Not Evil Just Wrong Director Takes on Al Gore

Monday, October 12, 2009

In the climate change world late last week, there were two uncommon events.

First, the BBC uncharacteristically published an article titled “What happened to global warming? ” The article by BBC climate correspondent, Paul Hudson, notes, among other things, that the warmest year on record was 1998, not 2007 or 2008, and the climate models did not predict this fact. This is noteworthy because during the past 11 years man-made CO2 levels have continued to rise.

Mr. Hudson also observes that the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO), one of the most important ocean warming and cooling cycles, is cooling. Researchers have seen a correlation between the PDO and global temperatures. So if the PDO is cooling, then global temperatures might be cooling too. In his article, Mr. Hudson poses questions; he does not embrace the skeptically viewpoint. His report, however, does attract attention because of its rarity at the BBC.

The second uncommon event occurred in Madison, Wisconsin Friday night. Al Gore gave a talk at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists and he uncharacteristically took questions from reporters. In the past, Mr. Gore has usually refused to debate or take questions about his views of global warming stating that the matter was settled.

Mr. Gore’s appearance, however, was not a free and energized debate. He only took six questions. One of the questions came from Phelim McAleer, the director of “Not Evil Just Wrong” (2008), a documentary about how certain extreme environmentalism can actually cause damage. Mr. McAleer asked Mr. Gore about the British court finding that “An Inconvenient Truth” contained errors. Mr. Gore stated that the court ruling was in his favor. When Mr. McAleer tried to ask Mr. Gore a follow-up question, the program moderators turned the microphone off.

But, even though Mr. Gore took only a half dozen questions (and no follow-up for Mr. McAleer) and the BBC did not throw in its lot with the skeptics, these two remarkable occurrences are noteworthy because they are rare events indeed. As Paul Hudson, somewhat surprisingly, closes his article, “It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. . . some would say it is hotting up.”