Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday, and the former vice president used the attention to warn that global warming is “the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced.”
World leaders, President Bush among them, congratulated the winners, while skeptics of man’s contribution to warming criticized the choice of Gore.
Gore in a statement said he was ” deeply honored … We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”
But the Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth made by former US Vice-President was found wanting when it was scrutinised in the High Court in London.
Mr Justice Burton told London’s High Court that distributing the film without the guidance to counter its “one-sided” views would breach education laws.
The judge said nine statements in the film were not supported by mainstream scientific consensus. The nine errors alleged by the judge included:
Mr Gore’s assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge said this was “distinctly alarmist” and it was common ground that if Greenland’s ice melted it would release this amount of water – “but only after, and over, millennia”.
Mr Gore’s assertion that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was expressly attributable to global warming – the court heard the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established the snow recession is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.
Mr Gore’s reference to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears had actually drowned “swimming long distances – up to 60 miles – to find the ice”. The judge said: “The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm.”
The “Unchained Goddess” 1958 – represents a felicitious collaboration between legendary Hollywood director Frank Capra and animation geniuses Shamus Culhane and William T. Hurtz. Appearing in live action, Dr. Research (Frank Baxter) and The Fiction Writer (Richard Carlson) set about to explain how weather is created, and how scientists have endeavored to predict and control it. They are aided by several animated character, foremost among them the beautiful but somewhat haughty Meteora, the Goddess of Weather (whose long gown rather resembles the funnel cloud of a tornado) and her subjects: Winds, Clouds and Rain. A copacetic blend of entertainment and education (Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide).
