An inconvenient Truth: A retrospect
(Last of two parts)
Exaggerated statements
AIT hypes the importance and exaggerates the certainty of the alleged link between global warming and the frequency and severity of tropical storms.
It claims polar bears "have been drowning in significant numbers," based on a single report that four polar bears drowned in one month of one year, following an abrupt storm.
AIT presents a graph suggesting that China's new fuel economy standards are almost 30% more stringent than the current U.S. standards. In fact, the Chinese standards are only about 5% more stringent.
Speculative statements
AIT blames global warming for the record-breaking 37-inch downpour in Mumbai, India, in July 2005, even there has been no trend in Mumbai rainfall for the month of July in 45 years.
It blames global warming for recent floods in China's Sichuan and Shandong provinces, even though more damaging floods struck those areas in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It blames global warming for the disappearance of Lake Chad, a disaster more likely stemming from a combination of natural regional climate variability and societal factors such as population increase and overgrazing.
AIT warns that a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels to 560 ppm will so acidify seawater that all optimal areas for coral reef construction will disappear by 2050—implausible because coral calcification rates have increased as ocean temperatures and CO2levels have risen, and today's main reef builders evolved and thrived during the Mesozoic Period, when atmospheric CO2levels hovered above 1,000 ppm for 150 million years and exceeded 2,000 ppm for several million years.
It warns that "moulins"—vertical water tunnels formed from surface melt water—could cause half the Greenland Ice Sheet to break off and "slide" into the sea, even though the scientific study to which Gore alludes found that moulins increase glacial flow by only a few meters a year.
Wrong statements
It claims the rate of global warming is accelerating, when it has been remarkably constant for the past 30 years—roughly 0.17°C/decade.
It attributes Europe's killer heat wave of 2003 to global warming; it was actually due to an atmospheric circulation anomaly.
It blames global warming for a "mass extinction crisis" that is not, in fact, occurring.
In light of these and other distortions, AIT is ill-suited to serve as a guide to climate science and climate policy.
I understand that Al Gore has taken a lifelong (and may be sincere) interest in global climate change, and one-sidedly turned it into what he calls his slideshow. This is pretty much what the film is about. He used graphs, statistics, maps and animation to imply that, indeed, human kind is on a collision with extinction.
Drought, famine, flooding, loss of farmland, water -- all of these factors are symptoms of a global catastrophe, he said. No question. The AIT suggests a chilling prospect that only an unconscious naysayer can proudly document and announce it to the public in international level.
In the backdrop of all these scare show, I think the AIT deserves a second look. I believe that the makers of the film need to undergo a Pinocchio test. I think they owe it to their viewers to cite the other side of the coin… the real other side of the coin.
For a person with a scientific mind, no amount of allegation is supposed to be accepted at face value. Nothing should be embraced hook, line, and sinker. Even the proofs presented should be tested and verified carefully before anything is to be believed in. Skepticism is indeed a good leveler of scientific facts.
In closing I say to Al Gore, it is one great, noble thing to campaign for the wellbeing of the Mother Earth (in fact I genuinely support him in his campaign to care for the environment and to conserve energy); but it is equally indispensable, righteous thing to bank on unbiased, objective, hard, non-speculative science to further one's hypothesis or theory—no matter how inconvenient it would be.