35 Errors Discovered in Al Gore’s Film

NewsBusters readers are well aware of the recent controversy involving Al Gore’s schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

A few weeks ago, a British judge cited nine errors in the film. Team Gore responded Thursday in a rebuttal published at the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog.

Now, famed climate change skeptic Christopher Monckton, in a detailed report published by the Science and Public Policy Institute, not only refuted Gore’s defense of the movie's contents, but also listed a total of 35 errors in the award-winning abomination responsible for most of the global warming hysteria sweeping the planet (emphasis added):

Al Gore’s spokesman and “environment advisor,” Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented “thousands and thousands of facts.” It did not: just 2,000 “facts” in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate.

The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term “errors.” In fact, the judge used the term “errors,” in inverted commas, throughout his judgment.

[…]

Ms. Kreider then says, “The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex.”

However, the single web-page entitled “The Science” on the movie’s official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the IPCC, but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term.

Ms. Kreider then says, “The judge stated clearly that he was not attempting to perform an analysis of the scientific questions in his ruling.” He did not need to. Each of the nine “errors” which he identified had been admitted by the UK Government to be inconsistent with the mainstream of scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s results are sometimes “conservative,” and continues: “Vice President Gore tried to convey in good faith those threats that he views as the most serious.” Readers of the long list of errors described in this memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith. However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion.

Readers are strongly encouraged to review the entire report, as well as all 35 errors chronicled by Monckton. Your attention is critical, for Gore’s film, though powerfully and convincingly presented, is indeed a work of fiction, and its veracity should be questioned with every conceivable opportunity.

Any other conclusion is facile and devoid of logic.

Make no mistake: as was clearly intended by the film’s producers, its star, and our woefully biased media, this celluloid canard has provoked tremendous international alarm concerning global warming that is neither warranted nor beneficial.

It should come as no great surprise that such was forecast in April when NewsBusters warned readers of the dangers associated with Gore’s propaganda. For those that have forgotten, a federal judge cited “An Inconvenient Truth” in his ruling against the government for its financing of overseas projects that supposedly contribute to climate change.

At the time, I cautioned (emphasis added): “[T]he alarmism running through society concerning this issue, and being flamed by Gore and his sycophant cadre in the media and Hollywood, clearly carries risks that an obedient and complicit press ignore.”

Six months later, these warnings seem rather prescient, as the hysteria has now officially begun to impact energy policy as evidenced by Thursday’s decision in Kansas to deny a license to an electricity producer for the construction of a new coal-fired power plant. Ominously, concerns over carbon emissions and their supposed impact on climate change were cited in the state's announcement regarding the matter.

Maybe just as cautionary, it appears Europe is going to start requiring carbon dioxide emissions warnings in advertisements for new cars, as well as imposing taxes on automobiles releasing the greatest amount of "greenhouse gases."

As a result, it should be crystal clear that the efforts on the left and by the media are beginning to have a policy impact not just here, but across the globe.

Sadly, this is just the beginning. Consider the proposal by House Energy and Commerce Committee chair John Dingell (D-MI) who in September offered a rather painful carbon emissions plan that would establish an additional 50 cent tax on gasoline as well as scale back the deductability of the interest on mortgages for some homeowners.

Lest we not forget House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Cal.) call for a European-style cap-and-trade program that reins in corporate carbon dioxide emissions.

These are but two of the dangerous schemes being tossed around Washington that would have potentially catastrophic impacts upon the economy, and have gained steam as a direct consequence of Gore's indoctrination campaign aided and abetted by a green media.

It has therefore become imperative for all supporters of liberty, democracy, and capitalism to fight the propagandist forces in our nation seeking to undermine our very way of life.

If you think that's putting too fine a point on the situation, ask yourself how you're going to provide electricity to your home, and what it's going to cost, if the warm-mongers have their way, and no more coal-fired OR nuclear power plants are built in this country.

Try also to imagine how our economy, and, therefore, your personal finances, are going to suffer as countries like China, India, Russia, and Brazil are allowed unfettered expansion of their energy creation while America curtails its own all to solve a problem that has yet to be proved either exists or can be mitigated by anything under man's control.

If you don't think one movie can cause this much political and economic upheaval, please recall what "The China Syndrome" did to catalyze the No Nukes movement in the '80s, and how America is still suffering from the hysteria it provoked 28 years ago.

The only remaining question is whether we are going to learn from this horrendous past mistake, or once again allow our economic and energy policies to be controlled by misplaced and erroneous environmental alarmism.