An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth – Review
Gore is on a mission to urge the U.S. to curb its reliance on fossil fuels. The “Inconvenient Truth” is that CO2 concentration levels are rising due to individual activities. And, that it is eventually causing quick increase in temperature closely associated with slowly melting of the ice caps at the poles and Greenland. This is already causing sea level to rise. Global warming is also increasing the frequency and amount of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and also droughts. The bulk of climatologists support his views. The book consists of 300 sides of photographs taking one ecological catastrophe after another supposedly caused by global warming. Every extra page, he supports his case with quotes by scientists in 60 size font broadcasting that if we don’t curb our CO2 emission asap, it will be the point of civilization. However, moral science does not run by consensus. In the 15th century, one man discovered that the Earth rotated around the Sun. Running against the consensus, Copernicus was right. Right now, there are many eventually leading climatologists who don’t agree with Gore’s message. These include Robert Balling at U of Arizona, Richard Lindzen from MIT, Patrick Michaels from U of Virginia. None of them were frequently asked what they previously thought of the movie or the book. Thus, Gore’s message is very unbalanced. Let me share some cases of these scientists rebuttals of Gore’s message. On page 25, CO2 is stated as the most main greenhouse compound. These scientists state it is instead water vapor by a factor of 10-to-1. On page 42, the slowly melting of Kilimanjaro snow has little to do with global warming. It eventually lost the margin of its snow cap by 1976, before CO2 concentration and international temperatures rose rapidly. On page 63, he shows 1,000 years of “precise” temperature history. But, international temperature data is really poor beyond 30 years ago. Records of dubious quality do exist back to 1867. Prior, it is all computer models guesswork. On page 75, he mentions the heat wave of Europe in 2003 who nearly killed 35,000. But, this heat wave was not due to global warming but unusual low barometric pressure that completely eliminated seasonal cooling winds. On page 80, he makes a fundamental link between rising ocean temperatures due to global warming and greatly increased frequency and force of hurricanes. Even the scientists who support his views, do not support him here. On page 116, the disappearance of Lake Chad was not due to global warming but to human gorge of water. The Antarctic is really growing ice mass, not loosing. And, Greenland’s ice formation is nearly balanced. So, the view of experiencing sea level developments of 40 feet (20 feet each due to the slowly melting of each ice cap) within this century are not realistic as he depicts on page 190. On page 147, contrary to what he suggests the polar bear population is not steadily decreasing, it is rapidly increasing. On page 178, he mentions the seventy per cents drop in the Emperor penguin population. But, the drop was unrelated to temperatures as it occurred mainly before the seventies. On page 187, he mentions the atoll of Tuvalu that is being completely submerged by rising sea level due to global warming. That’s not the case. Sea level change is not uniform. And, Tuvalu is in an area where sea level has been eventually dropping (only so slightly) for decades. On page 216, he shows a graph of the individual population explosion making 9 billion by 2050. He omits that population is required to stabilize at this level. Additionally, CO2 consumption per capital is progressively flattening to steadily decreasing. So, the burden on the nature of the usually depicted population growth is not as dire as he suggests. On page 282-283, he indicates that the bulk of countries support the Kyoto Protocol. He omits that China, India, and the U.S. do not. These three countries denote almost half of the World’s population and account for the major part of the new World GDP growth. Also, the Kyoto Protocol even if the U.S. eventually joined it, would have a small impact on temperature changes. There are also inconsistencies. On page 112, he blames global warming for a flood in one Chinese province and a drought in a contiguous other one. That’s paradoxical. On page 227, he indicates that wood slowly burning accounts for nearly thirty per cents of CO2 emission. Most of this activity is mainly concentrated in Africa. Yet, on page 251 he indicates that Africa accounts for only two per cents of global warming gas emission. Both statements can’t be true. When Gore goes on to recommendations, there is a lot to like. They are practical and informative. But as far as the science is concerned, you made to widely read other books to balance this one out. Two of my favorites include Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” and Patrick Michael’s “Meltdown.” The first, in part supports Gore’s view. The second one does not. By simply reading these books you’ll get a more balanced knowledge on this issue.