An Inconvenient Truth

BY ROGER EBERT / June 2, 2006 I want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it. I am a liberal, but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it, and it represents, I believe, agreement among the world's experts. Global warming is real. It is caused by human activity. Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it. If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a "tipping point" and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the other species on this planet. After that point is reached, it would be too late for any action. These facts are stated by Al Gore in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Forget he ever ran for office. Consider him a concerned man speaking out on the approaching crisis. "There is no controversy about these facts," he says in the film. "Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero." He stands on a stage before a vast screen, in front of an audience. The documentary is based on a speech he has been developing for six years, and is supported by dramatic visuals. He shows the famous photograph "Earthrise," taken from space by the first American astronauts. Then he shows a series of later space photographs, clearly indicating that glaciers and lakes are shrinking, snows are melting, shorelines are retreating. He provides statistics: The 10 warmest years in history were in the last 14 years. Last year South America experienced its first hurricane. Japan and the Pacific are setting records for typhoons. Hurricane Katrina passed over Florida, doubled back over the Gulf, picked up strength from unusually warm Gulf waters, and went from Category 3 to Category 5. There are changes in the Gulf Stream and the jet stream. Cores of polar ice show that carbon dioxide is much, much higher than ever before in a quarter of a million years. It was once thought that such things went in cycles. Gore stands in front of a graph showing the ups and downs of carbon dioxide over the centuries. Yes, there is a cyclical pattern. Then, in recent years, the graph turns up and keeps going up, higher and higher, off the chart. The primary man-made cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels. We are taking energy stored over hundreds of millions of years in the form of coal, gas and oil, and releasing it suddenly. This causes global warming, and there is a pass-along effect. Since glaciers and snow reflect sunlight but sea water absorbs it, the more the ice melts, the more of the sun's energy is retained by the sea. Gore says that although there is "100 percent agreement" among scientists, a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in the 1990s by the energy industries to "reposition global warming as a debate." It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of tobacco. My father was a Luckys smoker who died of lung cancer in 1960, and 20 years later it was still "debatable" that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. Now we are talking about the death of the future, starting in the lives of those now living. "The world won't 'end' overnight in 10 years," Gore says. "But a point will have been passed, and there will be an irreversible slide into destruction." In England, Sir James Lovelock, the scientist who proposed the Gaia hypothesis (that the planet functions like a living organism), has published a new book saying that in 100 years mankind will be reduced to "a few breeding couples at the Poles." Gore thinks "that's too pessimistic. We can turn this around just as we reversed the hole in the ozone layer. But it takes action right now, and politicians in every nation must have the courage to do what is necessary. It is not a political issue. It is a moral issue." When I said I was going to a press screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," a friend said, "Al Gore talking about the environment! Bor...ing!" This is not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore's concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to. Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, has said, "Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." I hope he takes his job seriously enough to see this film. I think he has a responsibility to do that. What can we do? Switch to and encourage the development of alternative energy sources: Solar, wind, tidal, and, yes, nuclear. Move quickly toward hybrid and electric cars. Pour money into public transit, and subsidize the fares. Save energy in our houses. I did a funny thing when I came home after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth." I went around the house turning off the lights.

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Paramount Classics presents a documentary featuring Al Gore. Directed by Davis Guggenheim. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG (for mild thematic elements).

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Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth

By Jeffrey Masters, Ph.D. Director of Meteorology, Weather Underground, Inc.

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Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," aims to call attention to the dangers society faces from climate change, and suggests urgent actions that need to be taken immediately. It is based on a slide show on climate Gore has presented to audiences worldwide over 1000 times in the past 15 years, but it is not purely a documentary. Gore's movie is an advocacy piece that is part documentary, part biography, and part campaign ad. I'll discuss all three of these aspects below. In brief, Al Gore has the right idea--climate change is an urgent issue that requires immediate action, and his thoughtful movie is a welcome addition to the usual array of mindless Hollywood summer fare. However, the movie has flaws. The presentation of the science is good, but not great--I rate it a B, which is the rating I give the movie as a whole. The excessive details on Al Gore's life make the movie too long, and his insistence on using the movie as something of a campaign ad detracts from its message. However, this is a very important movie, as was recognized in the 2007 Oscars, where it won best documentary. It's a movie everyone should see.

