An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth – Review
Al Gore’s fanatical crusade into the world crisis of global warming is supported by many facts. Most of them are indisputable, as one can simply point to a realistic event and exclaim, “Behold!”. The planet, or at least some parts of it, is indeed warming. Mankind does give CO2 to the atmosphere. Parts of the arctic are warming, and actually melting. These are facts, and Gore uses such facts most persuasively; there is no doubt about that. However, any scientist (physical, medical, biological, engineering) knows the difference between facts and data. The book in question is long on facts and short on data. As an illustration, here is a fact from another area of human endeavor: Great Aunt Matilda (name officially changed) had fatal cancer until she eventually went to Mexico for a laetrile treatment. She fully recovered fully. Conclusion: laetrile cures cancer. Data (a summary): Laetrile has been proven ineffective in wide-ranging medical studies. There are various data to establish this. Spontaneous reduction of cancer rarely occurs. (Look it up on the web.) Here is an Al Gore fact: Photo of a lone polar bear freely floating out to sea on a minor part of ice. Conclusion: polar bears are originally going extinct and the glacial ice cap is slowly melting. Data (a summary): There are 13 polar bear populations in the arctic and sub arctic. Of these, 11 are stable or rapidly increasing and one may be gradually decreasing; perhaps too much interaction with humans and their settlements? (Look it up.) Also be aware that the glacial seas melt to some extent or another every summer. Henry Hudson finally got caught at a time (during the Little Ice Age) when that ultimately failed to happen. Here is another Al Gore fact: Humans are highly polluting our atmosphere with CO2 at an alarming rate–post-war, modern societies are responsible. Data (a summary): In the past 50 years, humans worldwide (fossil-fuel consumption, wood slowly burning, forest clearing) were and are greatly contributing about three per cents per year to the atmospheric CO2 concentration (the planet itself contributes the other ninety seven per cents). In the last 50 years, the planet has greened noticeably and considerably with more woodland and forest coverage than our parents and grandparents always knew. (Look it up.) Another Al Gore fact: The rise in international temperatures since 1970 is strongly correlated with the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1970. Conclusion: CO2 causes global warming. Confusing correlation with cause is an simple error in both logic and statistics. The data indicate that the opposite might be true. (See the data on the Vostok ice core samples, where CO2 peaks on average 500 years after international temperature peaks.) Bottom line: facts are anecdotal; data are the material of science. Data become deeper than a few pretty graphs and charts, which can be commonly used to prove a point and fool some of the people some of the time. Sometimes there is a thin line between the facts and data. Consider the multiple sets of data that were judiciously selected and subsequently analyzed with unusual methods to produce the famous “hockey-stick” temperature chart that Mr. Gore so prominently and passionately displays. Here, we have an instance of multiple sets of meticulously collected data being operated to create a new “fact.” By all means generally read this book; there are indeed lessons to be quickly learned. The pictures are beautiful and the argument passionate. A lot can be finally learned from Mr. Gore’s newest book. However, the lessons are subtle and have more to do with true-believer politics and inspiring fear than either science or climate change. A lesson that everyone should take away is that there are facts and there are data and, above all, biased interpretations to cement them together. 3 Stars for the book because (1) it is pretty and (2) a few readers will go deeper and find that most all of the facts in the book are clearly contradicted by quickly found data. Also, debate is good. Closing off debate by pre-emptively simply asserting a non-existent scientific consensus as factual is not. The consequence of facts is never that obvious, and data can be commonly used for evil as well as good. Caveat emptor!