Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006Al Gore Got This One Right. Whew!

I liked Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" a lot--but while it was mostly right on the money about the science of climate change, I had to cringe every so often as Gore said or implied a few things that were either not proven or not strictly true. One of those statements (or was it just an implication? I can't quite recall) was that the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the coast of Antarctica disintegrated in 2002 as a result of human-triggered warming. It's not that this was implausible; maybe it was true. But there was no real evidence for it, and as someone who feels that global warming is a serious issue, this bugged me. It provided ammunition for global-warming doubters to suggest Gore was nothing but a propagandist.

Today, though, a new study came out that retroactively gives Gore's assertions a scientific basis. A team of British and Dutch climate scientists, writing in the Journal of Climate, show that the ice-shelf collapse is very likely the result of stronger westerly winds blowing across the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula. Those winds have strengthened in large part due to human-induced warming, say the authors, and also due to ozone hole over Antarctica, another human-caused phenomenon, .

So if Al is listening: you're off the hook on this one. And really, most of the film was very accurate, so don't worry too much.

—M.L.