Al Gore | ukwatch.net

Climate change: from issue to magnifier

Ellie Keen — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:38:02 +0000

The headline in the Independent newspaper on 13 October 2007 made it quite clear what the issue was: "He's won an Oscar. He's won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, can he win the Presidency?" Can Al Gore accomplish what no one has done before and secure this unique triumvirate of accolades and accomplishments?

The award of the 2007 Nobel peace prize jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the former vice-president of the United States has been applauded the world over. "It recognises climate change as a security issue", "... it emphasises the role of science in problem-solving", "... it rewards a charismatic communicator who has put climate change centre-stage". To the contrary, I found the rationale for this award bizarre. It was bizarre for Alfred Nobel's peace prize to be thus awarded – I fail to see where peace has broken out as a result of climate-science papers or Al Gore presentations. And it was bizarre to join together the enterprise of a huge international scientific assessment with a one-man publicity campaign aimed at subverting the power of the White House. The Independent newspaper, for all its populist ballyhoo, clearly saw what it was about. Why was the Nobel committee taken in?

The limits of formula

I want to examine the thesis, this formula – implicit in the Nobel award – that good science + good communication = peace. (And here, in the context of climate change, we have to think of "peace" as a shorthand for reducing the risks to societies posed by a warming climate). The IPCC represents good science, Al Gore and his inconvenient truth represents great communication; put them together and they can change the world. If only it were as simple as this.

This formula is very reminiscent of the deficit model of science communication, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, but now largely abandoned except in the bastions of scientistic hegemony that survive in western liberal democracies (although sadly still more prevalent in some other parts of the world). The deficit model suggests that the reason for perverse or laggardly public policies with regard to environmental hazards is that the public and the politicians haven't grasped the science. Louder siren voices from the republic of science, crisper and more seductive communication of that science from the spin-doctors, will rectify matters (see Simon Retallack, "Ankelohe and beyond: communicating climate change", 17 May 2006). If science speaks truth to power – to use the old Quaker formulation – and speaks it persuasively through the mouth of Al Gore and the soft-lens focus of his biopic movie, then power will surely respond. Peace will break out; a runaway climate will be brought under human control.

But this is not how our world works; and this most certainly is not the way that this world is going to come to terms with its inadvertent project of climate modification. To do that, much more than just good science is needed; and it most certainly is not sufficient for that science to be filtered through the preferences and peculiarities of one man. Camilla Toulmin points out on openDemocracy that Gore's remedy for his climate fever, promoted in An Inconvenient Truth – recycle, change your lightbulb, buy a hybrid car – is not relevant for a large majority of the world's population (see "Climate change, global justice: letter to Al Gore", 27 July 2006).

No, we need to understand the full significance of climate change in a different way. For sure, let us make sure that everyone understands that humans truly are altering climates around the world and that unfettered carbon-based material growth will lead to accelerated change ahead. This is what science is good at; this is what good science communication should be aimed at. This is lower-case "climate change"' if you will: climate change as physical reality.

The space of difference

But at that point, we have only just started on the task required. There is also an upper-case "Climate Change" phenomenon: Climate Change as a series of complex and constantly evolving cultural discourses. We next need to embark on the much more challenging activity of revealing and articulating the very many reasons why there is no one solution, not even one set of solutions, to (lower-case) climate change. "Solving"climate change, "stopping" climate chaos, "saving" the planet in ten years are fantasy projects. We disagree about Climate Change (upper-case, its social meanings not its physical reality) not because the science is uncertain or because a few well-paid sceptics have a loud voice. We disagree about Climate Change because we disagree in quite fundamental ways about the nature of the risks posed and about what constitutes appropriate responses.

Moreover, these disagreements can be traced back to things that matter very deeply to us. They emerge from our different perceptions and tolerances of risk; from our faith in, or suspicion of, the technological genius of human engineers and innovators; from the different views we hold about the role of the state in the regulation of individual freedom; from the ways we value the natural world relative to the human world; from the beliefs we hold about the autonomy of human action relative to the idea of a divine Creator.

