Xavier Sala-i-Martin
Leo with astonishment that the government has just hired Michael Moore as a consultant on issues of terrorism and is committed to reach all English schools his film Fahrenheit 9 / 11.
Or was Al Gore DC subjects (or climate change)? Well, Moore, Gore, for that matter: both are dedicated to making propaganda film with a disturbing disregard for the truth. In the case of former vice president, a lucrative cross-political climate has led him to star in An Inconvenient Truth, a film well done, dramatic and sometimes frightening, but with a little drawback: it is full of lies uncomfortable.
Let's start with the assertion that 100% of scientists agree with its tenets. It is true that there almost unanimous agreement that the earth has warmed (less than a degree, yes) during the last century. Unfortunately for the credibility of Gore, unanimity ends here. And if not, compare the claims of the film, with some reporting a mad scientist on the payroll of Exxon, but to document that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the UN made public last week, will probably document biased in favor of environmental position but, even so, shows that the film is full of exaggerations.
Gore shows pictures of an ice-free Arctic Ocean and a thawing Greenland and Antarctica thing that he says will cause a sea level rise of 7 meters. It is true that the mass of Arctic ice has declined over the last century (a process which, incidentally, began in the early nineteenth century, long before industrial CO2 emissions.) But in regard to Antarctica, the IPCC says that temperatures there have not only risen but they have fallen (page 9) and is expected to increase ice mass over the next century (page 13). The film shows images of a small Antarctic ice which has fallen into the sea, but that area is the exception on a continent that is cooling.
Lo 7 meters is also a hype: Arctic thaw will have less impact on sea level because the ice is already floating in the water. And, says the IPCC, the Antarctic will melt quite the contrary, rising sea levels are not very large. The IPCC forecasts confirm that logic and predict that the level will rise 7 not saying Gore but between 0.18 and 0.59 meters (IPCC page 11). The terrifying images of New York slowly inundated and the Netherlands, Bangladesh Shanghai or disappearing and causing hundreds of millions of forcibly displaced are therefore, according to the IPCC itself, a fantasy film designed to cause panic and fear.
Gore suggests that Greenland melting will stop the Atlantic current that brings warm water from the South Seas and cause a new ice age in Europe. IPCC scientists are 90% sure that will not happen (page 12).
After showing pictures of the heatwave experienced by Europe in 2003, Gore says global warming will cause millions of deaths. The IPCC says (p. 9) that the local climate fluctuations such as those experienced by Europe in 2003 may not be related to increased CO2. Moreover, to be intellectually honest, the amount of people who die because of heat, Gore people should subtract which will no longer die of disease related to the cold (hypothermia, flu, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases related to low temperatures). The film does not explain that during that disastrous 2003 that killed 34,000 Europeans in the heat wave, 100,000 Europeans died too cold.
Venturing into the realm of comic genre, Gore says that bird flu, tuberculosis, SARS and even the war in Darfur are caused by global warming. Obviously, none of those silly assertions appears in the IPCC. Also shows a graph in which the costs of insurance companies to deal with hurricanes have skyrocketed. The IPCC does not mention it because everyone knows that insurance payments increase when the price of houses and when there are more people living in the sea in the hurricane belt.
Finally, the ultimate lie is the image of New Orleans devastated by Katrina and a Gore explaining that the fault is the increased intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones because of global warming. The IPCC (page 6) says that, although there is some observational evidence that the intensity may have risen since 1970 in the Atlantic, the data do not give long-term trends in either the intensity or frequency of hurricanes . Moreover, by taking land Katrina was a force of less than 3-4 on a scale of 5. The reason why it was not his unusual devastating power, but the fact that burst some levees damaged by time. The irony is that years ago scientists were warning the government that any hurricane to pass over the old dam could break and cause a catastrophe. I say it is an irony because, guess who was the vice president of government that chose to ignore that advice and not to repair the levees? The answer, Mr. Gore, it is an inconvenient truth.
This is the first in a series of five articles on climate change the Columbia economics professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin published in La Vanguardia. The second - consensus - and third - Just around the corner - are already available on their web . Like the first, have no waste and strongly invite you to read. In the fourth attempt on the controversial (and apparently missed ($) ) British government's Stern report. Close with a fifth paper on possible solutions. In a topic that unleashes so many passions (our activists walked a bit in the doldrums since the workers left their class consciousness on a cruise low cost) is never more than an opinion countercurrent calm and informed.
Via: Barcepundit .
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