I wrote earlier about William Broad's many misrepresentations in his story that criticised Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Now Kevin Libin has produced an article for the National Post that makes Broad look like a paragon of virtue. Look at this:
James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist and one of Mr. Gore's advisors, agreed the movie has "imperfections" and "technical flaws." About An Inconvenient Truth's connection of rising hurricane activity to global warming - something refuted by storm experts - Mr. Hansen said, "we need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is."
Those quotes are from Broad's story. But look at the quotes from Hansen that Libin deliberately left out:
Some backers concede minor inaccuracies but see them as reasonable for a politician. James E. Hansen, an environmental scientist, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a top adviser to Mr. Gore, said, "Al does an exceptionally good job of seeing the forest for the trees," adding that Mr. Gore often did so "better than scientists."
Still, Dr. Hansen said, the former vice president's work may hold "imperfections" and "technical flaws." He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.
"We need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Gore. "On the other hand," Dr. Hansen said, "he has the bottom line right: most storms, at least those driven by the latent heat of vaporization, will tend to be stronger, or have the potential to be stronger, in a warmer climate."
Kind of gives a different impression than the Libin version doesn't it?
And if you want to know what Hansen really thinks of An Inconvenient Truth, read his review:
That brings me to Al Gore's book and movie of the same name: An Inconvenient Truth. Both are unconventional, based on a "slide show" that Gore has given more than one thousand times. They are filled with pictures--stunning illustrations, maps, graphs, brief explanations, and stories about people who have important parts in the global warming story or in Al Gore's life. The movie seems to me powerful and the book complements it, adding useful explanations. It is hard to predict how this unusual presentation will be received by the public; but Gore has put together a coherent account of a complex topic that Americans desperately need to understand. The story is scientifically accurate and yet should be understandable to the public, a public that is less and less drawn to science.
The reader might assume that I have long been close to Gore, since I testified before his Senate committee in 1989 and participated in scientific "roundtable" discussions in his Senate office. In fact, Gore was displeased when I declined to provide him with images of increasing drought generated by a computer model of climate change. (I didn't trust the model's estimates of precipitation.) After Clinton and Gore were elected, I declined a suggestion from the White House to write a rebuttal to a New York Times Op-Ed article that played down global warming and criticized the Vice President. I did not hear from Gore for more than a decade, until January of this year, when he asked me to critically assess his slide show. When we met, he said that he "wanted to apologize," but, without letting him explain what he was apologizing for, I said, "Your insight was better than mine."
Indeed, Gore was prescient. For decades he has maintained that the Earth was teetering in the balance, even when doing so subjected him to ridicule from other politicians and cost him votes. By telling the story of climate change with striking clarity in both his book and movie, Al Gore may have done for global warming what Silent Spring did for pesticides. He will be attacked, but the public will have the information needed to distinguish our long-term well-being from short-term special interests.
An Inconvenient Truth is about Gore himself as well as global warming. It shows the man that I met in the 1980s at scientific roundtable discussions, passionate and knowledgeable, true to the message he has delivered for years. It makes one wonder whether the American public has not been deceived by the distorted images of him that have been presented by the press and television. Perhaps the country came close to having the leadership it needed to deal with a grave threat to the planet, but did not realize it.
Again, compare with Libin's version of Hansen's views on An Inconvenient Truth.
Libin also serves up this:
Among other things, since the film's release last year, scientists have rejected Mr. Gore's claims that 2005 was the warmest year on record (temperatures have been receding since 1998), that polar bears are heading for extinction (their numbers are growing), that Antarctica is warming (interior temperature readings show cooling) and that sea levels will "rise 18 to 20 feet," swamping coastal cities (the International Panel on Climate Change predicts a few inches).
NASA's GISS has 2005 as the warmest year on record. Other sources have it as the second warmest, but no source has temperatures receding since since 1998. The US Interior Department has proposed listing polar bears as threatened because of loss of habitat from melting ice. The scientist who folks like Libin claim showed that Antarctica was cooling complains that his findings have been misrepresented. The IPCC prediction of a few inches specifically excludes the effects of accelerated ice flows, while Gore was talking about what happens if there was accelerated melting. The IPCC report supports Gore's 18 to 20 feet number:
The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than
present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions
in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 metres of sea level rise.
