[Grovenet] AP INCORRECTLY CLAIMS SCIENTISTS PRAISE GORE'S MOVIE

[Eric Canon]

I've been gone and I saw Steven's wonderful cut
and paste article from the Canadian Free Press.
This is a wonderful example of the attempts of
people who want to discredit global warming to
make a case that the Gore movie is wrong in the
facts it presents. I call it "wonderful" because,
with a little poking, one quickly discovers how
hollow their arguments really are.

The article mentions Richard S Lindzen. Here's a
report about him:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen

Quoting from his bio:

In November 2004, climate change skeptic Richard
Lindzen was quoted saying he'd be willing to bet
that the earth's climate will be cooler in 20
years than it is today. When British climate
researcher James Annan contacted him, however,
Lindzen would only agree to take the bet if Annan
offered a 50-to-1 payout.

Then there's Bob Carter.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Carter

And here's a quote from his bio:

In January 2006 Carter told The Australian that
"atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent
for temperature change," arguing instead that
"any cumulative human signal is so far
undetectable at a global level and, if present,
is buried deeply in the noise of natural
variation"

This is a real free thinker!

Here's a list of the "climate change skeptics:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics

And a quote:

Their disputes with the IPCC and advocates of
action on climate change are commonly along one
or more of the following lines:

    * there is no conclusive evidence that
climate change is happening;
    * the changes in measured temperatures are
part of the natural cycle;
    * even if the changes are human induced the
scale is not sufficiently large to make changes
beyond sensible 'least cost' measures;
    * that the economic impact of making
substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions on
the scale suggested by the IPCC or other groups
is too large; 

In other words, "when you step into the realm of
the skeptics, you find yourself on a parallel
Earth. It is a planet where global warming isn't
happening -- or, if it is happening, isn't
happening because of human beings. Or, if it is
happening because of human beings, isn't going to
be a big problem. And, even if it is a big
problem, we can't realistically do anything about
it other than adapt." [1]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html)

One excuse after another in order to perpetuate a
denial of the facts, the responsibilities, and
the possibilities both negative and positive. 

And here is a web site devoted to challenging
global warming:

http://www.envirotruth.org/drball.cfm

And here is a report about some of the exploits
of the Canadian Free Press, a web based
conservative publisher of "news stories" from a
conservative perspective. Check out all the
retractions and boners they have served up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Free_Press

It is with this kind of expertise and
documentation that certain people wish to defy
the evidence and keep us firmly committed to
fossil fuels suicide. I can not begin to
speculate why they do what they do. Greed, and
the oil companies intransigence to any kind of
change seem less than rational. I wish I knew.

Thanks Steven for bring this to our attention.



--- Steven <NoSpam03 at comcast.net> wrote:

