Gore ‘Inconvenient Truth’ DVD Dogged by Falsehoods
Contact: Christine Hall, 202.331.2258
Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary is scheduled for a Tuesday DVD release, but here’s what won’t be included in the purchase price: the actual truth. In a new short video series, PowerPoint presentation, and forthcoming book, CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis, Jr. rebuts a few false and misleading Gore claims.
CARBON DIOXIDE
· Gore: “We have vastly increased the amount of carbon dioxide—the most important of the so-called greenhouse gases.”
· The Truth: Using a misleading and manipulative picture, Gore wants us to think we’re literally seeing carbon dioxide pour out of smokestacks. But carbon dioxide is as invisible as oxygen. More important, carbon dioxide is a form of fertilizer for plants. Literally hundreds of scientific observations show that plants raised in carbon dioxide-enriched environments grow faster, larger, and produce more fruit. Get the full story.
HURRICANES
· Gore: “Textbooks had to be re-written in 2004. They used to say, ‘It’s impossible to have hurricanes in the South Atlantic.’ But that year, for the first time ever, a hurricane hit Brazil.”
· The Truth: Gore would have us believe that global warming and the associated rise in sea surface temperatures created Hurricane Catarina, the first hurricane on record ever to strike Brazil. Here’s what really happened. In 2004, Brazil had the coldest summer months in 25 years; the air was so much colder than the water that it caused the same kind of heat flux from the water to the air that fuels hurricanes in warm seas. Get the full story.
RATE OF GLOBAL WARMING
· Gore: “And in recent years the rate of [global warming] increase has been accelerating.”
· The Truth: That’s just plain wrong. Over the last 30 years, the warming rate has been remarkably constant—about 0.17 degrees Celsius per decade. And for 25 years before that, the world was actually cooling! The actual rate of warming is modest and non-accelerating. A better title for a documentary about global warming would be: “Apocalypse Not!” Get the full story.
GREENLAND ICE SHEET
· Gore: “When the [melt-]water reaches the bottom of the ice, it lubricates the surface of the bedrock and destabilizes the ice mass, raising fears that the ice mass will slide more quickly toward the ocean.”
· The Truth: Seems plausible, but only because Gore rips images out of their context. The photograph and diagram shown in the documentary come from a NASA study published in Science magazine in 2002. The study found that “moulins”—vertical water tunnels formed from pools of melt water at the surface of the ice sheet—accelerate glacial flow in the summertime, but the increase in speed over the entire year is no more than a few percent. Get the full story.