What did Gore say?

As those of you who have been paying attention (you, yes you in the back, wake up!!) may have noted that an issue has arisen about what Al Gore said at the 2009 AAAS meeting on disasters. Insistent Stoats are insisting, but the bunnies know what a bunch of weasels those guys are. Fortunately for the three people whose names we know and whose telephones are ringing right now with calls from Colorado, (Yes you Andy Revkin, and you Glenn Beck and you George Will. Lucia only gets Email) Andy Balaskovitz from Moo You was on hand with a camera and posted the talk on YouTube



and the AAAS has it on RealPlayer. The slide that Boy Scout Roger Pielke has been whining about appears at about 7:00 in the MSU video and ~36:30 on Real Player. What Gore says prior to and while showing that slide was:

I'm not going to dwell on the hurricanes and the view of many scientists that the intensity of hurricanes is affected by the warming oceans

The drying soils and the fewer number of days of frost have contributed to an extraordinary die off of trees in the west and the increase in fires is quite significant. The largest fires in the history of Georgia and Florida respectively. Several times in the last three years hundreds of thousands of people had to be evacuated from their homes in California. The government of Greece almost fell a year and half ago because of the record fires there. This month the highest temperatures ever measured in Australia, and of course the fires in South Eastern Australia still going on as we meet here have caused the tragic loss of almost 300 lives and ignited a huge nationwide debate in Australia that is very much focused on global warming. [Shows Koala drinking from bottle - ER] And, this iconic picture has gone around the world. These little Koalas usual avoid people at all costs. You may have seen interviews with the fireman, I have

There is published work by Reid Torn and Mills, showing that climate change will lead to significant fire risk and damage in Northern California, as well as the conclusions of the IPCC WGII that fire losses will increase significantly if emissions continue to grow. The controversy is whether this has yet happened. The insurance companies say yes. Boy Scout Roger says no. Eli suggests you ask him for a quote on home protection.

All around the world the fires from January to September of the past year [shows global map of fires-ER]. Now the pixels are rather dominated by these fires so they seem much larger than they are but they are warm enough.

This [the CRED slide -ER] is relating weather related disasters [the x-axis is time-ER] that are completely unprecedented, on the left hand side of this image you can see what used to be the norm and in recent years the increase has been quite startling four times as many in the last 30 years as in the previous 75 and the increases are continuing this has a huge economic impact when you look at in the context of history of these fires. This is from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters it’s quite startling

There are real reasons for believing that at a MINIMUM all of the weather related disasters that Gore talked about are, in the words of CRED,

Climate change is probably an actor in this increase but not the major one- even if it impact on the figures will likely become more evident in the future.

and again, the WGII provides strong support for the idea that the problems Gore talked about are influenced by climate change and the if greenhouse gases increase the problems will be exacerbated. People are arguing about how much that actor is responsible for and they differ. Gore is coming down on the strong side of the consensus that there is an effect (even Roger agrees, though he tries to back away from it). Pielke is complaining that

How did AAAS and the many scientists in attendance respond to being blatantly misled with scientific untruths in a speech calling for political action?

Maybe because there is a problem Roger?

But wait, there is more. Roger shows a slide

Which he claimed

Gore sought to sum up all of these weather anecdotes by citing data from the CRED in Belgium showing that the total number of disasters has increased in recent decades (at about minute 38:00 of the video), showing this graph for effect.

That is not the time they appeared in the video, more like 36:30, it's gone by 38:00 Perhaps Roger doesn't want you to see the real slide. Maybe because that is NOT the slide shown by Gore. Actually there were two, which are shown below as screen grabs from YouTube. Interested folk can see a better image on the RealPlayer replay.

(The limits of Eli's technology are that he grabbed the images from YouTube. The orange part is US disasters, the yellow global)

If you look carefully at Gore's slide in the talk, you see that the highest number on the y-axis is 390, in 2007, Roger P's peaks at over 550 in ~2000 (which accounts for the downward flip).

UPDATE: The text at P now reads:

showing that the total number of disasters has increased in recent decades (at about minute 38:00 of the video), showing a version of this graph for effect (Update: I later learned that Gore used a version of this graph produced by Charles Blow for the NYT).

but it is not a version of the graph he is still showing because, if nothing else, the data is different. Oh yeah, no links=:>

We all know that Roger INSISTS on accuracy for others. So why did he post the wrong graph, when the correct one was available to him on YouTube and Real Player (he links to the Real Player)? Even if he didn't know how to grab them, it is obvious by looking that the graph posted by Pielke is NOT the graph shown by Gore in the videos, one of which was taken live at the meeting. Maybe because Roger's disaster-o-graph peaks in 2000? Is he trying to convey false information here? Has the graph been changed by the AAAS and YouTube to make the Colorado Whiner appear to have mislead everyone??

Where are the auditors when you need them?

RTFR.
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