What did Al Gore mean when he said that CO2 Temp relationship is complicated?

Question

In "An Inconvenient Truth", Mr. Gore during his powerpoint presentation says the temperature-CO2 relationship “is actually very complicated.”

WHy complicated? Could it be that the following studies provide evidence in the paleoclimatic record that higher global temperatures PRECED high CO2 levels, i.e. CO2 is an effect, not a cause of high temperatures?

Stephens, B.B. and Keeling, R.F. 2000. The influence of Antarctic sea ice on glacial-interglacial CO2 variations. Nature 404: 171-174.

Yokoyama, Y., Lambeck, K., Deckker, P.D., Johnston, P. and Fifield, L.K. 2000. Timing of the Last Glacial Maximum from observed sea-level minima. Nature 406: 713-716.

Clark, P.U. and Mix, A.C. 2000. Ice sheets by volume. Nature 406: 689-690.

Fischer, H., Wahlen, M., Smith, J., Mastroianni, D. and Deck B. 1999. Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around the last three glacial terminations. Science 283: 1712-1714.

Sorry, couldnt fit anymore. Ran out of space.

The "Junk Science" charge, the "finacial motivated science" charge, and the "idologically biased" charge can cut both ways, so please, dont embarras yourself by using it as an argument.

Answer 1

I've heard an old saying, "If you can't convince them with logic, then baffle them with "Bull Sh*T"
Is the average layman supposed to understand this muck and follow Gore's lead? He has throngs of people nodding their heads in agreement with his copy cat scientific theory and they don't even know what he is talking about because the muck he spouts is beyond their comprehension. Either people think he is so smart because the babble is too confusing for them and accept what ever is called science, or.....we use our own wisdom and understanding and forget about the scientific babble. I don't give a rip about complicated CO2 levels and Gore's statistics. I still say:
All the "Global Warming" whiners should start walking to work and stop consuming products and resources that foul the air we breath. Get off the stinking computer as well! What are you thinking? Is your PC powered by sunshine & rainbows? Granted, we are not good stewards of our environment. And our time here on mother earth has been a miniscule speck in the scheme of time and space. Some people claim too much credit for having the power to destroy earth and our environment. I do more to save energy and conserve resources than Al Gore ever will. I'd love to see him draging plastic bags of aluminum cans and plastic bottles to the recyler as the poor do here everyday in my home town! Just the cost of one of his jet trips would feed a whole lot of those poor people and keep his jet smog from fogging up our atmosphere! Too many hypocrites trying to "hard sell" global warming as they consume and pollute with the rest of us. All your phoney concern for our world is wasted on me! Face it, the global warming "Chicken Littles" could never survive without modern technology and the garbage byproducts it produces! Get a clue Chicken Little, the world will be here long after your panic attact is over and forgotten and new scientists and the new Al Gores will continue the effort to baffle us with Bull Sh*t.

Answer 2

Even 110 million tons of coal burning is only a fraction of fossil-fuel burned each year (about 8 billion tons). Clearly those mine fires are increasing GW without doing anyone any good, but putting them out has been technologically impossible in the past and may be difficult in the future.

The CO2-temp relationship is complicated in that CO2 raises temperatures, and raising temperatures both increases and decreases the release of CO2 by natural processes. It's these "feedback" processes that are the greatest uncertainties in predicting the future of GW.

There is little doubt about the size of the CO2 forcing term---in other words, how much temperature rise at the surface comes from so much CO2 in the atmosphere. That's just a matter of physics, lab measurements, and straightforward calculation.

Answer 3

Here's the deal about CO2 lagging temperature historically.

Historically warming was caused by the Sun. That caused ocean waters to warm and release CO2. That process takes hundreds of years, because the deep ocean needs to circulate up to really get it going.

This time is different. CO2 and temperature are going up together. It's one of many proofs that this particular warming is actually caused (mostly) by CO2. More here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13

The reason the relationship is complicated is because of "feedback mechanisms". An example is, CO2 warms, reflective ice melts exposing dark ground, warming occurs faster.

