The Many Errors of An Inconvenient Truth

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An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film from 2006 by Al Gore. The year after it was released it was hauled in front of the UK high court, and found to be riddled with errors. What are these errors, and what can they tell us about climate science?

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Some stock footage courtesy of Getty.
Edited by Luke Negus. Thanks to Matt Lazo for their work helping compile the literature for this project.

This video is about An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary film by Al Gore about climate change, global warming, carbon emissions and sea level rise. We talk through the Dimmock court case that led to a judge ruling An Inconvenient Truth was inaccurate in nine ways and changing its distribution to schools. Is An Inconvenient Truth propaganda? No, but Al Gore is making a political point in An Inconvenient Truth.

Huge thanks to my supporters on Patreon: Quinn Sinclair, Ebraheem Farag, Fipeczek, Mark Moore, Philipp Legner, Zoey O'Neill, Veronica Castello-Vooght, Heijde, Paul H and Linda L, Marcus Bosshard, Liat Khitman, Dan Sherman, Matthew Powell, Adrian Sand, Stormchaser007 , Daniël Sneep, Dan Nelson, The Cairene on Caffeine, Cody VanZandt, Igor Francetic, bitreign33 , Rafaela Corrêa Pereira, Thusto , Andy Hartley, Lachlan Woods, Andrea De Mezzo.


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This is so interesting, and a great reminder that climate communication need not be sensationalised, as the objective truth is powerful in and of itself.

OurEden
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Perhaps you could do a video examining all of the predictions by climate scientists, and how accurate they have been?

devilskitchen
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Great to see you back Dr Simon Clark, official real doctor of science things.

SaintPhoenixx
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Regarding the link between CO2 and temperature: The historical record, including that promulgated by the IPCC has temperature peaks BEFORE peaks in CO2, not AFTER. This would imply the causal trigger is rises in global temperature and the effect is rises in CO2. This has to exclude the populist theory that rises in CO2 trigger temperature rises, where the argument is twisted to be the wrong way around.

The scientific reason for the link is that global temperature rises trigger warming of the oceans and hence a release of dissolved CO2. The flip side when Earth cools CO2 is captured by the oceans and CO2 levels in the atmosphere decline. If you look at a chart of the Palaeolithic Time Period you can see peaks in temperature occurring roughly 100, 000 years apart each followed by a peak of CO2 approximately 800 years later. It’s a simple chicken vs the egg problem. In each case the chicken {Temperature rise} occurs first and the egg {peak in CO2} comes second. This is not the model for global warming in action as the alarmists would have you believe.

Source: IPCC report for scientists circa 2006, Patric Moore, one time Chairman of Greenpeace and currently independent Scientist / Commentator.

petermarsh
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Nice to see you back, and what a good video to release with, I also watched this film just out of interest during my Ocean Science undergraduate degree, but critically looking at it raised some eyebrows from me, especially the oceanic componants...

greeny
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Polar bears swim very well, in fact. Inuit have observed over decades seeing them well out to sea swimming and hunting, since water in the summer is a fact of life for them. I would also note that there exists lots of data around sea levels, which have changed very little over a hundred or more years.

regmcguire
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In 2022, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) reported the highest levels of coral cover across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in over 36 years. 😂

Frumibandersnatch
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I have data based on antarctic ice cores that says that the higher CO2 levels follow rising temperatures not the other way around. The last Ice Age ended about 10 to 12 thousand years ago. This means that we may be less than halfway through an inter-glacial period, hence, I would expect global avg temperatures to continue rising for a few more centuries or perhaps millennia with or without human contributions of CO2

GeorgeMcMenamin
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18:45 "content is served to us algorithmically" made me chuckle, the video has conditioned my brain to expect that last word to have something to do with Al Gore

kala_asi
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This film had many, many flaws. But what it was great at was getting people to focus on climate change and the impending issues that're plaguing the planet. So, I give VP Gore credit for making this issue known to the public, despite it's many flaws. It's just like how _Super Size Me_ changed the landscape of Fast Food culture, despite all of that documentary's issues.

