Executive Summary: Science Fiction
5 Years After: Networks Celebrate Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth,’ Ignore Scientific Flaws, Criticism
By Julia A. Seymour, Business and Media Institute
The cause for the end of the world has been imagined by screenwriters to include everything from giant insects and malevolent robots to asteroids the size of Texas. But five year ago in May 2006, Hollywood found a new menace: carbon dioxide. This scenario was different in another respect. It was supposedly true.
The documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” wasn’t intended to be the blockbuster end-of-the-world tale that “Armageddon” was, but it was intended to frighten. The new film was full of disaster footage and catastrophic predictions about climate change. Its leading man: former vice president Al Gore.
The apocalyptic warning earned nearly $50 million worldwide and turned Gore into a “movie star,” according to the fawning networks. Gore won accolades, including an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize. Reporters and anchors on ABC, CBS and NBC also made a hero of Apocalypse Al, embracing his views and bringing on guests with the same views including one who said Gore had been busy “saving the planet – literally.”
Gore received almost entirely uncritical coverage from the network morning and evening shows over global warming, despite plenty of evidence – scientific evidence – that would have discredited him and his film. Since the movie’s release, nearly 98 percent of those stories have excluded criticism of the so-called “science” of the film.
Gore’s film has been criticized for many errors and hyperbole regarding the past and future effects of global warming – including his exaggerated claim that sea levels will rise by 20 feet and his now-debunked assertion that Hurricane Katrina was caused by climate change. Such examples were used to scare audiences into accepting Gore’s political agenda. The errors and agenda of the film prompted a British judge to rule that the film couldn’t be shown in schools without a disclaimer pointing out its inaccuracies and political bias. But those critical views are regularly banished from the networks.
The Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute analyzed broadcast news coverage of Gore about climate change and mentions of “An Inconvenient Truth” between May 11, 2006, shortly before the film’s release, and April 30, 2011. Here are some of BMI’s findings:
- Who Needs Science?: Nearly 98 percent of broadcast stories (266 out of 272) failed to challenge the supposedly scientific claims of “An Inconvenient Truth” about global warming, including dramatic predictions of sea level rise and links between climate change and extreme weather such as tornadoes, hurricanes, fires and droughts. Many of these claims have been challenged, yet scientific criticism was barely represented by ABC, CBS and NBC.
- Gore’s Way or the Highway: More than 80 percent (222 of 272) of the network stories and briefs excluded any criticism of Al Gore or his film. About one-fifth of the stories that included opposition were critical of the 2007 Live Earth concerts organized by Gore, but expressed no dissent about global warming.
- Gore For President, or VP or Czar: Gore’s success with “An Inconvenient Truth,” was used by all three networks to push him to run for president again or accept a position within the Obama administration. In one CBS “Early Show” interview, Harry Smith literally tried to pin a “Gore ’08” campaign button on the former vice president.
- NBC the Worst: NBC has thrown objectivity out the window on the issue of global warming, preferring activism instead. In the past five years, “Nightly News” and “Today” maintained that role by including the lowest percentage of opposing views (17 percent) in its Gore/”An Inconvenient Truth” reports. Its parent company NBC/Universal also partnered with Gore for the Live Earth concerts, which were aired on its networks.
- ABC the Best: ABC news programming with “World News” and “Good Morning America,” ranked best out of the three networks because they included more opposing views than the other networks. But those views were still only included roughly one-fifth of the time (20 of 95).
To improve coverage, BMI recommends:
- Don’t just take Gore’s word for it: Al Gore is certainly a passionate activist, but he isn’t a scientist. The networks shouldn’t take his interpretation of global warming science as truth. Rather, they should be skeptical because of his very real political agenda.
- Include both sides: The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states journalists should “ Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.” It is the media’s job to inform the public, not persuade them by leaving out alternative viewpoints. Particularly, networks should give skeptical scientists the opportunity to share their findings – just like they include scientists who say manmade global warming is going to devastate the planet.
- Recognize that advocacy is not reporting: The SPJ Code of Ethics also says to: “Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.”
