UPDATE 5/25/06 from National Review Corner
TCS Fact Check [Jonah Goldberg]
Yesterday I posted a fact-check of the Gore movie from TCS. Since then I've gotten a bunch of email saying that the piece was "debunked" at Andrew Sullivan's site. I asked Nick Schulz, editor of TCS, what he thought about it. Here's the relevant excerpt from the email:
The supposed “rebuttal” to the TCS commentary on the Gore movie is pretty thin gruel. The IPCC says “No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected.” That doesn’t mean there won’t be in the future, but it’s helpful for understanding what has actually happened on the planet so far. The “rebuttal” also refutes itself by saying “what is happening now is highly unusual” and cites as support the IPCC claim that “The most rapid rise in global sea level was between 15,000 and 6,000 years ago.”
The “rebuttal” also says that by linking to the IPCC report we suggest the report supports our case. This is nonsense. TCS has been highly critical of IPCC reports for, among many other problems, overstating likely future emissions based on highly dubious population and economic statistics. We link to the IPCC report because even that alarmist document doesn’t support some of what Gore asserts and insinuates in his film – which suggests just how exaggerated the film is.
Of course, Gore himself, in an interview with Grist magazine recently shed light on his efforts to persuade people by saying, “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” Over-representation, indeed.