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Erring on the side of tabloidismThe horrid misreporting on the case of the British judge and An Inconvenient TruthPosted by David Roberts at 12:45 PM on 12 Oct 2007There are three things you're unlikely to learn from the mainstream media about the Case of the Nine Errors, wherein a British judge is said to have taken issue with the accuracy of An Inconvenient Truth.
Tim Lambert has the definitive take on this: Let's look at what [High Court Judge Michael] Burton really wrote (my emphasis):[Dimmock's lawyer] Mr. Downes produced a long schedule of such alleged errors or exaggerations and waxed lyrical in that regard. It was obviously helpful for me to look at the film with his critique in hand.If you noticed the quotation marks around 'error,' then you are more observant than all of the journalists I listed above. Burton is not saying that there are errors; he is just referring to the things that Downes alleged were errors. Burton puts quote marks around 'error' 17 more times in his judgement. Notice also the emphasized part -- Burton is not even trying to decide whether they are errors or not. This too seems to have escaped the journalists' attention. (And yes, that was Bob Carter mentioned there.) Lambert goes on to look closely at the nine contended points. His conclusion: Overall, there are a couple of points where I wish Gore would have talked about timescales and probabilities (sea level rise and thermohaline circulation), and a couple of examples that could have been better chosen (Kilimanjaro and Lake Chad). Burton was mistaken on the other points where he felt that Gore went past the consensus. I don't think that there is any harm in the Guidance Notes on Burton's nine points, but the usual suspects will, of course, ignore the fact that the judge found that Gore was "broadly accurate" and try to make it look as if there are serious problems with AIT and climate science. Out of this -- a judge rejects the suit, but finds nine points in the film he thinks differ slightly from the consensus, and it turns out he's wrong about several and the others were at best matters of interpretation, omission, or insufficient context -- the mainstream media pulled, in the words of an AP headline I saw earlier this evening, "Judge Says Gore Movie Not Scientific" (it has since been changed). Your media at work, folks.
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