Ryan ChartrandHere is a story that you won’t hear from many in the mainstream media. A truck driver in England has sued the Ministry of Education for sending “An Inconvenient Truth” to 3,300 secondary schools as required viewing with no counter-argument. A recent ruling by the High Court has determined that there are nine factual inaccuracies in the film and those teachers who present the film must show the other side of the debate and draw attention to the factual inaccuracies. They are required to do this because of a law in England which requires teachers “shall forbid. the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school.” Wish we had a law like that in our schools. Now here is the interesting part, the factual inaccuracies:
1. The snows melting on Mount Kilimanjaro are as a result of global warming. The government expert conceded this isn’t true.
2. The film suggests ice cores prove that rises in CO2 cause the temperature to rise. The court discovered that this is not the case; in fact that rises in CO2 lag behind temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
3. Blaming Hurricane Katrina on global warming, as the film suggests, is “not possible,” stating that you can’t blame one-off events to global warming.
4. The government expert also conceded that the drying up of Lake Chad cannot be attributed to global warming.
5. The film attributes drowning polar bears to disappearing ice. It turns out Mr. Gore misunderstood the study he cited and that the polar bears drowned due to a storm.
6. Global warming could cause the Atlantic Gulf Stream to stop, plunging Europe into another ice age. The evidence showed this is a scientific impossibility.
7. The bleaching of coral reefs was due to global warming. The court could not find any evidence that this was the case.
8. The film suggests that sea level might rise by 7 meters (23 feet) but evidence shows that sea level will only rise by 40 cm (15 inches).
9. The claim that the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand, blamed on global warming, is unsubstantiated and false.
In a related issue, a study done by Dennis Avery, an environmental economist, and Professor Fred Singer, a physicist, has shown that global warming “is good, and not our fault.” They looked at the work of over 500 scientists, most of who do not describe themselves as skeptics, and found it is very doubtful man is the cause of global warming. They also cited warming periods of the past have been the times of greatest prosperity for mankind and cold spells kill far more than warm spells. As to the claim that weather gets worse with warming they concluded, “It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine, plagues and disease.”
There you go. Call me what you will; you don’t have to believe me this time, but you should probably believe the High Court of England and more than 500 scientists.
Taylor Scott is an international business senior and the author of last Wednesday’s conservative column.