An Inconvenient Truth as a biography of Al Gore

The creators of the movie presumably thought that simply presenting Gore's slide show would be too dull, so they decided to give the movie some human interest by interweaving a biography of Al Gore's life. Al Gore has led an interesting life, but "interesting" and "Al Gore" are not words one can often put together. Al Gore is boring, and the 20 minutes or so of biography presented in An Inconvenient Truth is too much for a movie that is 1 hour and 36 minutes long. For example, I didn't really need to see the road where Al Gore totaled his car when he was 14 years old, or a replay of his loss in the 2000 election. On the other hand, some details of his past were interesting and relevant, such as the fact that he took college courses in the late 1960s from Harvard's Dr. Roger Revelle. Revelle and Dr. Charles

Keeling were the pioneers in measurements of atmospheric CO2, and thus Gore got a very early exposure to the now infamous "Keeling Curve" (Figure 1), showing the build-up of atmospheric CO2. This early exposure to the significant impact humans were having on the atmosphere deeply affected Gore, and in the movie he details efforts he made to call attention to the issue long before most people had heard of it, back in the 1970s and 80s. Gore's slide show appropriately displays many graphs of the Keeling Curve, as it is probably the most important and most famous finding in climate change science.

Figure 1. The Keeling Curve is a record of CO2 measurements taken at he top of Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii since 1958.

The science of An Inconvenient Truth

The science presented is mostly good, and at times compelling, but there are a few errors and one major distortion of the truth. Gore does an excellent job focusing on the most important issues, and usually presents them with a minimum of hype and distortion. The only exception to this comes in his treatment of global warming and extreme weather events such as hurricanes.

Basic global warming science

Gore begins the science part of his talk with a very easy to understand presentation on the basics of how the greenhouse effect works. His speech is clear, the graphics top notch, and he spices it up with a hilarious two-minute cartoon depicting roughneck global warming gases preventing poor Mr. Sunbeam from escaping Earth's atmosphere. Gore addresses the argument of skeptics who claim that the Earth is too big for humans to affect by showing Space Shuttle photos of how thin the atmosphere really is compared to the vast bulk of our planet. "The problem we now face is that this thin layer of atmosphere is being thickened by huge quantities of carbon dioxide," he asserts, which is not correct. The build-up of CO2 has virtually no effect on the density or thickness of Earth's atmosphere. The correct thing to say would have been, "The problem we now face is that this thin layer of atmosphere is being made more opaque to the transmission of infrared radiation (heat) by huge quantities of carbon dioxide."

Glaciers
Gore shows an impressive series of "then and now" images documenting the widespread retreat of many glaciers over the past century. Most dramatically, he shows Kenya's Mt. Kilimanjaro, whose 11,000 year-old glaciers are almost gone. While not all the world's glaciers have retreated in the past century, Gore's presentation is an effective and reasonable way to show how global warming has affected the majority of the world's glaciers. Greenhouse skeptics, including Michael Crichton in his State of Fear book, are fond of bashing those who use Mt. Kilimanjaro as a poster child for demonstrating global warming. They cite scientific research showing that the glacial retreat on Mt. Kilimanjaro is due to drying of the atmosphere (PDF File), not global warming. However, as discussed at great length in a realclimate.org post, the research which supposedly supports the skeptics' claims has been widely misquoted and misinterpreted, and much of Kilimanjaro's melting can indeed be ascribed to warming of the atmosphere since 1960. Gore does an excellent job discussing the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. Again, Gore's graphics are superb, and he does a nice job narrating. He shows animations of what a 20-foot rise in sea level would do to Manhattan, Florida, India, and China. A 20-foot sea level rise is what we expect if all of Greenland or all of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt. Such a 20-foot rise is not expected by 2100, and it would have been appropriate for Gore to acknowledge that the consensus of climate scientists--as published in the most recent report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)--is that sea level is likely to rise between 4 and 35 inches, with a central value of 19 inches, by 2100. He should have also mentioned that temperatures in Greenland in the 1930s were about as warm as today's temperatures, so the current melting of Greenland's glaciers does have historical precedent. Nevertheless, the risk of a catastrophic melting and break-up of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets is very real, when we consider that sea level before the most recent ice age was 15 feet higher than it is now. Gore is right to draw attention to what might happen if sea level rose 20 feet.

