Al Gore tries to cool 'climate spin' by correcting claims of North pole thaw

Hannah Devlin Times Online 17 Dec 09;

Al Gore’s office issued a formal correction yesterday to a speech the former US Vice-President had given earlier in the week that started the latest in a series of “climate spin” rows.

Mr Gore told the Copenhagen summit meeting that the latest research suggested that the North Pole would be ice-free within five to seven years. The Times revealed that this was not the information provided to Mr Gore’s office by the climatologist Wieslaw Maslowski, who works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California.

Dr Maslowski said that his projections suggested that the North Pole would be near ice-free, but that some ice would remain beyond 2020. He also denied providing the 75 per cent figure used by Mr Gore. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office,” he said.

The clarification said that Mr Gore “misspoke” on the polar ice prediction and that he meant that the cap would be nearly ice-free.

Scientists have criticised Mr Gore for basing his talk on unpublished data, rather than relying on the latest peer-reviewed studies. Most researchers agree on a 20 to 30-year time-scale for near ice-free conditions in the Arctic. Mr Gore’s office, however, stood by the choice of data. It said that the US Navy research unit was in a stronger position to give predictions as it had unique access to measurements of ice volume by submarines.