The Inconvenient Truth Isn’t So Truthful

It seems that I’m beginning to recover from the stress induced aneurisms with which I was overcome after having seen “An Inconvenient Truth.” Many people are jumping on the global warming bandwagon after having seen this film and I would like to present the flip side of this coin; even though it’s only towards a small population.

Let’s start with the poor, innocent polar bears we see in the movie. Mr. Gore claims that the melting ice in the Arctic is causing the bears to lose their hunting grounds and natural habitat. A recent study done by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has reported that the polar bear population is generally stable and, in some instances, increasing. To add more drama, the movie presents the ghastly fact that polar bears have been resorting to cannibalism. In case no one knew, polar bears have always resorted to cannibalism. It’s not uncommon for a male polar bear to find a youngin’ with its mother and make a quick meal of it. It’s not always easy standing by a whole and waiting for a seal to pop out.

It’s not a matter of rejecting the facts presented; rather, trying to see the whole picture. As an example of global warming, Gore takes the example of the European heat wave in 2003 that claimed several thousand lives. The little tidbit that wasn’t mentioned was that a very similar heat wave was also experienced in 1921 in France with the same “record highs”.

Another huge fear is that the Antarctic will melt and cause devastating floods, especially in Florida (oh no! where will we vacation?). The inconvenient truth that many were told is that the western part of the Antarctic is warming. The more convenient truth is that the eastern part, which is about ten times bigger, is cooling and getting thicker. A study released in 2003 shows that the East Antarctica has gained 45 billion tons of ice. Not as scary as previously thought.

One of the big terms thrown around was CO2 emissions. One of the major guilt factors is that we are creating carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, which is warming our planet. Al Gore even has a nifty little graph that shows a link between our temperature and the CO2 emissions. The graphs that you weren’t shown were those linking solar winds and sun spots to the CO2. Isn’t it a tad weird that Gore never mentioned that perhaps our planet is being warmed by the sun? Our sun’s cosmic ray patterns actually closely matched that of CO2 emission; leading many scientists to believe that our massive sun is probably the cause of this warming trend. Instead, the notion of manmade CO2 emissions is driven in with data going back some 360,000 years. This may seem impressive, but scientists have already gone back further and have discovered that CO2 emissions used to be twelve times greater than they are now and the average global temperature was two degrees cooler.

The general populous seem to think that the majority of scientists agree with this notion of global warming. Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University said to the Canadian Free Press: “Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention.”

The decision is up to you. You have the choice to look deeper and continue researching the real facts. On the other hand, you can also continue believing Mr. Gore; whose Nashville mansion’s electricity consumption is more than twenty times the national average. Physician, heal thyself.