Drought and heat waves

An excellent discussion of the most serious climate change issue our generation is likely to face, the threat of increased drought and reduced water supplies, is presented. Gore makes reference to the extreme heat wave that affected Europe during the summer of 2004, and I was glad to see that he didn't blame the heat wave on global warming--he merely said that more events of this nature will be likely in the future.

Hurricanes and severe weather

The biggest failure in the movie's presentation of science comes in the discussion hurricanes and severe weather events. The devastation wrought by Katrina is used to very dramatic effect to warn of the dangers climate change presents. We are told that Katrina grew "stronger and stronger and stronger" as it passed over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico that were heated up by global warming. We are told that global warming is increasing the intensity of hurricanes, but not provided information on the great amount of uncertainty and vigorous scientific debate on this issue. Graphs showing recent record insurance losses from natural disasters are presented, but no mention is made of how increasing population and insistence on building in vulnerable areas are the predominant factors causing recent high insurance claims from disasters such as Katrina. Gore points to some unprecedented events in 2004 as evidence of increasing severe weather events worldwide--the record 10 typhoons in Japan, the most tornadoes ever in the U.S., and the appearance of Brazil's first hurricane ever. However, examples of this kind are meaningless. No single weather event, or unconnected series of severe weather events such as Gore presents, are indicative of climate change. In particular, the IPCC has not found any evidence that climate change has increased tornado frequency, or is likely to. Gore doesn't mention the unusually quiet tornado season of 2005, when for the first time ever, no tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma in the month of May.

Other science
Gore presents many other important aspects of climate change, including the threat of abrupt climate change leading to a shut-off of the Gulf Stream current, the increase in damaging insect infestations and tropical diseases, loss of coral reefs, loss of ice in the polar ice cap, and melting of permafrost in the Arctic. All of these issues were presented with sound science.

An Inconvenient Truth as a campaign ad

Gore has repeatedly said that he currently has no plans to run for president again, and that this movie was created as part of his life-long passion to protect the environment. Gore undoubtedly does care very deeply about the planet, but this movie very much looks like a campaign ad. We are shown many scenes of Gore being applauded, Gore traveling the globe to present his slide show, and Gore working to uncover evidence of Republican shenanigans to alter or suppress climate change science. Gore is portrayed as a humble and tireless crusader for good. If the movie is not intended to promote his political ambitions, then it is certainly intended to benefit the Democratic Party. All this gets in the way of the movie's central message.

Conclusion
At the end of the movie, we are presented with the same image that Gore started the movie with, that of a beautiful river in the wilderness. Throughout the movie, Gore emphasizes how beautiful and special our planet is, and he does an effective job conveying this. He also makes a powerful case that something can and should be done to protect the planet, and it is worth hearing his message, even if the science is flawed and the messenger does get in the way of the message. Overall, the movie rates 2.5 stars--definitely worth seeing, but you might want to wait until the DVD comes out. At the end of the movie, Gore presents some tips on how everyone can contribute, and points people to his web site,www.climatecrisis.net. However, I would recommend that people who want to get educated about climate change get their information from web sites not associated with a politician; perhaps the least politicized source of information is the latest scientific summary (PDF File) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), a group of over 2000 scientists from 100 countries working under a mandate from the United Nations in the largest peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history. It will only take you about 20 minutes to read through their conclusions, and it is something every citizen on the globe should educate themselves on.

Should "An Inconvenient Truth" be shown in schools?

