Accuracy of Al Gore's documentary about global warming questioned

Washington, April 15 : Scientists have questioned the accuracy of Al Gore's 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", by saying that it contains weaknesses and exaggerations.

An Inconvenient Truth is about Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming and inspire them to take action.

What is up for debate is whether the documentary accurately presents the scientific argument that global warming is caused by human activities.

Though climate change experts agree that it does an excellent job of raising public awareness of man-made global warming, its main weakness is that it tries to use individual extreme events, such as Hurricane Katrina, to prove the existence of global warming.

According to John Nielsen-Gammon from Texas A and M University, the movie neglects all information that can be gained from computer models, and instead relies entirely on past and current observational evidence.

This increases the film's emotional impact, but weakens the scientific argument.

David Legates from the University of Delaware addressed assertions about trends in precipitation, floods, droughts and storms in the documentary.

He determined that there are significant errors in the film, owing to alarmism and exaggeration, which give a false impression of both the current state of climate change and that the science is settled.

Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama in Huntsville also discredits the scientific validity of the documentary.

In his view, the film's main omission is that while humans are almost certainly responsible for global warming, there are other natural causes of climate variability which the film does not address.

According to Spencer, "the real inconvenient truth is that science has no idea how much of recent warming is natural versus the result of human activities."

ANI