December 15, 2009    Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole
sums don't add up               [Al Gore]
Al Gore's office admitted that the percentage he quoted in his speech
was from an old, ballpark figure

There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient
one yesterday.

The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the
green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An
Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change
"spin" row.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the
latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in
five years.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: "These figures are
fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there
is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the
summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven
years."

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped
the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr
Maslowski said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at
anything as exact as this."

snip>

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956\
783.ece  

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