Read the Full Report
Read the Sidebar: Live Earth: NBC Joins the Fight for ‘Climate in Crisis,’ Fails to Stay Objective
Rbateman at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/24/five-years-of-an-inconvenient-truth/#comment-667230 says the spotnumbers for 23rd and 24th should be 22 and 11. Well, NOAA has them at 37 and 23. How so?
Leif Svalgaard – are you there, to explain this?
Rich.
sceptical says:
May 25, 2011 at 10:01 am
The court found no instances of psuedo-science or anti-science in the award winning documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth”.
They did find a bunch of glaring inaccuracies, exaggerations and errors though. And ran out of time to consider the additional two dozen laid before it.
See – owe to Rich says:
May 25, 2011 at 11:24 am
Rbateman at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/24/five-years-of-an-inconvenient-truth/#comment-667230 says the spotnumbers for 23rd and 24th should be 22 and 11. Well, NOAA has them at 37 and 23. How so?
Leif Svalgaard – are you there, to explain this?
Rich.
Yesterday upon the Sun
I saw a spot, that’s two not one
Today I saw a couple more
Write down quick “a group of four”
For a definitive analysis of the book An Inconvenient Truth read A Convenient Fabrication.
sceptical – I see it like this: The UK court was swayed by weight of expert opinion, as courts tend to be – they don’t try to be scientific experts themselves. They were nevertheless persuaded that there were serious errors in the film, and that it should not be presented in schools without guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination. There is a natural bias in the court system, because plaintiffs are required to prove their case whereas defendants are not, so it could reasonably be argued that the errors were proven while the parts of the judgement that you cite were not, and that the court realised that the film was political in nature.
It is unreasonable to regard the parts of the judgement that you cite as some kind of scientific proof, because the judge said[*] that the errors were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration” and that the graphs of CO2 and temperature (the core scientific evidence in the film) “do not establish what Mr Gore asserts”.
Rather than rely on the court judgement, the sensible thing to do is to continue to test the science, and to test predictions against subsequent events. The climate has not in any way gone outside its natural range, the sea level is pretty much where it was 140,000 years ago (it has moved ~120 metres down and up since then), the rate of sea rise has slowed to the equivalent of a few inches per century (way below the alarming predictions), the Arctic sea ice has stopped shrinking, the oceans have stopped warming, the tropical troposphere shows no relative warming (AGW predicts that it must), etc, etc. No mechanism has ever been presented for the IPCC’s claimed positive cloud feedbacks, and evidence has now been found for the cloud-GCR connection, which was explicitly ignored in the IPCC report. All the evidence is pointing to a climate ruled primarily by natural phenomena.
The public is now ahead of the politicians. They realise that they are being scammed, and are refusing to pay for expensive feel-good schemes with no chance of success.
[*] – I relied on reports of the judgement.
“Boy, when I was your age Pluto was a planet.” That’s an inconvenient truth.
There may be hope for MSNBC, believe it or not. The recent hiring of Steele may not have been the cynical ploy it seemed. The new owners are notorious Republicans.
Sorry Al Gore Shill, I mean “sceptical” but the errors in Al Gore’s science-fiction propaganda film are explicit,
Judge, “[b]some of the errors by Mr Gore in AIT do arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.[/b]”
1. ERROR: Sea level rise of up to 20 feet (7 metres) will be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland in the near future.
Judge, “This is distinctly alarmist, It is common ground that if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, but only after, and over, millennia”
2. ERROR: Low lying inhabited Pacific atolls are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.
Judge, “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.”
3. ERROR: Shutting down of the “Ocean Conveyor”.
Judge, “According to the IPCC, it is very unlikely that the Ocean Conveyor will shut down in the future”
4. ERROR: Direct coincidence between rise in CO2 in the atmosphere and in temperature, by reference to two graphs.
Judge, “the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts.”
5. ERROR: The snows of Kilimanjaro.
Judge, “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.”
6. ERROR: Lake Chad.
Judge, “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.”
7. ERROR: Hurricane Katrina.
Judge, “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.”
8. ERROR: Death of polar bears.
Judge, “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. …it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description.”
9. ERROR: Coral reefs.
Judge, “separating the impacts of climate change-related stresses from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting, is difficult.”
