Climate change facts are 'inconvenient'
Monday April 13 2009
AFTER watching Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth (RTE 2, April 4), I was struck by the level of scaremongering -- backed by flawed scientific claims -- depicted in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning film.
Perhaps RTE should, as a public service broadcaster, attempt some balance in this much-hyped phenomenon of so-called man-made global warming. A good start may be the excellent Channel 4 production The Great Global Warming Swindle.
This documentary takes the wind from the myth of man-made global warming with a tsunami of scientific facts, not a flood of scare stories, and a cold blast of realism stating that global warming is a natural and repeated phenomenon.
Many contradictory views and scientific studies are not reported in the mainstream media. It would also help to investigate Mr Gore's motives for making this documentary in the first place.
He claims his lifestyle is "carbon neutral" as he buys carbon credits to offset his carbon footprint. However, the company (General Investment Management) from which he purchases these credits was co-founded by himself and David Blood, the ex chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and is partly owned and chaired by Al Gore. I think the issue of conflict of interest should be explored here.
Furthermore, the Daily Telegraph printed an article titled 'Nine Inconvenient Untruths' (November 10, 2008). A year earlier a High Court judge in the UK said Al Gore's film was basically misleading. Scientific evidence rarely reported is that the earth is now cooling down due to the steep drop in solar flares on the sun.
As recently as 35 years ago, we were being warned in a similarly alarming way that we were heading into a mini ice age. And during the era of industrialisation in the West, when large quantities of C02 were released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, the planet did not warm up. In fact it was cooling.
I hope there will be a real debate on this subject before carbon taxes, for whatever motive, are imposed on ordinary people. In my opinion, that is what the whole man-made global warming fraud is about.
Neil Foster
Ballfarnon, Co Roscommon
