scientists are mixed on this. another article on global warming and gore
Skeptics Call Gore's Movie Science Fiction
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 19, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - In response to former Vice President Al Gore's Academy Award-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," climate change skeptics called the film a "sci-fi disaster" movie.
"Al Gore put global warming on the map," said Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, at a Capitol Hill press conference on Friday. He called "An Inconvenient Truth" the "most politically influencing documentary."
But Lewis added: "Nearly every significant statement that Vice President Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative or wrong."
Lewis outlines these arguments in a 140-page congressional working paper released Friday, ahead of Gore's trip to Washington, D.C., to provide congressional testimony on global warming.
He said the movie "purport to be a non-partisan, non-ideological exposition of climate science. In reality, the film is a computer-enhanced lawyer's brief for global warming alarmism and energy rationing."
"The only facts and studies Gore considers are those convenient to his scare-them-green agenda," he said.
Lewis said Gore "vastly overstates carbon dioxide's importance" in climate change, noting that the 1930s were warmer than current temperatures.
"Our parents or grandparents somehow survived that crisis, and I think we will, too," he said sarcastically.
Lewis also took issue with Gore's characterization of climate change as a "moral issue."
"Gore calls global warming a 'moral issue,' but for him, it is a moralizing issue -- a license to castigate political adversaries and blame America first for everything from hurricanes to floods to wildfires to tick-borne disease," Lewis said.
"Somehow, he sees nothing immoral in the attempt to make fossil energy scarcer and more costly in a world where 1.6 billion people have never flipped a light switch and billions more are too poor to own an automobile," he said.
"There is no way you can stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere unless you extend Kyoto-like initiatives to developing countries like China and India," Lewis added.
Lewis said that many developing nations are "energy starved" and would be harmed by policies that would force them to curb the use of fossil fuels, an energy source he said is the "most affordable for the foreseeable future."
The Union of Concerned Scientists, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, World Resources Institute and Environmental Defense declined to comment for this article, but according to the movie's website, "The evidence [for global warming] is overwhelming and undeniable."
"The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it's already happening and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence," it states. "We're already seeing changes.
"Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing," it says. "If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences."