Once all the scientific errors are removed from Al Gore’s science-fiction propaganda film you are left with nothing that is alarming and thus a much different presentation that would not have had much if any serious impact. His propaganda requires lying about sea-level rise, lying about polar bears dying, lying about Hurricane Katrina ect… all with the intention to scare the hell out of ordinary people who don’t know any better.
“Sceptical”, please tell me what is scientific about lying and why do you support liars?
Proof: ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is Science Fiction (Video) (1min)
as an aside … the youtube video on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/14/gore-entire-north-polar-ice-cap-will-be-gone-in-5-years/ has gone missing …
did anyone have the luminous idea of preserving a copy of the video ?
or, since it was on WDR’s “Heute”, can any of our German friends look up a copy on their site ?
tia
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it [global warming] is” – Al Gore, 2006
“some of the errors by Mr Gore in AIT do arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.” – British High Court Justice Michael Burton, 2007 Ruling
Comment by Eli Rabett — 21 May 2011 @ur momisugly 7:13 PM at RC:
The magic flute had it right. Those of us who understand climate change have abandoned Al Gore when we should have supported him.
There is a group of people, ranging from Darryl Inhofe and his troll Marc Morano, to Roger Pielke Jr. who saw that Gore was effective and therefore vilified him. We have seen this tactic before with Nicholas Stern, and with Joe Romm, where any small mote was blown up into a huge controversy and we too easily folded in face of the onslaught.
It is become increasingly clear that there is no hiding and the opponents of necessary action on climate change have to be met head on and we have to stop abandoning our allies.
WHAHAHAHAHA what a jerk!
Poptech, you are confused, I never said I support you.
As far as your accusations against Mr. Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth”, you are off base. Mr. Justice Burton says in his ruling, “I turn to AIT, the film. The following is clear: i) It is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact…”
Poptech, why do you support lying about Mr. Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth”?
sceptical says:
May 27, 2011 at 7:07 am
Sceptical – why do you lie about what Poptech is saying? Lying in defense of the indefensible is no proof.
PhilJourdan, good response. You must have put a lot of thought into what you were going to say. Its refreshing to see an evidence based response supported by citation. Thank you.
Are you arguing with yourself? Since your last post appears to be directed at that. My citation is your post. Your citation is Poptech’s. Clearly you either are referring to the wrong person (in which case my post is pointless) or your last post is a refutation of your previous post.
Sceptical, I proved a verbatim quote from the judge to the 9 lies he ruled on in Gore’s science fiction propaganda film. I have not stated any lies about Mr. Gore. I have quite a bit of material on him,
The Education of Al Gore (The Washington Times)
“Mr. Gore’s high school performance on the college board achievement tests in physics (488 out of 800 “terrible,” St. Albans retired teacher and assistant headmaster John Davis told The Post) and chemistry (519 out of 800 “He didn’t do too well in chemistry,” Mr. Davis observed) suggests that Mr. Gore would have trouble with science for the rest of his life. At Harvard and Vanderbilt, Mr. Gore continued bumbling along.
As a Harvard sophomore, scholar Al “earned” a D in Natural Sciences 6 in a course presciently named “Man’s Place in Nature.” That was the year he evidently spent more time smoking cannabis than studying its place among other plants within the ecosystem. His senior year, Mr. Gore received a C+ in Natural Sciences 118.
At Vanderbilt divinity school, Mr. Gore took a course in theology and natural science. The assigned readings included the apocalyptic, and widely discredited “Limits to Growth,” which formed much of the foundation for “Earth in the Balance.” It is said that Mr. Gore failed to hand in his book report on time. Thus, his incomplete grade turned into an F, one of five Fs Mr. Gore received at divinity school, which may well be a worldwide record.”
Al Gore, Environmentalist and Zinc Miner (The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2000)
Al Gore Refuses to Take Personal Energy Ethics Pledge (US Senate Environment & Public Works Committee)
Gore’s home energy use: more than 20 times the national average (Tennesse Center for Policy Research)
poptech, the judge nowhere claimed any lies by Mr. Gore. Please take the time to read what you pasted. All of the “errors” the judge found in AIT were on the strength of evidence of causation. The judge never said the conclusions were wrong, only that the link wasn’t as concrete as some may take from AIT. Repeating lies about Mr. Gore lying is silly. poptech, you are being silly.