> AP INCORRECTLY CLAIMS SCIENTISTS PRAISE
GORE’S
> MOVIE
>
http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> June 27, 2006
> The June 27, 2006 Associated Press (AP) article
> titled “Scientists OK Gore’s
> Movie for Accuracy” by Seth Borenstein raises
> some serious questions about
> AP’s bias and methodology.
> 
> AP chose to ignore the scores of scientists who
> have harshly criticized the
> science presented in former Vice President Al
> Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient
> Truth.”
> 
> In the interest of full disclosure, the AP
> should release the names of the
> “more than 100 top climate researchers”
they
> attempted to contact to review
> “An Inconvenient Truth.” AP should also
name
> all 19 scientists who gave Gore
> “five stars for accuracy.” AP claims 19
> scientists viewed Gore’s movie, but
> it only quotes five of them in its article. AP
> should also release the names
> of the so-called scientific “skeptics” they
> claim to have contacted.
> 
> The AP article quotes Robert Correll, the
> chairman of the Arctic Climate
> Impact Assessment group. It appears from the
> article that Correll has a
> personal relationship with Gore, having viewed
> the film at a private
> screening at the invitation of the former Vice
> President. In addition,
> Correll’s reported links as an
“affiliate” of a
> Washington, D.C.-based
> consulting firm that provides “expert
> testimony” in trials and his reported
> sponsorship by the left-leaning Packard
> Foundation, were not disclosed by
> AP. See http://www.junkscience.com/feb06.htm
> 
> The AP also chose to ignore Gore’s reliance
on
> the now-discredited “hockey
> stick” by Dr. Michael Mann, which claims that
> temperatures in the Northern
> Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900
> years, then spiked upward in
> the 20th century, and that the 1990’s were
the
> warmest decade in at least
> 1000 years. Last week’s National Academy of
> Sciences report dispelled Mann’s
> often cited claims by reaffirming the existence
> of both the Medieval Warm
> Period and the Little Ice Age. See Senator
> Inhofe’s statement on the broken
> “Hockey Stick.”
>
(http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697
> )
> 
> Gore’s claim that global warming is causing
the
> snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro to
> disappear has also been debunked by scientific
> reports. For example, a 2004
> study in the journal Nature makes clear that
> Kilimanjaro is experiencing
> less snowfall because there’s less moisture
in
> the air due to deforestation
> around Kilimanjaro.
> 
> Here is a sampling of the views of some of the
> scientific critics of Gore:
> 
> Professor Bob Carter, of the Marine Geophysical
> Laboratory at James Cook
> University in Australia, on Gore’s film:
> 
> "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak
> that they are pathetic. It is
> simply incredible that they, and his film, are
> commanding public attention."
> 
> "The man is an embarrassment to US science and
> its many fine practitioners,
> a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state
> publicly) that his propaganda
> crusade is mostly based on junk science." –
Bob
> Carter as quoted in the
> Canadian Free Press, June 12, 2006
> 
> Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan
> Professor of Atmospheric Science at
> MIT, wrote:
> 
> “A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's
> approach is to assiduously ignore
> the fact that the earth and its climate are
> dynamic; they are always
> changing even without any external forcing. To
> treat all change as something
> to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to
> exploit that fear is much
>  worse.” - Lindzen wrote in an op-ed in the
> June 26, 2006 Wall Street
> Journal
> 
> Gore’s film also cites a review of scientific
> literature by the journal
> Science which claimed 100% consensus on global
> warming, but Lindzen pointed
> out the study was flat out incorrect.
> 
> “…A study in the journal Science by the
social
> scientist Nancy Oreskes
> claimed that a search of the ISI Web of
> Knowledge Database for the years
> 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global
> climate change" produced 928
> articles, all of whose abstracts supported what
> she referred to as the
> consensus view. A British social scientist,
> Benny Peiser, checked her
> procedure and found that only 913 of the 928
> articles had abstracts at all,
> and that only 13 of the remaining 913
> explicitly endorsed the so-called
> consensus view. Several actually opposed
it.”-
> Lindzen wrote in an op-ed in
> the June 26, 2006 Wall Street Journal.
> 
> Roy Spencer, principal research scientist for
> the University of Alabama in
> Huntsville, wrote an open letter to Gore
> criticizing his presentation of
> climate science in the film:
> 
> “…Temperature measurements in the arctic
> suggest that it was just as warm
> there in the 1930's...before most greenhouse
> gas emissions. Don't you ever
> wonder whether sea ice concentrations back then
> were low, too?”- Roy Spencer
> wrote in a May 25, 2006 column.
> 
> Former University of Winnipeg climatology
> professor Dr. Tim Ball reacted to
> Gore’s claim that there has been a sharp
> drop-off in the thickness of the
> Arctic ice cap since 1970.
> 
> "The survey that Gore cites was a single
> transect across one part of the
> Arctic basin in the month of October during the
> 1960s when we were in the
> middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs
> were done in the warmer month of
> September, using a wholly different
> technology,” –Tim Ball said, according
> to the Canadian Free Press.
> 
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