24 Hours of Reality : Gore should welcome open inquiry
Tom Harris
Starting at noon Eastern Time on Tuesday, former Vice President Al Gore will be presenting his fourth annual ‘24 Hours of Reality.’ Broadcast to millions of people, the event is “dedicated to sparking action on
climate change.”
If it is like most Gore productions, only carefully pre-screened questions will be allowed from journalists. Considering what’s at stake—billions of dollars, millions of jobs, and, if Gore is right, the fate of the global environment—that is not good enough. Reporters must be encouraged to ask any questions they like.
Several leading climate experts were asked what question they would most like media to ask Gore in a public forum. Here are ten of their responses.
William Kininmonth, former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, suggested, “Mr. Gore, observations confirm that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration has increased about 34% since 1990 but ‘global temperature’ has failed to rise as predicted by the computer model forecasts you cite. On what basis, other than alarmism, are we
‘running out of time’?”
Similarly, Dr Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences of the University of Virginia, recommended that Gore be asked to “explain why climate models increasingly diverge from all observations
of global temperatures—whether from surface thermometers, balloons, or satellites.”
Since Gore portrays climate change as a bad thing, Dr Cliff Ollier, Professor Emeritus at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Western Australia, asked, “What makes you think the present climate is ideal for everybody? Some places may be better if warmer, others if cooler. Or wetter or drier. There is no ‘Goldilocks’ climate when everything is ‘just right’.”
Dr Lee Gerhard, Senior Scientist Emeritus, University of Kansas, inquired, “Mr. Gore, you keep using the term “EVER”, when speaking about temperature records. Please define how long that is. My own papers show that the temperature changes of the 20th Century were less than what has occurred several times during the last 1200 years, both in actual value and rate of change.”
The message from meteorologist Anthony Watts, host of the popular blogging site ‘Watts Up With That?’, was very direct: “In a video you produced for Climate Reality, called Climate 101…it has been conclusively shown that the experiment couldn’t possibly work as advertised, and that thermometer results were actually faked in post-production. Yet three years later the video is still on your website, unchanged. Why?”
Former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr Tim Ball also had inconvenient questions for Gore: “You said the arctic ice would be all gone in the summer of 2013. This summer it was there in greater amounts than two years ago. Why? Every forecast the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), your partners in a Nobel Prize, have made since 1990 was wrong. Why should we believe you or them now?”
Dr Madhav Khandekar, previously Environment Canada research scientist, suggested Gore be sent photos of the conditions on September 10th in Calgary where more than a foot of snow fell in about 36 hours. He wants
Gore asked, “If earth’s climate is warming, why did we have one of coldest winters just eight months ago and why do we have snow in NW Canada now when summer is still not over? There is no global warming anywhere now! On the contrary we see cold weather episodes increasing worldwide.”
Mark Duchamp, Chairman of the World Council for Nature, asked, “If an increase in CO2 causes a rise in temperatures, how come higher temperatures have always preceded any rise in CO2, not the reverse?”
An outstanding question came from a scientist who would not allow his name to be used since he has received death threats as a result of his stance on climate change. He asked, “Every time there is a flood or a cyclone or any natural disaster anywhere on the globe, immediately climate scientists are pronouncing with certainty that it is due to global warming. Now there is no global warming for the past 17 years.
How long it will take for the climate scientists to accept the reality that their models and projections bear absolutely no resemblance to what is actually happening?”
Finally, Dr William Lindqvist, a Tiburon, California-based independent geologic consultant, had a more philosophical question, “Mr. Gore, how can you justify advocating that to save the planet we all live like
paupers while you live like a King? Is it a monarchy you hanker for so that we all must do as we are told?”
Whichever side of the debate they agree with, reporters must be free to ask Gore the sort of questions they would normally ask anyone who advocates major policy changes. The stakes are too high to accept anything less.
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based
International Climate Science Coalition