So, Paramount is gearing up to release an Al Gore documentary about global warming. But at least two scientists in the Philippines are rejecting Gore’s hot air. The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports:

Not everyone was pleased with the way former US Vice President Al Gore was given “celebrity” treatment when he spoke as a crusader against global warming in Manila.

Two scientists from the University of the Philippines yesterday lamented how Gore’s “doomsday” pronouncements apparently received more attention than the more detailed analyses and solutions offered by Filipino environmental experts. They also challenged and branded as “exaggerated” what the former US leader said about Manila Bay “overflowing” because of the greenhouse effect.

Too much use of ground water by typical households and establishments-not global warming-was the bigger reason the metropolis is sinking, said Dr. Carlo Arcilla and Dr. Fernando Siringan of the UP College of Science in Diliman, Quezon City.

“There we go again. A foreign celebrity coming over for a quick visit, giving a talk, and we are all in adulation, taking everything said as gospel truth,” Arcilla said in a statement e-mailed to the Inquirer.

Arcilla is an associate professor of geosciences and coordinator of the college’s Science and Society Program. He has a Ph D in geosciences and geotechnical engineering earned at the University of Illinois. Siringan, a professor on marine geology, holds a Ph D from Rice University in Houston, Texas…

…The former Vice President of the Clinton administration warned that up to two million Metro Manila residents may have to be evacuated from flooded communities as melting glaciers and the polar icecap raise sea levels worldwide.
Warning that the world will reach the “tipping point” toward an ecological catastrophe within the next 10 years, he urged international and local leaders to focus their efforts toward halting the phenomenon of global warming.

His computer-aided presentation earned a standing ovation.

“The problem with these exaggerated and very general pronouncements about environmental doomsday scenarios is that they distract us from the real local problems which we can really do something about,” Arcilla said.

He conceded that global warming was “a serious threat to humanity, (but) it is certainly not in the terms that Gore presents.” As to Manila Bay overflowing, he noted that his peers at UP, like Siringan and Dr. Kelvin Rodolfo, along with their students, had conducted their own studies of the water level’s rise…

“I am not saying that we should stop helping control greenhouse gas emissions, but very, very few really know the real story about flooding in Metro Manila,” he said. “We could cry all day about greenhouse gases but if we don’t regulate carefully our use of groundwater, we could be flooding faster than whatever could come from global warming.”

Unfortunately, warning about groundwater use won’t get you a glitzy Hollywood movie contract or lucrative speaking engagements. I hope more scientists committed to the truth speak up about Gore’s bloviations.

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