KC-Mitch
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I have to comment on your statement that peoples of pacific islands are not evacuating due to sea level rises. We, in Australia are already making plans to take in residents of these islands due to sea level rise. Although these people are relocating to different areas within their nations at the moment due to constant inundations due to sea level rise, it won't be long before they can't do that any more and other countries have to take them in. Movement is happening, even if it can't really be called evacuations as such right now. There are negotiations happening and talks about how to deal with 'statelessness' happening every day.

rennnnn
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I read the judge's decision. You missed the mark on what he said about the correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature. He stated that, though there is correlation between the two, close examination revealed that CO2 increases lagged temperature increases. Thus, the graph more likely indicated that increased temperatures caused increased CO2 levels, not that increased CO2 caused increased temperatures. There might be other evidence that CO2 increases cause increased temperatures, but this graph does not qualify.

abajojoe
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Sea level rise is predicted to be between 1.3 to 1.6 meters by 2100, but the IPCC has consistently underestimated sea level rise in their projections, so the idea this is a lowball is plausible.
Arctic Ocean is predicted to be sea ice free by between 2035 and 2040, known as the blue ocean event, is the acceleration turning point where global warming is out of humanity's hands.
Solomon Islands are five Pacific islands which have already been submerged due to sea level rise, and a sixth, Tuvalu, home to 12, 000 people, is likely to join them in the next few decades.
Regarding Kilimanjaro, I have to ask how it's possible that mountains melting isn't attributed to global warming. There are so many locations where mountain glaciers are rapidly retreating.

AvangionQ
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Good to see you back Simon. Hope things are going good.

nickwilliams
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"Taking a complex statement and reducing it down to snappy headlines..."
This happens a lot more than should be acceptable... I hate it...

scienceislove
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"Is it a political film? Yes!"

cheapcomedy
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10:23 there is the fact that co2 lags the global temperature rise by about 800 years during the glacial-interglacial transition during an overall ice age, although that was caused by milankovitch cycles rising temperatures first by changing the amount sunlight hitting the polar ice caps in summer which melts the ice, reduces the albedo, and causes the planet to warm up, than co2 is degassed from the oceans (because co2 is less soluble in warmer water, it’s one reason why you store carbonated drinks like Soda cold), than that causes most of the warming after which is why we enter an interglacial period. So while the initial warming is caused by milankovitch cycles during a glacial-interglacial transition, most of the warming comes after co2 is degassed from the oceans which amplifies the warming. The forcing from milankovitch cycles alone isn’t enough to actually stop or start glacial cycles.

Just thought I’d mention it because it is a misleading claim many climate “skeptics” make “because if co2 lags temps than it can cause it to rise”.

PremierCCGuyMMXVI
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The big real issue is at this time we do not have the ability to remove large volumes of CO2 from the atmosphere. There is lag in emissions (currently at 422 ppm from 280 ppm CO2). So as we reach 1.5 C over preindustrial within the next 3 years massive melting is guaranteed. We may have reached enough lag with positive feedback that Greenland melting over a century or two may be guaranteed. 2 meters of sea level by 2070 WILL happen and reduction of our food supply WILL happen resulting in large scale starvation (not millions but hundreds of millions). These effects are no longer avoidable.

DaveS
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The melting of arctic sea ice does not contribute to sea level rise as you state at 5:00. The arctic sea ice is already floating, when it melts it displaces exactly the same amount of water as it did in ice form. So, it does not contribute at all to any rise in sea level. I appreciate the overall message of the video, though I think you are giving the climate-change fearmongers much more slack than they deserve. It actually isn't clear what will happen in this century. It may turn out that the fear was mostly unfounded.

rogerogden
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I'm still struggling here. Given evaporation from the oceans due to heat increases CO2 in the atmosphere, do we know CO2 is at the root of climate change, or is it merely a CONSEQUENCE of climate change and we need to look elsewhere? We're using models that think you can have negative cloud cover and don't know fresh water freezes as 0 C. Instead of fixing the physics, they've added fudges to stop these errors, and that tells me the models aren't accurate. Before we impoverish the western world by switching off all fossil fuels (which, btw, would also remove clothing, computers, phones, windfarms and solar panels, shoe soles, eye glasses, medicines, medical equipment, food deliveries to northern climes in winter, and just about everything else that has ensured the flourishing of humans on Earth since they are ALL based on on oil derivatives), wouldn't it be a good thing to be absolutely CERTAIN increased CO2 is CAUSING increased temps and not the other way around? Wouldn't it be a good idea to make the models accurate to actual physics instead of using ad-hoc fudges to conform to a political agenda? Shouldn't we be paying more attention to the satellite temperature data (which says the temperature hasn't gone up that much) rather than weather stations that are being surrounded by urban sprawl or are next airports? Might it be an idea to move the CO2 sensors off the Hawaiian islands (known for volcanic activity) and base them somewhere there is NO volcanic activity? Also, if CO2 (plant food, remember, which was at 1, 000 ppm when primates first evolved -- the optimum level for plant life and the level we pump it into greehouses) IS the driving force, and neither China nor India have ANY intention to stop their use, what difference will it make to starve and impoverish the advanced countries which have the equipment and money to find solutions?

socratesrocks