When Will Al Gore Fix The Mistakes in "Inconvient Truth"?

Question

He mislead people into believing that global warming is not natural.

Mr. Al Gore's movie left out these facts:
1) 6,000 years ago, the earth was hotter than it is today. 6,000 years is less than a second when compared with the age of the earth.

2) Temperatures dropped in the 1950's and 1990's when CO2 levels were increasing.

3) 140,000 years ago the earth had record CO2 levels and there were no gasoline powered cars.

4) 20,000 years ago, Canada was one big ice cube and half of the U.S. was covered with Ice. The grand canyon was formed by melting ice ages over 20 million years.

5) The temperature of the Earth has only increased by 0.65 of a degree in the last 110 years. There were faster increases in temperatures around 10,000 years ago and there were no gasoline powered cars during that time.

6) NASA proved rapid changes in temperature is normal

NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Paleoclimatology_Evidence/Images/gisp2_temperature.gif

NASA: "Occurring over one or two decades, the warming of the Earth at the end of the last ice age [15,000 years ago] happened much faster than the rate of change of the Earth’s orbit"

Also, volcanoes decrease the temperature of the earth.

"Year Without A Summer" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

Also, the experts at historical weather trends are Paleoclimatologists.

Biology and physics scientists are not experts at historical weather patterns.

Also, volcanoes are not to be blamed. Volcanoes only change the temperature of the earth for a few year. Not thousands of years.

Only 0.65 of a degree hotter in 110 years. (1890= -0.2 degrees. 2000= 0.45 degrees. Difference: 0.65 degrees.) NASA website:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/107760main_annual_mean_anom.jpg

The temperature has only spiked since around 1980. CO2 cannot be blamed since CO2 levels were increasing even when there was a drop in temperature.

Only 0.65 of a degree hotter in 110 years. (1890= -0.2 degrees. 2000= 0.45 degrees. Difference: 0.65 degrees.) NASA website:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/107760main_annual_mean_anom.jpg

The temperature has only spiked since around 1980. CO2 cannot be blamed since CO2 levels were increasing even when there was a drop in temperature.

Answer 1

Kudos... you mention that most of the run-up in temp is before CO2 levels skyrocketed after the 1940's but did you know that in the last interglacial period 6,000 years ago CO2 levels increased for over 500 years before sustained temperature changes occurred on the earth. Over the past 550 million years cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's climatic temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. It was also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity. Data collected since the 1640's show the close association between the solar variance & earth's climate changes

Answer 2

Very true. Mistakes by omission can lead to exactly wrong conclusions. An inconvenient truth that Mr. Gore left out is that the 40 year time line of CO2 increase exactly meshes with the 40 year increasing JET traffic. Jet engines are burning thousands of tons of kerosene above the clouds every day world wide. Each ton of jet fuel burned produces 3.66 tons of CO2 and 1.56 tons of H2O. Even tho CO2 is heavier than air, it takes time for it to drift to the surface. Nature never had to deal with such a huge infusion of CO2 in the upper atmosphere. There is no quick natural system to rid it. In contrast, fuel burned at the earths surface is taken up immediately by plants as it is their basic growth element with H2O and sunlight. But what happens in the winter and at night when plants are not growing or there is no sunlight? Land is only 15% of the surface of the earth. The vast majority is ocean. It is the primary sink for CO2 absorption. The oceans salt water uses a buffered system that is so efficient and rapid that CO2 can not increase in the lower atmosphere. The colder the water the more CO2 it can take up. Ain't nature wonderful?
Unfortunately, CO2 in the upper atmosphere from jet traffic must wait to slowly sink with the cold air circulation patterns. If you look at the contrails of jets high above the clouds, you can see they stay for a good while. The contrail is the H2O part of the burned jet fuel. Perhaps the JET engine is the culprit and not the burning on the surface.

Re: the Ice Age ?caused by humankind? hardly
It was a sudden catastrophic event that extincted the mammoths in an instant. The ones that were encased in ice were frozen so fast and so deeply that they did not have time to swallow daisies that they were chewing. How come they never unfroze the 'next spring'? They were frozen about 10,000 years ago when mankind was on earth!! There are cave drawings in France showing men throwing spears at mammoths!!!
An open mind comes to the inevitable conclusion that the Earths axis had to have changed. Shifting from a grass growing temperate zone to the Arctic North Pole. The spinning Earth is a giant gyroscope. Meaning it would take an external force to change the earths axis of spin!!! It could well have been a near miss by a smaller planet. If it were a larger planet it would have taken all our water. The temperature of outer space is absolute zero. I could go on.

