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As Jim Henley notes, if nothing else Al Gore's Nobel Prize has made for arguably "the funniest day in the history of the internet," producing all measure of wingnuttery. It's worth, however, clearing up some nonsense about a recent British Court ruling about An Inconvenient Truth. Despite misleading claims that the judge found "nine significant scientific misstatements by Gore in the film," via Dave Noon Tim Lambert carefully explains that the court found no such thing:
Burton is not saying that there are errors, he is just referring to the things that Downes alleged were errors. Burton puts quote marks around 'error' 17 more times in his judgement. Notice also the emphasised part -- Burton is not even trying to decide whether they are errors or not. This too seems to have escaped the journalists' attention. (And yes, that was Bob Carter mentioned there.)So what is Burton assessing in his judgement? Well, s407 says that where political issues are involved there should be "a balanced presentation of opposing views" so Burton states that the government should make it clear when "there is a view to the contrary, i.e. (at least) the mainstream view". Burton calls these "errors or departures from the mainstream".So contrary to all the reporters' claims Burton did not find that there were 9 scientific errors in AIT, but that there were nine points that might be errors or where differing views should be presented for balance.Even more importantly, Barton's classification of these nine claims as not representing the scientific consensus are, in themselves, largely inaccurate, in many cases either mischaracterizing Gore's position or the scientific evidence. Lazy reporting, shoddy work by the courts; who would have thought Al Gore would ever be subject to that? --Scott Lemieux