We have to reveal these deeper reasons why we disagree about Climate Change rather than pretending that louder, crisper and slicker communication of science will somehow bully the world to a convergence of response. In different form, but with similar intent, this has been tried before in theocracies and been found wanting. God's ten commandments delivered from smoke and thunder on Mount Sinai went out of fashion a while ago. An Inconvenient Truth is hardly an adequate substitute. As David Goldston has said with respect to the US Congress: , "... the complexity of the policy discussion [about climate change] will make the previous congressional debate over whether climate change even exists seem like child's play" (see "Climate of opportunity", Nature, 17 January 2007).

This is not a prognosis for despair. It is only once we truly understand how deep our differences are, and respect them – differences in beliefs, values, goals, instruments, politics – that we will be in a position to think more clearly about what we really want to happen in the future. The role of Climate Change I suggest is not as a lower-case physical phenomenon to be "solved". We need to use the idea of Climate Change – the matrix of power relationships, social meanings and cultural discourses that it reveals and spawns – to rethink how we take forward our political, social and economic projects over the decades to come.

Climate Change is a good magnifying glass for us to use in a more forensic examination than we have been used to of each of these projects – economic growth, free trade, poverty reduction, community-building, demographic management, social health, and more. Let’s use the magnifying power of Climate Change – its emphasis on the long-term implications of short-term choices, its global reach, its revelation of new centres of power, its attention to both material and cultural values – to attend more closely to what we really want to achieve for humanity: affluence, justice or mere survival.

Mike Hulme is professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia. He is currently writing a book, to be published by Cambridge University Press, called Why We Disagree About Climate Change. His website is here.

Gore tells the truth. His enemies smear him

JamieSW — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:45:38 +0000

Is anyone else going to watch Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech live, just to check? The last time I celebrated a Gore victory it ended with a Bush hangover that thumped for eight years. So I am expecting the ceremony in Stockholm next month to end with George Bush striding to the podium to announce that the Supreme Court has declared him the world’s greatest peacemaker after all, with Gore watching pale-faced in the wings.

Yet there has already been a sour little coda. As news of the Nobel came, it was inevitably paired with a second story: that a British High Court Judge, Mr Justice Burton, had announced that there were nine “errors” in Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth that school-kids had to be warned about when it was shown to them. This verdict was celebrated by global warming deniers across the world as their Scopes Trial, a moment when the judicial system smacked-down science in favour of their dogmas.

This is part of a squalid process that has been going on for more than a decade now – the smearing of Al Gore, simply for telling the truth. I looked back over the American reports of the 2000 election this week, as George Bush was vetoing the extension of healthcare to poor children. “He’s gone from being Richard Nixon to Monty Burns,” John Stewart noted. Yet Bush was presented then as a “compassionate conservative” who you’d wanna have a beer with. Gore was presented as a prissy, effeminate asshole, and he was relentlessly mocked for, like, knowing stuff about science and the Middle East and other nerd-speak.

And – worse – Gore was presented as a Pinocchio prone to lying about his political achievements. They said Gore lied about inventing the internet. They said Gore lied about being the inspiration for Love Story. They said Gore lied about discovering toxic sites. The only catch is: it’s the journalists who were lying.

Here’s what really happened. In the 1980s, the internet was just a few computers wired up in the Pentagon for research. As a senator, Gore sponsored the very first bill to turn it into a much wider “information superhighway.” Vincent Cerf, who is widely regarded as the technological founder of the internet, has publicly said that it is thanks to Gore that the internet is used by all of us today. So when Gore said in a 1997 interview that he “took the initiative” in making the internet possible, it was true. The other Gore “lies” have equally impressive truths behind them.

Now a British court has been sucked into the smear machine. This case has been reported as a David vs Goliath battle: a plucky school governor and dad-of-two taking the former Vice-President to the High Court so his kids could be given a “balanced” education rather than having An Inconvenient Truth forced on them. The reality is rather different.

The man who brought this case, Stewart Dimmock, is a member of an organisation called the New Party, which is so far to the right that even the Scottish Tories call it “fascist”. His legal challenge to Gore has been largely funded by business interests with close links to the fuel and mining lobbies. (They call themselves “centre-right”, and claim the funding doesn’t sway them.) Dimmock isn’t Galileo bravely standing against the conventional wisdom; he’s part of the fossil-fuel Vatican.

And, crucially, the judge rejected his denialist arguments entirely. In his verdict, Justice Barton said: “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film were broadly accurate.” The thesis that man is disastrously changing the climate by increasing greenhouse gas emissions is, he says, “supported by a vast quantity of research published in peer-reviewed journals worldwide and by the great majority of the world’s climate scientists.”

