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Gore accused of distorting global warming’s dangers in film |
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Tuesday, 17 April 2007 |
| Marlo Lewis
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By JOHN NORTH
A self-proclaimed skeptic spent nearly an hour challenging what he termed distortions about global warming propagated by former Vice President Al Gore, during a luncheon address at the Grove Park Inn & Spa last Wednesday.
Marlo Lewis Jr.’s talk, titled “Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’: A Skeptical Tour,” drew about 150 people. Afterward, Lewis fielded questions from the audience for about 20 minutes.
Lewis, who holds a doctorate in government from Harvard University, is
a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington,
D.C., where he writes on global warming, energy policy and other public
policy issues. His Asheville presentation was sponsored by the John
Locke Foundation, a Raleigh-based conservative think tank. The event
co-sponsor was Asheville news-talk radio station WWNC-AM (570).
Lewis was introduced as a thinker and writer who has been published in
The Washington Times, Investors Business Daily, National Review and The
American Spectator, among others. He has also appeared on various
television and radio programs and his ideas have been featured in radio
commentary by Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy.
Gore, who Lewis noted won an Oscar for his role in “An Inconvenient
Truth” and “put global warming on the map,” disingenuously purports the
film “to be a non-partisan, non-ideological exposition of climate
science and moral common sense ... a meditation on ‘what matters,’” he
asserted.
Instead, he said, the documentary “is a colorfully illustrated lawyer’s
brief for global warming alarmism and energy rationing.” Through his
own investigation, Lewis said he has found that “nearly every
significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate
policy is either one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative or
wrong.”
By definition, a lawyer’s brief is one-sided, as is Gore’s film, Lewis
charged, adding that it also is politically motivated as a “J’accuse”
aimed at the fossil-energy-based United States and other Westernized
countries, the Bush administration and its allies in the U.S. oil and
auto industries.
As a result of what Lewis termed Gore’s “extraordinary film,” nearly
every U.S. politician “is trying to out-green each other ... So this
film has had a tremendous influence on the United States.”
In “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore points to evidence of global warming
through many examples, including an increase in the intensity of
hurricanes and glacial melting, resulting from the effect of greenhouse
gases. He claims human beings have contributed to the earth’s warming
through the use of fossil fuels.
During his lecture-slide presentation, Lewis reviewed his challenges to
Gore’s assertions. He began by noting that the film was promoted as:
“By far the most terrifying movie we’ll ever see.” Gore, in Lewis’
view, is frightening people to advance his own liberal political agenda.
He added, “It is a good idea to be skeptical when a politicans says the
world is coming to an end.” What’s more, Lewis reiterated, Gore’s film
only presents evidence that supports his case.
When he asked the audience how many had seen the film and only a
smattering of hands were raised, Lewis triggered laughter when he
asserted, “Oh my God! In Washington, D.C., everyone has seen the movie
several times! In fact, they’ve never left the movie!”
On major points of contention, Lewis cited scientific evidence in
charging that Gore is incorrect in his claims that global warming
triggered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, will eventually result
in a mini-ice age in Europe and will case the sea to rise by 20 feet
with the loss of the shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica.
Among several specific examples of what he characterized as the film’s
one-sided statements, Lewis said, “‘AIT’ never acknowledges the
indispensable role of fossil fuels in alleviating hunger and poverty,
extending human lifespans and democratizing consumer goods, literacy,
leisure and personal mobility.”
In reviewing what he termed misleading statements in the film, he said,
“‘AIT’ implies that, throughout the past 650,000 years, changes in CO2
levels preceded and largely caused changes in global temperatures,
whereas the causality mostly runs the other way: CO2 changes followed
global temperature changes by hundreds to thousands of years.”
As for what he labeled exaggerated statements, Lewis said, “‘AIT’ hypes
the importance and greatly exaggerates the certainty of the alleged
link between global warming and the frequency and severity of tropical
storms.”
Speculative statements in the film, according to Lewis, included,
“‘AIT’ blames global warming for the record-breaking 37-inch downpour
in Mumbai, India, in July 2005, even though there has been no trend in
Mumbai rainfall for the month of July for 45 years.”
He cited the following as “wrong statements” in the film:
• “‘AIT’ claims glaciologist Lonnie Thompson’s reconstruction of
climate history proves the Medieval Warm Period was ‘tiny’ compared to
the warming observed in recent decades. It doesn’t. Four of Thompson’s
six ice cores indicated the Medieval Warm Period was as warm or warmer
than any recent decade.
• “It claims the rate of global warming is accelerating, when it has
been remarkably constant for the past 30 years — roughly 0.17 degrees
centigrade per decade.
• “It attributes Europe’s killer heat wave of 2003 to global warming: It was actually due to an atmospheric circulation anomaly.
• “It claims that 2004 set an all-time record for the number of
tornadoes in the United States. Tornado frequency has not increased;
rather, the detection of smaller tornadoes has increased. If we
consider the tornadoes that have been detectable for many decades (F-3
or greater), there is actually a downward trend since 1950.
• “It blames global warming for a ‘mass extinction crisis’ that is not, in fact, occurring.”
After citing the aforementioned, Lewis said, “In light of these and
other distortions, ‘AIT’ is ill-suited to serve as a guide to climate
science and climate policy for the American people.”
He also said, “The consensus is there’s no consensus on global warming.
There is, in fact, strong debate — and no strong consensus.”
Lewis chastised Gore for “moralizing” in his film and manipulating information to support his case.
“How do we do the most good?” he asked, rhetorically.
The Kyoto Protocol would only reduce malaria infections about 0.2
percent, Lewis said, “but with a targeted policy” to devise alternative
energy sources that emit much less greenhouse gas, the U.S. and the
world would benefit most. “Kyoto is just all cost for no benefit.”
He added, “We don’t know how to reduce or control climate change.”
Lewis then asked, “(Does anyone know of) the only proven ‘method’ for making deep (energy) emission cuts?
“The only contemporary example is the former Soviet Union’s economic
collapse,” he said. Thus, “the cure would be worse than the disease,”
Lewis concluded, as he received hearty applause from the audience.
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