What are these 'factual errors'?

The Peace Prize is awarded for achievments in the year under consideration. Are you saying that Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change don't deserve the prize. If so, you haven't read the citation.

...errors and all.  My objection to this man getting the peace prize is his support for the war in Iraq and worse, his advocacy for persecuting Iran for exercising it's  legal right to (albeit foolishly) develop nuclear power.  He is a warmongering hypocrite who has sold his soul to big business.  It's joke giving people like this a "peace" prize.

However, the judge was not settling scientific arguments - all the judge was concerned with was the law about what can be shown to British school children, under the law. We cannot show school children films of a pornographic nature unless it has been sanctioned by British law - British law demands that scientific material shown to British school children must meet a strict criteria - legally, the film An Inconvenient Truth, self-evidently failed that criteria whether you want to except that or not. The turth is, Al Gore's film cannot be shown to British school children until the literature supporting the film has been radically changed - without that changed literature the film would be illegal to screen to school children - that is the law. I am very sympathetic to your sentiments regarding a judges intervention into scientific arguments - of course, no judge in the world could be the last word on such important matters. Nevertheless, the facts remain that Gore's film has nine scientific inaccuracies, and it would be wrong under British law to show this film to minors without correcting literature.

"Gore claims not to be perturbed that nine out of 'thousands' of facts are being challenged." For young school kids, learning about their world this may not be too much of a problem - however, for me, such a lucklusture attitute towards scientific facts actually represent a very serious scientific and moral problem of the highest order. The notion that it's perfectly ok to get your scientific facts wrong just so long as it does not 'invalidate the message' you are trying to propagate is boarderline Orwellian newspeak. Indeed, it is environmentalists like Al Gore who have time and again insisted that it is they who are the holders of scientific accuracy, not the sceptics. When Gore claims not to be 'perturbed' by his inaccuracies, what he is really saying is 'so what'? If anything, Gore and his supporters would do well to heed the words of the war leader Winston Churchill who once said a 'lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on' - because that is precisely what an inaccuracy is, a lie. An inaccuracy or error is not the truth. Can you imagine a world where it's perfectly acceptable to tell a few little lies because it serves the interests of the 'Greater Truth'? Is that not the tools of tyrants? To scare people with little lies that keep them in their place for the greater good? As if there was such a thing as a good lie? Oh well, he got a few facts wrong, but he did it for a 'good cause', didn't he? Me and you know that polar bears are not in danger of drowning because the lack of ice-sheets - but most under 16 year olds except that polar bears are doomed because of what Gore's film told them of their plight. Mark Twain once said that in 'religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing'. It's precisely what I think about when I think of Gore and his alarmist film.

Eric, 

[quote]And, again, even if some points were indisputably incorrect, it would not invalidate the message of the film. [/quote]

So, what WOULD invalidate the message?  Given that Gore is no scientist--how about a scientific evaluation of the film's thesis?

[quote] 

Forecaster Calls Gore's Theories 'Ridiculous'

CBNNews.com October 15, 2007

CBNNews.com - One of the world's top meteorologists is challenging Al Gore on his global warming theories.

Famed hurricane forecaster, Dr. William Gray, is the latest scientist to call the former vice president "ridiculous" for claiming that man is responsible for global warming.

Gray made the comments while addressing a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina, just after it was announced that Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Gray, 78, a professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie -- An Inconvenient Truth -- and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

Gray acknowledges that a global warming has taken place, but said he believes a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures -- related to the amount of salt in ocean water -- is responsible, not man.

That same cycle also means there will be a period of cooling soon that will last for several years.

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realize how foolish it was," he said. "The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures."

Gray also says other scientists agree with him, but he knows they are afraid of not getting any grants if they publicly disagree with Gore. He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

Gray is a pioneer in the science of seasonal forecasts. His annual projections of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes have been widely publicized. [/quote]

What i find most interesting is Dr. Gray's observation that other experts are declining to speak out in fear of losing grant money.  You see the threat of Judges deciding science, when I would suggest the greater threat is "political correctness" trumping science.

[quote]...but it is quite incredible to then go on to try to debunk the vast majority of scientists in the field by saying they are lying in order to get a grant.[/quote]

I certainly never said or implied that any scientists are lying to get a grant.  What I am saying (not implying) is we do not have a counterbalance of scientific opinion, because many of those scientists who DO disagree,  are in fear of endangering their grants by taking politically incorrect, opposition stand. 

The lack of opposition voices suggests to the non-scientific world that there is consensus on global warming, when in reality political correctness has simply created that impression. 

The Japanese have a saying about the nail that sticks up is the one hammered down. 

Mike, it was Gray who reportedly said that other scientists agreed with him but were afraid to speak out because they would not get a grant. I do not think this is at all a common scenario. There has been plenty of money poured in to disproving climate change by companies like Exxon, for example. It is really not the general way science works. Independent funding would be adjudged on the scientific merit of the research proposals. Of course there is a tendency for some department heads to put forward areas of research which would lend support to their own viewpoint, but I would not say that this is much to do with political correctness as much as everyday hubris. So, of course, the status quo tends to prevail. But make no mistake, this is, overwhelmingly, the status quo; i.e. most scientists in the field broadly agree that man is responsible, at least in part, for climate change.