
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore's 'alarmist' climate change film - gibsonf1
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23416151-details/Judge+attacks+nine+errors+in+Al+Gore's+'alarmist'+climate+change+film/article.do
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Retric
I don't think this really needs to be on Hacker News but this is an
interesting argument over word choice. So I think it is important to remember
that people can listen to the same presentation and assume far different
meanings.

[http://ninepoints.pbwiki.com/low-
lying%20inhabited%20Pacific...](http://ninepoints.pbwiki.com/low-
lying%20inhabited%20Pacific%20atolls)

"That's why the citizens of these pacific nations had all had to evacuate to
New Zealand." Is Ambiguous if it's saying all the people who left for that
reason then it's true as some people did. If it's saying everyone who was
there left it's false because there are still people there.

<http://ninepoints.pbwiki.com/Hurricane-Katrina>
[http://ninepoints.pbwiki.com/shutting-down-the-ocean-
conveyo...](http://ninepoints.pbwiki.com/shutting-down-the-ocean-conveyor)
<http://ninepoints.pbwiki.com/Sea-level-rise> etc.

PS: If you're going to do a demo / presentation try it out on a friend who
does not know anything about what you are saying to see how they interpret
your words. Having coworkers listen to a presentation it's like proof reading
while you type it's hard to distinguish what you meant from what you said.

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cstejerean
I think type of article is specifically mentioned as not appropriate for YC
News.

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brlewis
Did more than one version of "An Inconvenient Truth" circulate, or is error #1
just totally made up?

From my recollection seeing the movie, and from the transcript below, Gore
never claimed that a 20 foot rise was inevitable 'in the near future.' He said
that scientists have been surprised at the higher-than-expected rate of
melting, and that the potential exists if all the ice melted to have a 20-foot
rise.

Other "errors" also seem to be much more definitive statements than what was
actually said in the movie.

[http://forumpolitics.com/blogs/2007/03/17/an-inconvient-
trut...](http://forumpolitics.com/blogs/2007/03/17/an-inconvient-truth-
transcript/)

~~~
anamax
The movie is basically an enumeration of: (1) Evidence that global warming is
occurring. (2) Consequences of global warming.

Clever parsing aside, do you really want to argue that he wasn't suggesting
that catastrophic ice melt wasn't in (2), but just a random fact thrown in?

~~~
brlewis
It doesn't take any clever parsing to see that if person A says "X is
possible" and person B says, "No, you're wrong! It's not 100% certain that X
will happen!" then person B is misinterpreting person A, either mistakenly or
deliberately.

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anamax
GW is actually quite convenient for Gore.

"It is the most dangerous challenge we've ever faced but it is also the
greatest opportunity that we have ever had to make changes that we should be
making for other reasons anyway," Gore said.

<http://in.news.yahoo.com/071012/137/6lvvz.html>

He's been pushing basically the same program for decades, well before the
global warming excuse.