Their are many feedbacks and it's uncertain exactly how fast they will accelerate global warming. So we don't know exactly when things will get bad, ie how bad might they be in 30 years?

The choices are bad, really bad, and really really bad. Not bad is not an option.

Answer 4

The simple fact is that CO2 blocks infrared light but not visible light. Visible light hits the ground, gets absorbed, warming up the ground, which emits infrared light which would take energy back out to space if it didn't get blocked (re-absorbed) by CO2 in the air.

The complicated parts are things like, it takes a long time to trap enough heat to warm the planet, so even if CO2 levels went down now, temperature could keep rising for some time, changing temperature can change the amount of CO2 absorbed by or naturally created by the environment, temperature is effected by lots of other factors, like water vapor which blocks more infrared light than CO2, and there is a lot more of it, and it is highly variable, and on and on and on. Weather is very complicated and CO2 is just one small factor.

Answer 5

Haven't seen the movie, so I may be taking this out of context:

The CO2 temperature relationship is complicated because transport phenomena is, in general, complicated.

It is especially complicated when applied to a system as large as the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_phenomena


so there will not be a neat linear relationship between CO2 emissions and temperature, therefore it becomes complicated.

Answer 6

Al Gore knows as much about global warming as I do about
Nuclear fusion. I at least have slept at a Holiday Inn express.

Another point to his bs was his comments about ice bergs melting and lifting the ocean levels. Well excuse me I thought
2/3 of the icebergs were submerged, melt the whole thing
the levels do not raise that much.

Take a glass mark a line fill it with one ice cube and water.
Melt the ice see how far the water rises above the original line.

Al Gore is an scam artist, 100 hundred years ago his great grandfather was selling snake oil.

Answer 7

Thirty percent of environmental scientists don't believe man is causing global warming. That does not mean the other 70 percent are junk scientists, and that doesn't mean that the thirty percent who believe it is beyond man's effect are whack. What bothers me is that no one, including Gore, ever mention the fact that in China there is a huge fire going on perpetually with 100 million tons of coal going into the atmosphere every year. India has 10 million tons of coal doing that. WHY DON'T THE SERIOUS PEOPLE REQUIRE THESE FIRES TO BE EXTINGUISHED?

Answer 8

Sorry. Not even a good try--not surprising, though. The junk science you are basing your post on isn't worth anything.

What Gore meant--IF you'd bothered to actually listen--is that the Earth's climate is a complex system. The basic CO2-heat retention relationship is simple. How it plays out in practice is complex--you also have to take into account the enormous variation and diversity in Earth's weather and oceans to come up with an accurate model. Which is why REAL scientists took years to develop that model and come to conclusions. That's what real science takes--a lot of hard work.

Nitwits who think wild speculations based on incomplete reading of random articles about unrelated instances of warming thousands of years ago are science only show how ignorant they really are.

Answer 9

Its a technical subject in terms of basically the survival of business society and continueing its modern-day point of sustainance. although i think that Al Gore's action picture is geared in the direction of human beings interior the west (the place the skill of business production are controlled from), who've an entrenched activity interior the continuation of business society at its modern-day stages. as a effect it fairly is a ethical subject for those human beings as westerners as an entire could know different peoples choose to no longer fall sufferer to the technique, additionally as they have a ethical resoponsibilty to no longer perpetuate their existence on the backs of destiny generations(who will ought to pay for it), its a ethical subject for super bussiness, who administration production, to no longer make a income on the fee of the entire of humanity and its additionally an attempt to personify the planet and make it a ethical subject for humanity to no longer ruin its atmosphere.

Answer 10

He said the CO2-temperature relationship is complicated because, well, it is. It didn't have anything to do with the CO2 feedback mechanism you refer to, although that is certainly a complicated mechanism in itself.

There is a fallacy in your logic though. The fact that, historically, temperatures have preceded carbon dioxide levels only tells us that a rise in temperature can result in a rise in CO2, it doesn't tell us that CO2 can't cause the temperature to rise. In fact, CO2's ability to absorb IR radiation can be directly measured in controlled laboratory experiments, so we can be absolutely certain that what you say is not the case.