Yesterday, Jack sent me this from the Financial Post. It is a scathing attack on "An Inconvenient Truth" and the British School System's attempts to indoctrinate children using Al Gore's film.
... The 11 inaccuracies that the court found are not quibbles. They represent the film's most spectacular claims about the dangers of global warming, and form the very basis of the film. Were the film to be edited to have these inaccuracies removed, in fact, vanishingly little would be left.Update: That he won the Nobel Peace Prize only renews and deepens my disrespect for that committee and its processes. Fortunately, the economics Nobel is decided by different people. For more, see this from WaPo.
- The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro demonstrate global warming. The government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
- The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 caused temperature increases over 650,000 years. The court found that the film was misleading: Over that period, the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800 to 2,000 years.
- The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina, which it suggests was caused by global warming. The government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
- The film attributes the drying up of Lake Chad to global warming. The government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
- The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing Arctic ice. It turned out that Gore had misread the study: In fact, four polar bears drowned because of a particularly violent storm. - The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, throwing Europe into an ice age. The claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
- The film blames global warming for species losses, including coral reef bleaching. The government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
- The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt, causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
- The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting. The evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
- The film suggests that sea levels could rise by seven metres, causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact, the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40 centimetres over the next 100 years, and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
- The film claims that rising sea levels have caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The government was unable to substantiate this claim and the court observed that this appears to be a false claim.
The judge's final decision is expected within the week. It promises to change how and what students are taught, and to empower teachers and students alike who choose to think for themselves. In classrooms in Canada and elsewhere around the world, meanwhile, our children are not empowered to question the conventional wisdom on climate change, and teachers continue to show An Inconvenient Truth without any guidance to the children in their charge.