But the denialists are now so discredited that they have been reduced to cherry-picking a verdict that humiliatingly rejects their arguments. They fixate on the judge’s claim that Gore makes “errors” – when, in all but one instance, it is actually Justice Burton who is mistaken.

“Error” One. Burton says “there is no evidence” that the citizens of low-lying islands like Tuvalu are being evacuated because of rising sea levels. In fact, the programme to evacuate them began in 2002, as a simple phone call to the island’s government – or to the New Zealand embassy, which is taking them in – would have told him. Journalists like Mark Lynas and Andrew Simms have been reporting on this for years.

“Error” Two. Burton says Gore argues that there is “an exact fit” between rises in CO2 and rises in global temperature. This would indeed be wrong – but Gore doesn’t say it. His exact words are: “The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside.” If you think that’s wrong, you’d fail a Geography GCSE.

“Error” Three: Burton says Gore is wrong to attribute the current slow, protracted death of the world’s coral reefs to global warming. This is bizarre. As Professor Tim Flannery explains, summarising the scientific consensus: “In all, 42 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef bleached in 1998, with 18 per cent suffering permanent damage… It is not fishing or tourists that are killing the reef, it is being done by spiralling CO2 emissions.”

I could go on. True, Gore did make one error. Although they once thought the Gulf Stream was likely to shut down, leaving Europe to freeze, most climatologists don’t think so any more. Instead, they think we will cook. Forgive me if I fail to celebrate.

Yet many news outlets thought it appropriate to wheel out in response someone who the broadcasting regulator found had made a misleading and totally disingenuous film about global warming – Martin Durkin, who “directed” The Great Global Warming Swindle. This is a man who says “legitimate scientists – people with qualifications – are the bad guys.” This is a man whose film was full of elementary howlers, like the claim that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all man’s activities combined. This is a man who has been accused by the scientists tricked into appearing on his films of “pure propaganda”, “disinformation” and being “close to fraud.” This is a man who responded by telling the scientists to “go fuck yourself”. Yet there he was, savaging Gore for producing “a sham.”

I wish Durkin was right. I wish global warming was “a lie.” I like planes and concrete and patio-heaters. But the evidence is overwhelming that Gore is right. It would be nice if we could ignore Durkin and the deniers – but people who live in greenhouse-effects can’t afford to throw stones at the science-huggin’ smart people for long.

The last time Gore was smeared, the result was President George Bush. This time, if Gore’s global campaign to stop runaway global warming is smeared into submission, the results will be even worse.

An 'error' is not the same as an error

JamieSW — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:41:16 +0000

A UK High Court judge has rejected a lawsuit by political activist Stuart Dimmock to ban the showing of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in British schools. Justice Burton agreed that

“Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate.”

There were nine points where Burton decided that AIT differed from the IPCC and that this should be addressed in the Guidance Notes for teachers to be sent out with the movie.

Unfortunately a gaggle of useless journalists have misreported this decision as one that AIT contained nine scientific errors. Let me name some of the journalists who got it wrong: Sally Peck in the Daily Telegraph, Nico Hines in the Times, Mike Nizza in the New York Times, James McIntyre in the Independent, PA in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, David Adam in the Guardian, Daniel Cressey in Nature, the BBC, Mary Jordan in the Washington Post, Marcus Baram for ABC News, and (of course) Matthew Warren in the Australian.

Let’s look at what Burton really wrote (my emphasis):

Mr Downes produced a long schedule of such alleged errors or exaggerations and waxed lyrical in that regard. It was obviously helpful for me to look at the film with his critique in hand.

In the event I was persuaded that only some of them were sufficiently persuasive to be relevant for the purposes of his argument, and it was those matters – 9 in all – upon which I invited Mr Chamberlain to concentrate. It was essential to appreciate that the hearing before me did not relate to an analysis of the scientific questions, but to an assessment of whether the ‘errors’ in question, set out in the context of a political film, informed the argument on ss406 and 407. All these 9 ‘errors’ that I now address are not put in the context of the evidence of Professor Carter and the Claimant’s case, but by reference to the IPCC report and the evidence of Dr Stott.

