An Inconvenient Truth - DVD Special Features

[c9]

I received a copy of An Inconvenient Truth on DVD for Christmas from Vinny's Mom, and I'm just getting around to looking at the special features today. There's some really interesting stuff.

The DVD was assembled a full year after the movie was completed, and there's a mini-movie with Al Gore going through the dozens of studies and new pieces evidence that have appeared in late 2005 and early 2006. He references things shown in the movie, and gives more details or provides specific examples of even higher temperatures in the past year.
There are eight sections or so, on things like hurricanes, ocean acidification, soil moisture, the permafrost, and others. It includes extended scenes from his slide show too, which just makes me want to see his full slide show more.

It also makes me want to study climate science. I get very frustrated to see thousands upon thousands of highly-knowledgeable, skilled, experts talking about things they understand, and to then see climate professional change deniers, funded by companies that think they can't adapt, get all the press. What's especially frustrating to me is not knowing all the details about every single topic, so I can't respond effectively to those sorts of debates.

Just need to get Vinny done with school, then it's my turn again.

Comments

[joecdn.livejournal.com]

Just read all your comments, can't really put them together right now cause I just got up, but give this a read:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm

It points out some interesting facts.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Let's take a closer look at this article.

First off, CanadaFreePress is an incredibly biased and right-wing publication. They think Stephen Harper is not conservative enough. But that's not reason enough to discount it entirely.

Secondly, CanadaFreePress is an opinion site, not a science site. It is also not a peer-reviewed journal, so the people deciding what gets published and what doesn't are not scientists. But that's not reason enough to discount it entirely either.

Let's look at the article itself. There's plenty there.

1. Professor Bob Carter is a member of a professional global-warming-denying organization founded by an Australian Mining company, and he has personally received funding from ExxonMobil (source: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/corporate/giving_report.pdf). Obviously everybody has to pay for their food and shelter, but it's interesting that so many who fight climate change science just happen to be funded by oil and mining companies? (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy)

2. Next, the article claims that there are "hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change." Wikipedia lists precisely ten climate scientists, by name, who oppose the consensus on global warming. By contrast, Wikipedia lists seventeen major scientific organizations, representing probably thousands of scientists, who support the consensus on global warming.

3. His point about scientists who study one specific area not necessarily having the expertise to speak on global climate change matters is valid. Amusingly, the very first scientist he quoted does not study global climate change, and is trained in marine geology. He talks about climate change, but his expertise is not there. This is a common theme.

4. Dr Tim Ball, who is quoted next, does actually study climate. Interestingly, his original degrees were in Arts, and only his PhD was in science, but I don't know his background enough to really judge that. I found an interview with him (http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=864) where he uses several known-to-be-false arguments against the global warming consensus.

5. Ball claims that "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," but in fact the models have been proven quite accurate (http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/19/51921/827). James Hansen for example, who presented a famous set of three predictions to the US Senate in 1988, has been proven very accurate: http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/04/hansen-has-been-wrong-before.html.

6. Next, the article claims "Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear." In fact, we hear the debate more often than not. Over half of media reports on climate include some quotes from global warming deniers. At the same time, 0% of peer-reviewed published scientific journal articles show the debate. The exact problem is that we do hear the debate even though among scientific organizations the debate is mostly over.

[c9.livejournal.com]

7. Professor Tim Patterson at Carleton University claimed "In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." The problem is that we do not have extensive and consistent data for 450 million years ago. We do have consistent and extensive data for the last 650,000 years. Additionally, 450 million years ago was before there were any land animals in existence yet. I bring this up just to say that what has happened in the past million years is maybe even more relevant than what happened 450 million years ago. But I'm no expert, so take that with a grain of salt. :)

8. It's the sunspots, he says. Nope. http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/04/its-sun-stupid.html

9. The next section features Dr Boris Winterhalter. I don't know his background, but I note that the article doesn't actually address what Gore talked about in his presentation and in the movie: melting pools and water drilling down underneath glaciers. Instead it complains about the video of ice crashing into the water.

10. Next, they talk about Antarctic ice breaking off and floating away. "...just like it has done back in time." The changes are not "just like they have done" unless the individuals are talking about hundreds of thousands of years, which is not stated. Additionally, they bring up the false argument of "Antarctica is growing, so it's all ok". First, the data shows tiny growth, and there's very little data. There's more data showing shrinkage. Second, it's OK for Antarctica to grow and for the planet as a whole to warm -- just like it can be cold in Burnaby and warm in Miami on the same day. (http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/4/211834/644) In fact, Greenland is growing internally but shedding ice externally, losing about 200 cubic km each year.

11. Next, another region-based statement. Part of the Arctic has shown "fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise". Again, taking the climate record of one small area and saying it obviously contradicts decades of science and hundreds of thousands of years of evidence around the globe is not valid science.

12. A cute argument about the map projection Gore uses. Mercator is very inaccurate in the way it shows the continents, this is true and undisputed. But Dr Morgan claims that if only they had used a more fair map, the warming and cooling areas displayed on the map would have been closer together in size.


This article also made it onto Slashdot back in June. It got lots of debate, and you'll find a bunch more interesting responses there (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/14/209235&threshold=3) from both sides of the debate.