Senate committee launches taxpayer-funded misinformation campaign about Gore's movie

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a press statement, “AP Incorrectly Claims Scientists Praise Gore’s Movie,” but the statement lacks the scientific backing to substantiate the claims of its title.

The Associated Press contacted 100 climate scientists, including some well known "climate skeptics". Of the 19 that had seen the movie, all commended its scientific accuracy. Read my response below.

The Committee faults the AP for not cherry-picking the handful of scientists around the world who make a living questioning the scientific consensus on global warming. For example, an Australian scientist named Bob Carter told an obscure Canadian paper that Gore’s arguments are "so weak that they are pathetic." How could the AP exclude this kind of incisive analysis?

Since Marc Morano and Matt Dempsey, who work for the committee, encourage us to contact them about the release, I wrote them the following response:

Dear Mr. Dempsey and Mr. Morano,

I wish to clear up a few misconceptions regarding the issues that you have made with the scientific facts behind the movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Firstly, it is a widely accepted scientific fact that humans are having a significant impact on the Earth's climate (IPCC, 2001), and likely have been for thousands of years (Ruddiman, 2003). The linkages between atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and atmospheric temperatures are clear, as are the clear linkages between human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, and the concentrations of greenhouse gasses. These linkages are undeniable.

Furthermore, the evidence suggesting that the changes occuring in our climate today are outside the scope of natural fluctuations is startling. This is not to say that the Earth's climate has not changed this rapidly in the past; we know that it has. It has just never changed this much this rapidly. In other words, we are in the midst of one of the largest and most rapid climate changes that has possibly ever occurred. The idea that a few politicians, with little or no scientific training can be making claims which cause confusion and help support their inaction are what is most disturbing about climate change.

Regarding the vanishing tropical ice cap of Mount Kilimanjaro, while it is true that Georg Kaser, a personal friend of mine, and others (2004) have claimed that it is too cold atop the mountain to cause the ice to melt, Lonnie Thompson, also a personal friend, has photographic evidence of huge pools of melt water forming on top of the ice caps, with huge ice dams collapsing. Kuhn (1979) showed that significant melt can occur on a glacier at temperatures well below freezing (-10ºC) given other conditions which likely exist on the summit of Kilimanjaro today. Yes, it is true that much of the ice has sublimated (change directly from a solid to a gas) and that some of the retreat is caused by lack of snowfall, but these, too, are consequences of global warming. It takes nearly 8 times as much energy to sublimate ice, which is what Kaser et al. claim is happening. There was not enough energy 150 years ago to cause this much sublimation. Today, however, increased greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing the longwave (infrared) radiation reaching the ice caps. This is the dominant energy causing the changes we are seeing on all glaciers, and it is directly caused by the concentration of greenhouse gasses. These gas concentrations are increasing because of human activities. Still, linking the melting of a single glacier to global warming is more difficult and less significant that making the link between the widespread global retreat of glaciers and secular warming.

Finally, claims that there is still scientific doubt regarding global warming are wrong. Of every literature search of peer-reviewed journals in the past decade, not a single article has disputed global warming.

I did note one glaring mistake in Al Gore's movie, however. On one of his slides, he misspelled the name of our planet. While the correct spelling is "Earth", he had misspelled it "earth", which means dirt. This is as common an error as the claim by the US media that there is still a debate on global warming. Still, I plan to let him know so that he can correct this in his slide shows.

In the future, please check all of your facts with scientists who are not funded by special interests.

Sincerely,
Todd H. Albert, M.S., A.B.D.
Department of Geography
Florida State University

References:

• IPCC (2001), Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 944 pp., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
• Kaser, G., et al. (2004), Modern glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro as evidence of climate change: observations and facts, International Journal of Climatology, 24, 329-339.
• Kuhn, M. (1979), On the computation of heat transfer coefficients from energy-balance gradients on a glacier, Journal of Glaciology, 22, 263-272.
• Ruddiman, W. F. (2003), The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago, Climatic Change, 61, 261-293.