Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Senate Committee Launches Taxpayer-Funded Misinformation Campaign About Gore Movie
Your tax dollars are being used to fund a misinformation campaign about Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth.
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works issued a press release headlined “AP Incorrectly Claims Scientists Praise Gore’s Movie.” It doesn’t substantiate the claim. The AP contacted 100 climate scientists, including noted “climate skeptics,” and of the 19 that had seen the movie, all commended its accuracy.
The Committee release faulted the AP for not cherry-picking the handful of scientists around the world who make a living questioning the scientific consensus on global warming. For example, an Australian scientist named Bob Carter told an obscure Canadian paper that Gore’s arguments are “so weak that they are pathetic.” How could the AP exclude this kind of incisive analysis?
The release is also full of misinformation about global warming science. Here are just three of the most blatant errors:
1. The research of Dr. Michael Mann is “now-discredited.” A report released last week by the National Academy of Sciences, created to Congress to provide scientific guidance, found Mann’s research – which concluded the warming in the last several decades is unprecedented in the last 1000 years — “has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence.”
2. “Scientific reports” concluded Mt. Kilimanjaro’s glacier is not disappearing due to global warming. The climate scientists at realclimate.org explain studies of Kilimanjaro “only support the role of precipitation in the initial stages of the retreat, up to the early 1900’s.” Moreover, “the Kilimanjaro glacier survived a 300 year African drought which occurred about 4000 years ago.” The most likely explanation for why it has almost completely disappeared this time is “anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change.”
3. A literature review in the journal Science which claimed consensus on global warming is “flat out incorrect.” The release relies on the analysis of Benny Peiser, which was egregiously flawed. Benny claimed that 34 abstracts “doubted or rejected” the scientific consensus. Actually, there wasn’t a single peer-reviewed abstract that opposed the scientific consensus.
Marc Morano and Matt Dempsey, who work for the committee, encourage you to contact them about the release. Please be substantive and polite with any criticism.