Looks like Vranes still has a few minutes left out of his fifteen minutes of fame:
"Though Mr. Gore was right for "getting the message out," University of Colorado climatologist Kevin Vranes told The New York Times last month that he worried about the film "overselling our certainty about knowing the future."
How eloquent. Sounds like something George Bush would say.
This is a comment sent to the National Post, as their vile propaganda on the Climate issue is reaching new lows...
The National Post is reaching new lows of vulgar propaganda in its intellectually dishonest attempts to influence public opinion in the direction its political affiliations.
Its downright disgusting to see such blatant attempts at dishonest propaganda, on a almost daily basis on the cover and throughout your paper.
Your "article" on the film An Inconvenient Truth is a pathetic transparent attempt to copy some of the vile propaganda from Fox News in the US on this issue. (you used the exact same propaganda template...not very smart).
There are huge amounts of the Canadian public that see right through your ugly and transparent attempts to manipulate and dupe the public with persuasive and distorted words.
You should be ashamed of yourselves for displaying such a lack of journalistic integrity.
I will never buy your paper again, and will be sure to continue to point out to dozens of other people the blatant manipulations and distortions contained in your paper on a daily basis, and encourage them to also withdraw their advertising.
Your paper has become simply a biased, desperate political propaganda rag.
Perhaps the Republicans have found Godel's missing proof in the untranslated papers at Princeton?
They're acting like they've got it figured out and it's inevitable.
http://www.telecomtally.com/blog/2006/01/what_was_it_that_upset_kurt_go…
It's amazing that a species that is growing in population is listed as threatened.
I blame it on biologists who don't have a clue about physics.
Hans,
As usual, garbage in, garbage out from you. You should stick to whatever scientific field you think you are good at. Biology ain't it.
Polar bears are in serious trouble. As I have said before, a small reduction in pack ice will probably benefit the bears, but the problem is that Arctic ice is receding rapidly. It will not reach an optimum for the bears and then stabilize, but will continue to shrink. This is just one of a myriad of examples of non-linearity which characterizes ecological processes. Its like the analogy of rocking a canoe back and forth: one thinks this is fine until they are suddenly tipped into the water. With the current rate of anthropogenic global change, expect surprises. Big, nasty ones.
Hans as usual obfuscates the facts with a witty (NOT) dismissal. His refrain is like the guy who falls 90 floors from a 100 story building, looks up and says, "Hey! I am fine!". Then SPLAT.
Jeff is right (again). Surprises abound with non-linear systems -- especially when one has no idea what to expect. Surprises like this one:
"Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal "sinks" absorbing carbon dioxide - the Southern Ocean around Antarctica - a new study has found."
"the research team [from University of East Anglia, the British Antarctic Survey and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, published in the journal Science] has found the vast Southern Ocean, which is the earth's biggest carbon sink, accounting for about 15 per cent of the total absorption potential, has become effectively CO2-saturated."
I'd have to say that the people who are most surprised by non-linear behavior are the phyicists, not the biologists.
There is a very logical reason for that. Over the centuries, physicists have devoted most of their time and effort to the class of problems that exhibit linear (or almost linear) behavior. As it turns out, this class is a very small subset of the real world. It just happens that these are the easiest problems to solve, which is no coincidence. That is precisely why the physicists focused on them to begin with.
I'd also have to say that most biologists have a much better handle on the physics of complex systems (like living systems) than most physicists do. Because most physicists are used to working on problems by the divide and conquer method, they are at a loss in cases in which does not work -- as with living things.
JB, Kevin Vranes got way more than his fifteen minutes for the "overselling our certainty" bit of rhetorical genius. That phrase is all over the internet.
Right-wing blogs, of course. But Vranes was taught well by his sidekick, Roger Pielke Jr.
Nice logic, Hans.
"It's amazing that a species that is growing in population is listed as threatened"
It sounds like you may have cause and effect reversed--the whole point of listing a species as threatened is to institute protections so that its population will grow.