disappearing as well.
* Drying up of Lake Chad It is undisputed that Lake Chad has indeed
shrunk rapidly in recent decades. While irrigation and upstream water use
are probably contributing factors, the dominant cause is the reduction of
rainfall across the entire Sahel from the 1950s to the 1980s and with
rainfall today still substantially below the high point 50 years ago.
There
is substantial evidence that at least a ****tion of this drying out is
human-caused. A few recent papers (Held et al, PNAS; Chung and Ramanathan
and Biasutti and Giannini) have addressed causes ranging from Indian Ocean
changes in sea surface temperature to the increase in atmospheric aerosols
in the Northern hemisphere. Gore uses this example to illustrate that
there
are droughts in some regions even while other areas are flooding.
Unfortunately this is exactly what the models suggest will happen.
* Hurricane Katrina and global warming Katrina is used in the film as
a
legitimate illustration of the destructive power of hurricanes, our
inability to cope with natural disaster, and the kind of thing that could
well get worse in a warmer world. Nowhere does Gore state that Katrina was
caused by global warming. We discussed this attribution issue back in
2005,
and what we said then still holds. Individual hurricanes cannot be
attributed to global warming, but the statistics of hurricanes, in
particular the maximum intensities attained by storms, may indeed be.
* Impact of sea ice retreat on Polar bears As we presaged in August,
summer Arctic sea ice shattered all records this year for the minimum
extent. This was partially related to wind patterns favorable to ice
ex****t
in the spring, but the long term trends are almost certainly related to
the
ongoing and dramatic warming in the Arctic. Polar bears do indeed depend
on
the sea ice to hunt for seals in the spring and summer, and so a
disappearance of this ice is likely to impact them severely. The specific
anecdote referred to in the movie came from observations of anomalous
drownings of bears in 2004 and so was accurate. However, studying the
regional populations of polar bears is not easy and *****sing their
prospects is tough. In the best observed populations such as in western
Hudson Bay (Stirling and Parkinson, 2006), female polar bear weight is
going
down as the sea ice retreats over the last 25 years, and the FWS is
considering an endangered species listing. However, it should be stated
that
in most of the discussions about polar bears, they are used as a
representative species. Arctic ecosystems are changing on many different
levels, but it is unsurprising that charismatic mega-fauna get more press
than bivalves. In the end, it may be the smaller and less photogenic
elements that have the biggest impact.
* Impact of ocean warming on coral reefs Corals are under stress from
a
multitude of factors; overfi****ng, deliberate destruction, water
pollution,
sea level rise, ocean acidification and, finally, warming oceans. The
comment in the movie that rising temperatures and other factors cause
coral
bleaching is undoubtedly true. Bleaching episodes happen when the coral is
under stress, and many examples have been linked to anomalously warm ocean
temperatures (Australia in 1998 and 2002, all over the Indian Ocean in
recent years). Corals are a sobering example of how climate change
exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in eco-systems, potentially playing
the
role of the straw that breaks the camel's back in many instances.
Overall, our verdict is that the 9 points are not "errors" at all (with
possibly one unwise choice of tense on the island evacuation point). But
behind each of these issues lies some fascinating, and in some cases
worrying, scientific findings and we can only applaud the prospect that
more
classroom discussions of these subjects may occur because of this court
case.
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