Just think of all of the impressionable young minds AIT has influenced because this judge decided that AIT was a useful teaching tool.
sceptical has cognitive dissonance, and he has it bad.
sceptical, I never said the judge used the word lies, I called them lies because that is what they are. They are lies used as propaganda because the truth is not alarming and AIT has been debunked in a court of law as the Judge explicitly stated,
“some of the errors by Mr Gore in AIT do arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.” – British High Court Justice Michael Burton, 2007 Ruling
The judge called them alarmist. AIT is an alarmist political propaganda film.
poptech, AIT was never debunked in a court of law. The judge actually said, ““The Film advances four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC…”
The court found the film to be based on actual science. Your representation of the film is silly.
smokey, your silly. How am I being disharmonious? Is it because I do not agree with you?
Poptech
Makes you wonder why a senior was taking a freshman course. We had those in HS. They were in the Honor Society, but their course load consisted of TA, TA, TA, TA (and we are not talking anatomy). In other words, sounds like he was skating.
Funny how Sceptical only uses the quotes from the High Court British judges to support his own 1-sided totally biased view on the propaganda film so-called “An Inconvenient Truth” & doesn’t bother to even acknowledge the quotes from the judge that oppose his view. Mmmm… Sounds exactly like the arguments of these Pseudo-Science Zealots everywhere. Completely ignoring the facts disputing their “holy doctrine” AKA A Convenient LIE with their fingers shoved firmly in their ears, all the while shouting “LA LA LA LA!” at the top of their lungs. Its sounding more & more like a religion all the time.
Funny how anyone who tries to publicly debate or offer a different opinion on these so-called global warming “facts” is always ridiculed, spoken over or quickly ejected from the room. Yes… were all a bunch of filthy “Heretics” or “Liars” or “Skeptics” or as your buddy Al puts it: “Deniers” because we don’t believe in this new age Pseudo-Science Doomsday Religion you call “man-made global warming”. Furthermore there are claims that “skeptics” have all sold out to the oil companies who seek to discredit your hero “Honest Al” so they can continue making profits. So you better burn us at the stake Sceptical because we wont be changing our mind on this issue because WE KNOW THE TRUTH. That is that GW is all a money making Ponzi scheme invented by Al Gore & his beneficiaries to make a killing out of everyday gullible people like you Sceptical. Despite common misconception, Oil Companies & Big Polluters don’t stand to lose from “Honest Al’s” propaganda, they stand to gain astronomical profits from the completely ridiculous Carbon Tax (or Cap & Trade scheme depending on what country your from).
So how do these governments want to tackle the impending doom of Global warming related disasters huh? By Stopping deforestation? To cease illegal Toxic waste dumping? Stopping water & air pollution? No, but by implementing a “Carbon Tax” that will tax ordinary citizens & businesses alike on everything aspect of human activity that releases such “toxic gases” as Methane & Carbon Dioxide. From turning on your lights, to driving your car, to even… bizarrely enough: animals flatulence. Thats right folks animals FARTING WILL BE TAXED. What utter nonsense! Even if you believe that CO2 is toxic gas; even though we breath it out constantly & 0.039% of the earths atmosphere is made up of naturally occurring Carbon Dioxide (While 0.000179% of the atmosphere is methane). Answer me this question if you can. How on earth is paying a ludicrous carbon tax to a corrupt government going to stop global warming? How? Honestly it isn’t. Big Polluters wont lose out in the end, however low to middle income earners will. It will increase the cost of living to the point where many low-income earners will be forced out onto the street. Essentially making this a TAX ON THE POOR.
Honestly if this doesn’t expose this fraud for what it is, then nothing will & I’m sorry but you are a fool. For if you believe a conniving compulsive liar like Al Gore, who has gone on record “Claiming” he invented the internet (what a blatant lie) than you will believe anything.
Sceptical my representation is exact,
Did the judge say the following,
“some of the errors by Mr Gore in AIT do arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.”
Yes or No?