According to a recent blog posted at realclimate.org, "An Inconvenient Truth" has a become a required part of the science curriculum in some countries. One of the producers of the film, Laurie David, recently offered 50,000 free copies of the $19.99 DVD to National Science Teachers' Association (NSTA) for use in U.S. classrooms. The NSTA turned down the offer on the grounds that the NSTA has a 2001 policy against "product endorsement", and a fear that distributing the film would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." Realclimate.org points out that one of these targeted supporters is oil giant ExxonMobile, and questions whether concern about losing funding from ExxonMobile influenced the decision not to take the free movies. I don't have a problem with the NSTA rejecting the free movies on the grounds that Al Gore's presentation is politicized. However, as pointed out in the realclimate.org post, NSTA does not offer much content on climate change in their list of recommended materials. One of the recommended books, "Global Warming: Understanding the Debate" has no business being on their recommended reading list. This book is written by Kenneth Green, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). This fossil-fuel funded think tank recently offered $10,000 to any scientist willing to criticize the recent landmark 2007 Summary of Policy Makers (PDF File) climate change report issued by the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). AEI offered to award the money to scientists who would "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs", as explained in an article in the UK Guardian. Given the lack of quality climate change education material available to teachers, NSTA needs to seriously rethink their recommended offerings on this important subject.

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by Eric Steig

Along with various Seattle business and community leaders, city planners and politicians, a large group of scientists from the University of Washington got a chance to preview the new film, An Inconvenient Truth, last week. The film is about Al Gores efforts to educate the public about global warming, with the goal of creating the political will necessary for the United States to take the lead in efforts to lower global carbon emissions. It is an inspiring film, and is decidedly non-partisan in its outlook (though there are a few subtle references to the Bush administrations lack of leadership on this and other environmental issues). Since Gore is rumored to be a fan of RealClimate, we thought it appropriate to give our first impressions. Much of the footage in Inconvenient Truth is of Al Gore giving a slideshow on the science of global warming. Sound boring? Well, yes, a little. But it is a very good slide show, in the vein of Carl Sagan (lots of beautiful imagery, and some very slick graphics and digital animation). And it is interspersed with personal reflections from Gore that add a very nice human element. Gore in the classroom in 1968, listening to the great

geochemist Roger Revelle describe the first few years of data on carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere. Gore on the family farm, talking about his fathers tobacco business, and how he shut it down when his daughter (Al Gores sister) got lung cancer. Gore on the campaign trail, and his disappointment at the Supreme Court decision. This isnt the wooden Gore of the 2000 campgain; he is clearly in his element here, talking about something he has cared deeply about for over 30 years. How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research. Discussion of recent changes in Antarctica and Greenland are expertly laid out. He also does a very good job in talking about the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane intensity. As one might expect, he uses the Katrina disaster to underscore the point that climate change may have serious impacts on society, but he doesnt highlight the connection any more than is appropriate (see our post on this, here). There are a few scientific errors that are important in the film. At one point Gore claims that you can see the aerosol concentrations in Antarctic ice cores change in just two years, due to the U.S. Clean Air Act. You cant see dust and aerosols at all in Antarctic cores not with the naked eye and Im skeptical you can definitively point to the influence of the Clean Air Act. I was left wondering whether Gore got this notion, and I hope hell correct it in future versions of his slideshow. Another complaint is the juxtaposition of an image relating to CO2 emissions and an image illustrating invasive plant species. This is misleading; the problem of invasive species is predominantly due to land use change and importation, not to global warming. Still, these are rather minor errors. It is true that the effect of reduced leaded gasoline use in the U.S. does clearly show up in Greenland ice cores; and it is also certainly true that climate change could exacerbate the problem of invasive species. Several of my colleagues complained that a more significant error is Gores use of the long ice core records of CO2 and temperature (from oxygen isotope measurements) in Antarctic ice cores to illustrate the correlation between the two. The complaint is that the correlation is somewhat misleading, because a number of other climate forcings besides CO2 contribute to the change in Antarctic temperature between glacial and interglacial climate. Simply extrapolating this correlation forward in time puts the temperature in 2100 A.D. somewhere upwards of 10 C warmer than present rather at the extreme end of the vast majority of projections (as we have discussedhere). However, I dont really agree with my colleagues criticism on this point. Gore is careful not to state what the temperature/CO2 scaling is. He is making a qualitative point, which

is entirely accurate. The fact is that it would be difficult or impossible to explain past changes in temperature during the ice age cycles without CO2 changes (as we have discussed here). In that sense, the ice core CO2-temperature correlation remains an appropriate demonstration of the influence of CO2on climate. For the most part, I think Gore gets the science right, just as he did in Earth in the Balance. The small errors dont detract from Gores main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change. This is not entirely a scientific issue indeed, Gore repeatedly makes the point that it is a moral issue but Gore draws heavily on Pacala and Socolows recent work to show that the technology is there (see Science 305, p. 968 Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies). Ill admit that I have been a bit of a skeptic about our ability to take any substantive action, especially here in the U.S. Gores aim is to change that viewpoint, and the colleagues I saw the movie with all seem to agree that he is successful. In short: this film is worth seeing. It opens in early June.

