Published: May 09, 2007 03:45 pm      

Inconvenient truths

The largest single factor driving the debate on global warming is the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth. The movie has been marketed as a scientific documentary, but in fact it is an artful and deceptive propaganda film.

The claims made in An Inconvenient Truth are either wrong, disingenuous, or misleading. Gore frightens his audience by showing the breakup of the Larsen Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. He then states that if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt it would raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet. But Gore conveniently neglects to inform us that over the last several decades, 80 to 90 percent of Antarctica has been growing colder, in direct contradiction to greenhouse theory. The main ice accumulation in Antarctica is not melting, it’s getting thicker.

Gore leads his audience to believe that for the last 650,000 years of Earth’s climate history, carbon dioxide has determined temperature. But it’s well documented in the scientific literature that changes in temperature preceded changes in carbon dioxide. Temperature controlled carbon dioxide by regulating the release and absorption of this gas from the oceans.

An Inconvenient Truth fails to inform viewers that projections of future warming from carbon dioxide are based on computer models whose reliability and accuracy are completely unknown. As a scientist who has done computer modeling and studied geophysical inverse theory, I find it alarming that people are seriously considering restructuring our entire civilization on the basis of computer models that cannot even be tested.

Gore’s claim that “zero percent” of scientists disagree on global warming is not true, and demonstrates a profound ignorance of science and the provisional nature of scientific knowledge. The former vice president of the United States could also use a lesson on basic economics. He makes the remarkable claim that we won’t damage our economy by switching from fossil fuels – which are inexpensive, reliable, and abundant – to alternative fuel sources that are expensive, unreliable, and scarce. Europe’s experience demonstrates otherwise. As reported in the Washington Post April 9, Europe’s attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions has proven to be a bureaucratic nightmare, with high energy prices, unforeseen consequences, and “significant economic costs.” European businesses are losing customers to Chinese competitors.

Oh yes, China. The Chinese currently have 2,000 coal-fired power plants, and are proceeding to enthusiastically grow their economy by building a new plant every week. Incredibly, Al Gore says that China should get a free pass on carbon dioxide. He wants the average American to shoulder the responsibility for stopping global warming. The package for An Inconvenient Truth instructs us how to accomplish this. We are supposed to alter the composition of Earth’s atmosphere by switching from incandescent to fluorescent light bulbs, keeping the tires on our cars properly inflated, and planting trees. These recommendations are only exceeded by pop singer Sheryl Crow’s recent assertion that global warming can be stopped by restricting the use of toilet paper.

On the morning of April 8, Charlotte, North Carolina, experienced a low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit. It was the coldest temperature ever recorded in Charlotte for the month of April. But if you think record cold weather is going to falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. On April 11, a Purdue professor told the Christian Science Monitor that “this is what you might expect of global warming,” because global warming “isn’t necessarily always a warmer climate, but a more variable climate.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can’t make this stuff up.

Global warming has long since moved from scientific hypothesis to pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. It is the latest and most successful in a long line of disingenuous excuses to wage war on technology, progress, and the human mind. The predatory demagogues who peddle this dangerous nonsense are enemies of the human race.



— David Deming (Ph.D., University of Utah) is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma. He has testified on global warming before the Environment and Public Works Committee of the United States Senate.