If you noticed the quotation marks around ‘error’ then you are more observant than all of the journalists I listed above. Burton is not saying that there are errors, he is just referring to the things that Downes alleged were errors. Burton puts quote marks around ‘error’ 17 more times in his judgement. Notice also the emphasised part — Burton is not even trying to decide whether they are errors or not. This too seems to have escaped the journalists’ attention. (And yes, that was Bob Carter mentioned there.)

So what is Burton assessing in his judgement? Well, s407 says that where political issues are involved there should be “a balanced presentation of opposing views” so Burton states that the government should make it clear when “there is a view to the contrary, i.e. (at least) the mainstream view”. Burton calls these “errors or departures from the mainstream”.

So contrary to all the reporters’ claims Burton did not find that there were 9 scientific errors in AIT, but that there were nine points that might be errors or where differing views should be presented for balance.

Now let’s look at the nine points and see if Burton classified them correctly.

In scene 21 (the film is carved up for teaching purposes into 32 scenes), in one of the most graphic parts of the film Mr Gore says as follows:

“If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in Florida. This is what would happen in the San Francisco Bay. A lot of people live in these areas. The Netherlands, the Low Countries: absolutely devastation. The area around Beijing is home to tens of millions of people. Even worse, in the area around Shanghai, there are 40 million people. Worse still, Calcutta, and to the east Bangladesh, the area covered includes 50 million people. Think of the impact of a couple of hundred thousand refugees when they are displaced by an environmental event and then imagine the impact of a 100 million or more. Here is Manhattan. This is the World Trade Center memorial site. After the horrible events of 9/11 we said never again. This is what would happen to Manhattan. They can measure this precisely, just as scientists could predict precisely how much water would breach the levee in New Orleans.”

This is distinctly alarmist, and part of Mr Gore’s ‘wake-up call’. It is common ground that if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, but only after, and over, millennia, so that the Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of 7 metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.

The IPCC report does say that the ice sheets will melt if warming is sustained over millennia, but does not rule out it happening sooner:

Recent satellite and in situ observations of ice streams behind disintegrating ice shelves highlight some rapid reactions of ice sheet systems. This raises new concern about the overall stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the collapse of which would trigger another five to six metres of sea level rise. While these streams appear buttressed by the shelves in front of them, it is currently unknown whether a reduction or failure of this buttressing of relatively limited areas of the ice sheet could actually trigger a widespread discharge of many ice streams and hence a destabilisation of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Ice sheet models are only beginning to capture such small-scale dynamical processes that involve complicated interactions with the glacier bed and the ocean at the perimeter of the ice sheet. Therefore, no quantitative information is available from the current generation of ice sheet models as to the likelihood or timing of such an event.

Burton:

In scene 20, Mr Gore states “that’s why the citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand”. There is no evidence of any such evacuation having yet happened.

Yes there is.

Seeing themselves as climate refuges some Tuvalans are already leaving their islands, moving their communities to higher ground in a new land. ... Fala and Suamalie, along with international environmental activists, argue that Tuvaluans and others in a similar predicament should be treated like refugees and given immigration rights and other refugee benefits. This tiny nation was among the first on the globe to sound the alarm, trekking from forum to forum to try to get the world to listen. New Zealand did agree to take 75 Tuvaluans a year as part of its Pacific Access Category, an agreement made in 2001.

Gore’s statement is badly worded, since it could be understood to to be saying that entire countries have been evacuated rather than some of the residents.

Burton:

In scene 17 he says, “One of the ones they are most worried about where they have spent a lot of time studying the problem is the North Atlantic, where the Gulf Stream comes up and meets the cold wind coming off the Arctic over Greenland and evaporates the heat out of the Gulf Stream and the stream is carried over to western Europe by the prevailing winds and the earth’s rotation … they call it the Ocean Conveyor … At the end of the last ice age … that pump shut off and the heat transfer stopped and Europe went back into an ice age for another 900 or 1000 years. Of course that’s not going to happen again, because glaciers of North America are not there. Is there any big chunk of ice anywhere near there? Oh yeah [pointing at Greenland]”. According to the IPCC, it is very unlikely that the Ocean Conveyor (known technically as the Meridional Overturning Circulation or thermohaline circulation) will shut down in the future, though it is considered likely that thermohaline circulation may slow down.