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An Inconvenient Truth
Gore as climate exaggerator
Ronald Bailey | June 16, 2006
I have long been a critic of former Vice-President Al Gore, but as a recent convert to the view that humanity is contributing significantly to the current increase in average global temperatures, I was trying to keep a somewhat open mind about his new global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. As a film, An Inconvenient Truth is a competently made documentary centered on Gore's famous global warming slide show interspersed with shots of him brooding on the fate of the earth. This is the sort of movie that appeals to science lecture powerpoint junkies (of which I am one). Gore warns that "what is at stake [is] our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization." Let's take a look at some of the evidence that he presents to justify this dire conclusion. He begins by insisting that nothing he has to say is scientifically controversial. Gore claims to be presenting the "scientific consensus" on global warming. But is that so?

Well, at least not always. Take sea level rise for example. Gore spends a lot of time talking about how dramatic melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps that could raise sea level by 20 feet by 2100. He shows computer animated maps in which most of southern Florida, southern Manhattan, Shanghai, and Bangladesh are inundated. "Think of the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees, and then imagine 100 million," says Gore. Of course his reference to the couple of hundred thousand refugees aims to evoke thoughts about the horrific experience of New Orleanians last year.

Well, the "consensus" of climate scientists as represented in the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that sea level is likely to rise between 4 inches to 35 inches with a central value of 19 inches. Nineteen inches is not nothing and is 3 times greater than the sea level rise the world experienced during the 20th century, but Manhattan and most of Florida will most likely still be above water in 2100. A new study in Science concluded if temperatures rose steeply that the Greenland ice sheet might melt away in 500 to 1000 years. So fortunately we don't have to worry about the impact of 100 million people fleeing relentlessly rising seas all at once, though it would be a good idea for builders and insurance companies to keep the projected rise in sea level in mind. Gore shows that many mountain glaciers are melting away all around the worldglaciers in Alaska, Europe and Mount Kilimanjaroare responding to increased warming. (Though the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro seem to be melting away because of changes in rainfall patterns rather than to increased heat. Of course, it is possible that the shift in rainfall is the result of global warming.) As further evidence of warming, Gore notes that permafrost is melting in parts of Alaska and Siberia. The temperatures in central Siberia are thought to have increased by 3 degrees Celsius over the past 40 years. This not only causes engineering and infrastructure problems, but might

also release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as once frozen organic matter begins to decompose. But is this warming unprecedented? Perhaps not. A Russian study in 2004 found that the average temperatures in Siberia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum around 6000 years ago warmed up by 3 to 9 degrees celcius in the winter, and by 2 to 6 degrees celcius in the summer. Due to changes in the earth's orbit which affect how much sunlight reaches the surface, pretty much the entire Arctic was warmer than now 6000 years ago. Which brings me to the polar bears. Gore shows an animation of a polar bear (very reminiscent of the Coca Cola bears) swimming pitifully in the sea trying to haul itself up onto the last piece of ice floating in the Arctic Ocean. In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund issued a report warning that global warming was endangering polar bears. Arctic sea ice is thawing sooner and this means that the bears who hunt seals on the ice have fewer opportunities to feed themselves. This week saw an alarming report that hungry polar bears are turningcannibal. Yet, the WWF report itself found that most bear populations are either stable or increasing (see page 9 of the report). And remember, polar bears evidently survived when Arctic temperatures were warmer 6000 years ago. Of course, if predictions that the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free in 100 year turn out to be right, then the polar bears will have a problem. Gore also argues that global warming will increase storminess. As suggestive evidence, Gore cited several examples of recent severe weather events across the globe. For example, he pointed the heat wave that hit Europe in 2003 that killed some 35,000 people with temperatures hitting 104 degrees Fahrenheit. But historically such temperatures are not unknown to Europe. In July 1921, a heat wave hit much of Western Europe with the temperature reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit in Strasbourg, France. Gore also pointed to the monsoon storm in 2005 that dumped 37 inches of rain in 24 hours on Mumbai India. But storms like that have happened beforeeven in the United States. In 1921, Thrall, Texas experienced a 24-hour downpour of 38 inches and Alvin, Texas was soaked with 43 inches over a 24-hour period in 1979. Gore points to the devastation of the Hurricane Katrina and flatly says that global warming is increasing the intensity of hurricanes. But that claim is hotly contested by climate scientists. For example, a recent study in Geophysical Research Letters finds "based on data over the last twenty years, no significant increasing trend is evident in global ACE [accumulated cyclone energy] or in Category 4 5 hurricanes."

