Well, it's about time:
Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”
Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe's recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.
"Overselling our certainty about knowing the future" and going "beyond the scientific evidence" about covers it.
Comments
If the question is "whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence" what's the answer? The answer, of course, must necessarily include all the scientific evidence, right?
Try this:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Let's ask another question: do dedicated global warming deniers claim that Gore has made statements that he has not made in order to create false evidence that Gore has over-stated the science?
wow, anybody else have to read that last question 4 or 5 times??
To answer it, no, I think you can take the filmed quotes and the movie itself as proof he is overstating his case. He doesn't need anyone making up statements he's made, he makes plenty of stupid claims all on his own.
All of the scientists who, like the politician Gore, claim evidence for man-made global warming are overstating the case. At best, there is a correlation between carbon dioxide levels and "global warming"--there is no proof, however, of cause.
I consider myself an environmentalist. Many of the positions I would take would be considered to be extreme, even. I believe in cleaning up the air, the land, our waters. I believe in saving endangered animals and plants. I believe, above all, that most environmental ills are being driven by an excess of human beings on the planet. But the evidence simply does not exist that global warming is being caused by humans.
One day, historians of science will view this period of time, in which scientists rushed to assign human cause to what are natural variations in global climate, as a shameful one.
Eminent scientists--supposedly our brightest and most rational humans--have confused correlation with cause, and have threatened to banish those scientists who refuse to toe the party line.
To my mind it's more shameful than the treatment of Galileo by the Catholic Church, and history will be very unkind to the propagandists of human-caused global warming.