Answer 3

The entire film is accruate. A note: if you watch the film--then check on the supposed errors that the "skeptics" accuse the film of containing, you will notice a 100% correlation: In every single case these "skeptics" took a condtional statement (that is, one that specifically stated some particular thing MIGHT happen or prove to be the case) and then di d the following a) misrepresented wha tth efilm said by saying the statment had been made as a fact, not a hypothesis b) then claimed that the supposed statment was in error. To put it a bit more succinctly: the "skeptics" who have claimed "An Inconvenient Truth" contains a large number of errors are damned liars.

Answer 4

Just like you accuse Al Gore of doing, you are cherry picking information to suit your idea of reality. Further, I have very low confidence in your "facts". To wit:

1) 6000 years ago? It's real hard to measure historical temperatures, that's why and how many opponents question data that supports global warming (I prefer the term global climate change). The data that is regarded as reliable does not demonstrate the global warming is not a concern, but also does not prove it.

2) Step back and look at trends, and it's a better picture of what we can expect than if you just look at relative short periods (you regard 6000 years as less than a second).

3) Ice core data provides a pretty accurate measure of historical atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and the most recent data available shows that we are at the highest CO2 levels in the last 650,000 years, so I don't know the source of your data.

4) No one questions the occurence of the most recent ice age.

5) It's not just gasoline, it's everything we burn, trees, coal, oil, etc. Remember that there is a hugh natural supply of CO2 and also huge natural sinks, like the oceans. But the problem that we are causing as a big increase in supply, but not in sinks, so we are out of balance. When you add livestock that we also produced and methane to the equation, you'll see why some are so concerned.

You and other doubters seem to think it's all a hoax, but there is real science out there. And yes, there are those like you on the other side of the issue that try to maximize the crisis; I sure hope they're just as wrong as you.

Answer 5

YOu neglect the significant fact that those ice ages and rapid increases in global temperatures were the result of volcanic activity, changes in the distance b/w the Earth and the Sun, asteroid collisions, and changes in the Earth's flora. We've been knocking down and burning millions of acres of forests (whose rapid growth led to climate changes millions of years ago), burning off billions of pounds of fossil fuels, and creating all sorts of nasty chemical emissions into the atmosphere. Yeah, these things can happen without human interference; however, the natural activities needed to bring about prolonged, extensive reaction in the atmosphere have not been present. I know about the Year without a Summer, and the Year without a winter; not to mention the potato fanines and so forth-- all caused by climate disasters-- but none of those events lasted more than a few years. What Gore is showing in his film is that these climate changes are a constant, long term trend, not some quick flip and back to normal again.

Answer 6

The IPCC report will be available in a few weeks. It will cost money, it's 1600 pages. But someone will put it up online at some point. It covers all the ideas that have been raised for natural causes, solar variation, volcanoes, etc. And it rejects them, not based on opinion, but on hard peer reviewed data. Read the 21 page summary here:

http://www.ipcc.ch/spm2feb07.pdf...

The IPCC report is the biggest scientific paper ever, with the most data, the most authors, and the most peer review, in the history of science. It is the very pinnacle of hard scientific research. The last paper to hold that title was the last IPCC report in 2001. You can look at that one here.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/online.htm...

Science does not get any more solid than this.

Answer 7

When Hell freezes over. This week Hell is located in Minnesota. Al ought to get ready.

I myself will worry when the Rocky Mountain's snow level goes back up 1,000 feet to where it was during the Middle Ages.

I think it's time for scientific method deniers to start a program to stop the man-made global warming on Mars...

Answer 8

Responding to:
"I dare you to tell that to any one of the 100+ environmental scientists (with doctorates and decades of experience) who recently met in Europe to collaborate and publish their findings that global warming is caused by human activity."

Collaborate is the key word in the above. Thousands of scientists with credentials as good or better were invited not to attend these collaborations, because they do not agree with the collaborators.

What makes you think Mr. Gore thinks he made any mistakes? What makes you think that omission of data that could disprove the hypothesis was a mistake? Judging by the name-calling that goes on when one questions any part of this structure, the examination of anything contrary to the premise must be prevented at all costs. Discrediting opponents by name-calling is a political tool. It is not a scientific tool.

Answer 9

I think you miss the point Mr. Gore was trying to make. The current "Global Warming" is not natural, it is being caused by the careless unmanagement of CO2 emissions by our worlds countries.

When "Global Warming" occurred naturally it was due to the volcanic activities of the times. Currently, we do not even have a comparable ratio of volcanoes erupting, but we still have CO2 emissions at record rates. Do you get it now? It is not currently being affected by natural factors, but rather man made.

Answer 10

The global warming the earth is now experiencing is not natural. And by continuing to deny that only makes you look like a fool.