The IPCC says that by “very unlikely”, they mean a 5-10% chance of it happening. Since the consequences would be very bad, I think Gore is justified in saying that it is worrying, though it would have been better if he had said that it was a possible rather probable result of continued warming.

Burton:

In scenes 8 and 9, Mr Gore shows two graphs relating to a period of 650,000 years, one showing rise in CO2 and one showing rise in temperature, and asserts (by ridiculing the opposite view) that they show an exact fit. Although there is general scientific agreement that there is a connection, the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts.

Burton is wrong here. Gore does not assert that there is an exact fit, but rather that:

The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside

And that does reflect the scientific consensus.

Burton:

Mr Gore asserts in scene 7 that the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro is expressly attributable to global warming. It is noteworthy that this is a point that specifically impressed Mr Milliband (see the press release quoted at paragraph 6 above). However, it is common ground that, the scientific consensus is that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

The Kilimanjaro glacier may or may not be disappearing due to global warming, but it is making other tropical glaciers disappear. So while he could have picked a better example, it doesn’t affect his argument.

The drying up of Lake Chad is used as a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming. However, it is generally accepted that the evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution. It is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.

Sanjay Gupta reports:

The United Nations Environment Programme says that about half of the lake’s decrease is attributable to human water use such as inefficient damming and irrigation methods. The other half of the shrinkage is due to shifting climate patterns. Anada Tiega of the Lake Chad Basin Commission blames climate change for 50 to 75 percent of the water’s disappearance.

So some of it is due to human use, but it is wrong to say that global warming has been ruled out as a cause.

Burton:

In scene 12 Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans is ascribed to global warming. It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that.

Gore does not ascribe Katrina to global warming. He follows the scientific consensus in saying that warming will make hurricanes get stronger. Katrina is used as an example of the damage that stronger hurricanes could do and of the consequences of ignoring warnings from scientists.

Burton:

In scene 16, by reference to a dramatic graphic of a polar bear desperately swimming through the water looking for ice, Mr Gore says: “A new scientific study shows that for the first time they are finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances up to 60 miles to find the ice. They did not find that before.” The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm. That is not to say that there may not in the future be drowning-related deaths of polar bears if the trend of regression of pack-ice and/or longer open water continues, but it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description.

Burton is badly wrong here. Look at the news story on the drownings (my emphasis):

“We know short swims up to 15 miles are no problem, and we know that one or two may have swum up to 100 miles. But that is the extent of their ability, and if they are trying to make such a long swim and they encounter rough seas they could get into trouble,” said Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the USGS.

The new study, carried out in part of the Beaufort Sea, shows that between 1986 and 2005 just 4% of the bears spotted off the north coast of Alaska were swimming in open waters. Not a single drowning had been documented in the area.

However, last September, when the ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of Alaska, 51 bears were spotted, of which 20% were seen in the open sea, swimming as far as 60 miles off shore.

The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days later after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. “We estimate that of the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds,” said the report.

There were storms before 2006, but they didn’t drown bears. The bears drowned in the 2006 storm because they had to swim further because of global warming.

In scene 19, Mr Gore says: “Coral reefs all over the world because of global warming and other factors are bleaching and they end up like this. All the fish species that depend on the coral reef are also in jeopardy as a result. Overall specie loss is now occurring at a rate 1000 times greater than the natural background rate.” The actual scientific view, as recorded in the IPCC report, is that, if the temperature were to rise by 1-3 degrees Centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and widespread coral mortality, unless corals could adopt or acclimatise, but that separating the impacts of climate change-related stresses from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting, is difficult.

Burton is wrong. The IPCC report actually states:

Late 20th century effects of rising temperature include loss of sea ice, thawing of permafrost and associated coastal retreat, and more frequent coral bleaching and mortality.

Overall, there are a couple of points where I wish Gore would have talked about timescales and probabilities (sea level rise and thermohaline circulation), and a couple of examples that could have been better chosen (Kilimanjaro and Lake Chad). Burton was mistaken on the other points where he felt that Gore went past the consensus. I don’t think that there is any harm in the Guidance Notes on Burton’s nine points, but the usual suspects will, of course, ignore the fact that the judge found that Gore was “broadly accurate” and try to make it look as if there are serious problems with AIT and climate science.