There seems little point in commenting here about the Al Gore-Mr. Justice Burton kerfuffle, given that a) everyone who comes here and cares about climate issues already knows all about it, and b) everyone who comes here and cares about climate issues has already made up their mind about its significance. But since I’ll lose my climate blogger’s union card if I don’t say something, I’ll just say – what William said:
what would also be a problem would be if all the good guys felt obliged to get trapped into defending AIT to the death. I hope that doesn’t happen (Myles Allen on R4 last night didn’t). It should be clear that AIT is a partisan film, not a source for the science; for that we have the readily available IPCC (or wikipedia, if you want a readable summary). AIT is in some danger of becoming a cuckoo overshadowing what it is supposedly explaining. Skeptics can find it very convenient to attack the film, and thereby pretend they are attacking the basic science.
OTOH, William seems obsessed in the opposite direction as the discussions over there showed. The film can be defended. Much of the furor is about differences in emphasis. Tuvulu is an excellent example as the discussions show. Inel, for one pretty much nailed William, and ol Bill took it badly.