More Gore-Bashing

The neo-con Frontier Centre for Public Policy, long a promoter of oil-sponsored deniers of climate change, has produced a new “background paper” that challenges the showing of An Inconvenient Truth in Canadian schools on the basis of a 15-month-old UK Court decision.

The report, written by high school social studies teacher and Steinbach, Manitoba city councillor Michael Zwaagstra, declares that “there is no demonstrable causal relationship between the CO2 record and the temperature record at any point in earth’s history,” and goes on to complain that Gore’s movie (which presents this information rather more accurately) should therefore only be allowed into Canadian schools with a stern warning to students.

The school governor who challenged the screening of Al Gore's climate change documentary in secondary schools was funded by a Scottish quarrying magnate who established a controversial lobbying group to attack environmentalists' claims about global warming.

The Paradox of Al Gore When Al Gore won the Nobel Peace prize last Friday—along with the very deserving U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the fulminations predictably followed. Previous victims of what Paul Krugman calls "Gore Derangement Syndrome" had new flare-ups of the disease, often in the most embarrassing of places. There was a rash of bad science reporting, suggesting that Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (the film version) is somehow much more inaccurate than it actually is.

And then came the powerful defenses of Gore, the skewerings of the Gore deranged, and just general voicing of reason. Alas, the Gore defenders, while being broadly accurate about Gore's "broadly accurate" film, also seem to have missed some key matters that bear addressing.

So let's add some needed perspective here.

A DeSmogBlog exclusive weekly column by best-selling author and science writer, Chris Mooney.

Media Matters has a nice wrap on how the U.S. mainstream media covered the U.K. High Court decision that approved An Inconvenient Truth for continued broadcast in U.K. schools.

In a few cases, the news slipped through that the judge had actually rejected Stewart Dimmock's request to block the movie's broadcast or insist that it be accompanied by trashy "balancing" videos (The Great Global Warming Swindle, anyone?). But mostly, papers just reported that Al Gore had been caught out overstating the case.

You have to be impressed when a disppointed plaintiff can spin a court loss that successfully. But equally, you have to wonder, did any of those reporters actually read the judgment?

Dimmock, Durward, et al, are disrobed.

For a background on the issue, check our earlier posts here and here.

And here's further background on the "Scientific Alliance" and Robert Duward…

First, our warmest congratulations to Al Gore. The Nobel Prize is one of the world's great honors and, in our view, one that is extremely well-deserved.

But I'm conscious that the standing ovation Gore is enjoying today is not exactly unanimous. The climate change conversation has become polarized - and belligerent - over the last decade. And Al Gore - a politician who dared to address a controversial public issue outside the conventional political process - has become a lightning rod for some hyper-political criticism. How can we get people from all points on the political spectrum to celebrate Gore's Nobel Prize without feeling that they are sacrificing their own cherished political interests?