At a climatic moment (pun intended) in the film, Gore traces a red temperature line inexorably increasing while he declares that 10 of the hottest years on record occurred in the last 14 years. Then he asserts that 2005 was the hottest ever. Pause for effect. Basically, Gore's general point is right but it's just irritating for him not to acknowledge that 2005 is statistically indistinguishable from 1998. But doing that would not have had the quite the same dramatic effect in the film. Of course, the increase of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is thought to be the chief contemporary driver of global warming. All things being equal higher carbon dioxide levels lead to higher temperatures. Gore illustrates the relation between carbon dioxide and temperatures with a chart showing data taken from ice cores from Antarctica. These ice cores contain tiny bubbles of air from the earth's atmosphere all the way back to 650,000 years ago. Scientists measure them to see the proportion of various gases that were in the atmosphere when the bubbles were trapped. Gore points out that temperatures and carbon dioxide go up in tandem over the last four ice ages. But waitGore fails to mention something interesting. Temperatures go up first and then the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases some 800 or more years later. The one interpretation is that orbital changes start periods of warming which then affect ocean circulation such that the oceans begin to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which leads to further warming. In any case, current carbon dioxide levels are 27 percent higher than they have been in the last 650,000 years. Gore overhypes the spread of various diseases due to global warming. As proof for his claim, he points to the arrival of West Nile virus in the United States and even hints that avian flu might be affected by global warming. West Nile virus (WNV) is a mosquito-borne virus that first

appeared in New York City in 1999, apparently somehow arriving from Israel. It is quickly spreading across the country carried by birds on which mosquitoes feast. The Centers for Disease Control map of WNV and related virusesshows that WNV is not confined to tropical regions. WNV took hold here not because of increases in global temperatures, but because, like malaria, cholera, and dengue before it, an appropriate carrier finally made it across the Atlantic. Lowering global average temperatures is not the way these diseases will be controlled, effective public health measures and vaccines is. And of course, outbreaks of flu arenot generally associated with higher temperatures. Finally, Gore allows that some skeptics of global warming catastrophe may be sincere in their beliefs; however, he apparently assumes that most such global warming "deniers" are similar to "tobacco scientists" who were paid for "studies" that sowed doubt about whether or not cigarettes can cause lung cancer. Make no mistake about itwhat the tobacco companies did was a despicable attempt by corporations to hijack and distort science to protect their profits and it backfired. Perhaps some global warming skeptics are paid advocates (liars), but many are not. Gore's tobacco industry insinuation is an attempt to discredit opponents by smear rather than on the basis of scientific evidence. Why does he bother with such low tactics since the bulk of the scientific evidence supports his views now? Because partisanship dies hard. In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore makes a big deal about how his Harvard professor, oceanographer Roger Revelle, influenced his views about the dangers of global warming. A genuinely gifted scientist, Revelle was responsible for the creation of the Mauna Loa Observatory that has been measuring the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1958. However, Professor Revelle co-authored an article in the house journal of the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC in 1991 which concluded, drastic action at this time. The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify

Professor Revelle died shortly after the article appeared. This conclusion apparently dismayed Gore whose staff

worked behind the scenes to spread the rumor that Revelle's co-authors had taken advantage of a senile old man and that Revelle's name should be taken off the article. This sorry episode ended with alawsuit in which another Harvard professor who had conferred with Gore's staff formally apologized for making his insinuations.