The Goracle exposed
No, not in that way (*shivers!*). In a way that we’ll all enjoy reading (h/t: several ST readers):
Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ”An Inconvenient Truth,” have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.
For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate reported, “Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame.”
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, “Although it’s tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests’ humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine.”
Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.
Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.
Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, “Africa’s deserts are in ‘spectacular’ retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa.”
Make sure to read it all.
Think any of the participants (both stars and fans) of next weekend’s “Live Earth” concert efforts would change their minds after reading something like this? Of course not. It’s generally not very productive to confuse the willfully ignorant with the facts, after all.
On a related note, the NYT features a piece from the Goracle himself, titled “Moving Beyond Kyoto” in which he implores people who will listen or attend the Live Earth concerts to, among other things, sign a “personal pledge to take specific steps to combat climate change.”
Speaking of pledges, I think it’d be funny if, sometime during the interviews Gore is (I’m sure) scheduled to do next weekend during the concerts, one of the interviewers asks him to, in turn, sign the Personal Energy Ethics Pledge Senator James Inhofe asked him to sign 102 days ago. Can you imagine the look on his face if asked that? Probably something like this:
“Sign a Personal Energy Ethics Pledge?
I don’t need to sign no stinkin’ pledge!”
Related: Sun’s Shifts May Cause Global Warming (thanks, again, to ST reader Sev for the link)