Al Gore alleges climate change misinformation

A huge public misinformation campaign funded by some of the world's largest carbon polluters is aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming, former US Vice President Al Gore has claimed.

Gore said the world is approaching a tipping point that will see an acceleration in efforts to fight climate change
"There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10m a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community," Gore said at a forum in Singapore.
"In actuality, there is very little disagreement."
Gore compared the campaign to that of the millions of dollars spent by US tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of uncertainty and debate within the scientific community on the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes.
"This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science," Gore said. "We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion."
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After the release of a February report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world's top climate scientists, that warned that the cause of global warming is "very likely" man-made, "the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere," Gore said.
"They're trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools," he said.
He said Exxon Mobil Corp, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, was one of the major fuel companies involved in attempting to mislead the public about global warming.
Last year, British and American science advocacy groups accused ExxonMobil of funding groups that undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. The company said the scientists' reports were just attempts to smear ExxonMobil's name and confuse the debate.
Gore said as awareness of the urgent need to address climate change grows, the world is fast approaching a tipping point that, when crossed, will see an acceleration in efforts to fight the problem, and urged businesses to recognise that reducing carbon emissions is in their long-term interest.
China could cut its carbon emissions without jeopardising economic growth if it used new technologies that do not emit greenhouse gases, he said.
Gore cited the mobile phone industry as an example of a business that does not need to burn fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
"There are ways to leap-frog the old, dirty technologies," he said.
China, like other developing nations, fears that plans to cut carbon emissions would cripple its economic development.
But Gore said the Chinese government needed to be more aggressive in fighting global warming because the country's chronic water shortage was tied to climate change.
"China has a great deal at risk," he said. "The water crisis is very closely related to the climate crisis." Millions of people in China, which is on course to overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, have no access to clean drinking water.
Chinese scientists said last month that rising temperatures are draining wetlands at the head of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, China's two longest rivers, choking their flow and reducing water supplies to hundreds of millions of people.
While top Chinese leaders have "expressed themselves forcefully" on global warming, the comments do not "necessarily lead to immediate changes in the region," Gore said.