The inconvenient truth about "An Inconvenient Truth" ...

Excerpt from the New York Times (as reprinted by the Sydney Morning Herald):

Scientists have inconvenient news for Gore

March 14, 2007

The environmental campaigner Al Gore may have won over Hollywood with his documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

But the scientific world is proving a much tougher audience for his relentless campaign to raise public awareness of climate change.

There is a rising chorus of concern, extending even to "moderate" scientists with no political axe to grind, over the former US vice-president's tactics and advocacy.

The nub of their concern is a belief that he has over-egged his case. That, in trying to sell to the public the dangers of complacency in combating global warming, he is guilty of a number of convenient untruths or distortions.

The main charges are that he has skated over the Earth's history of climate change and that his talk of impending doom ignores that change is a slow-motion process.

Even a top adviser to Mr Gore, the environmental scientist James Hansen, admits the former vice-president's work may hold "imperfections" and "technical flaws".

Read the full article - Scientists have inconvenient news for Gore.