FALSE ALARM: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Global Warming is Misleading, Exaggerated, or Plain Wrong

Published by on 03 Jun 2008 at 10:01 am

Al Gore: The speech he needs to give

18 Comments Climate change

18 Responses to “Al Gore: The speech he needs to give”

1. ab on 13 Dec 2008 at 4:25 am #

   

   I find Al Gore’s nonsense to be shameful. Furthermore, it should be considered criminal as so many Americans have fallen prey to these falsities while paying dearly financially.

   Even scarier is the reality that the faults lay on us. Are we really so pathetic that we blindly believe and throw millions at a theory based on a movie/book produced by a politician with an agenda?

   It is unfathomable that the American public has not looked into all of the scientific research rebutting almost 100% of this. Is anyone irritated and embarrassed that people have been making money by fueling our fears with falsehood?

   I am astonished that the American people will believe, and defend, and spend millions, on just about any theory presented to them, while not taking a moment to confirm or research the logic behind it.

   Please tell me that there are some left with the mindset to look at scientific evidence and research before just following assumptions naively.

   I am amazed that we Americans believe any garbage offered to us.

   This is a big issue that goes way beyond the Al Gores of this country……

2. Cb on 24 Mar 2009 at 10:16 pm #

   

   Do you know anything about how the atmosphere works?

   Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which traps infrared radiation in the atmosphere. This is what causes the temperature to rise, it doesn’t happen the other way. The greenhouse effect is a process which ‘warms’ the planet, if we didn’t have this phenomena, then our planet will be a huge ball of ice with temperatures of -50 celsius.

   Modern human activities have exacerbated this natural phenomenon causing carbon dioxide levels to rise. Granted, volcanic eruptions and forest fires increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere aswell. But large numbers of volcanic eruptions would have to occur at the same time to do this. Forest fires on the other hand can happen naturally, but most are lit by humans. Look at South America.

   You claim, but frankly you don’t know.

   And your journalistic writing isn’t impressing anyone.

3. Paul MacRae on 25 Mar 2009 at 10:13 am #

   

   Cb:

   There’s a lot more to the temperature of the earth than carbon dioxide. Water vapor does about 90 per cent of the heavy lifting when it comes to warming and cooling. The sun and the oceans are also more important “drivers” than CO2, which tends to be on the passive side. Ever wondered why nights are cooler than days? The carbon dioxide level is the same (well, it fluctuates a bit), but the solar radiation isn’t. The sun is a far more powerful factor in the earth’s temperature than CO2.

   If you look at a chart of the earth’s temperature and carbon dioxide levels over the last 600 million years (it’s on Climate Change: Learning to Think Like a Geologist, Figure 6, on this site), you’ll see very little relation between CO2 and temperature.

   You’ll also see that CO2 levels right now are exceptionally low, as are temperatures, based on the past 600 million years. The planet is in more danger of a new ice age (glacial, actually, since we’re in an ice age) than uncontrolled warming.

   Finally, in the previous interglacials of this ice age, temperatures and sea levels were higher than today’s, with NO human influence at all. This means it’s likely that, even if temperatures and sea levels do go up over the next few hundred years, the human contribution is negligible. What’s certain is that at some point a planetary switch will click and we’ll go into 80,000 years of cooling.

   These are the atmospheric and geological facts. Check them out!

   Paul

4. J. H. on 07 Sep 2009 at 1:55 am #

   

   Dear Mr. MacRae,

   Assuming that you are right and that the temperature rises before CO2 levels do, I am asking myself (and you) wether your findings are of any relevance regarding global warming.

   What is sure is that CO2 traps the sun’s energy in our athmosphere (see Cb’s comment). Thus, even if temperature rise preceded the rise of CO2 levels in the past, and there are other reasons for the rise (and fall) in temperature, it doesn’t mean that the current accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere won’t cause a rise in temperatures and lead to global warming. Quite the opposite. It will.

   By not mentioning this (and even denying it), in my eyes, your article is not only redundant, it is also misleading the general puplic.

5. Paul MacRae on 12 Sep 2009 at 2:30 pm #

   

   Hello, J.H.,

   Thank you for writing.

   Regarding your comment: CO2 is trapped in the 15 micron band of the troposphere, but the relationship of CO2 and temperature is logarithmic. That is, the first, say, 100 ppm of CO2 causes, say, 1 degree C of warming. The next 100 ppm causes .5ºC of warming. The next 100 ppm, .25ºC of warming. After a while, this band gets “saturated” and very little further warming occurs (there is a bit of additional warming in what climatologists call the “wings” of the 15 micron band, but not enough to be a problem or cause runaway warming).

   No climate scientist disputes the saturation effect; they may dispute when the 15 micron band is saturated. It is almost certain that, at 400 ppm, the level of CO2 is saturated. If there’s much further warming, it will have to come from other causes. The consensus climate scientists would, however, prefer to ignore this scientific fact because it doesn’t fit their hypothesis, and most consensus books on the subject, especially those for non-scientists, don’t mention carbon saturation.

   Carbon saturation is why there has never, since complex life has existed on earth starting about 600 million years ago, been runaway warming. Carbon saturation is why there won’t be runaway warming now.

   Also, if you look at carbon dioxide over the past 50 million years, the overall trend is slowly down, not up. Even if we hit, say, 800 ppm (which would be great for the plant life), eventually CO2 levels will start to fall again. If they go below about 200 ppm, plant life dies and so do we. I’d prefer to keep the CO2 levels a bit too high than a bit too low.

   Paul

6. Andrew on 28 Sep 2009 at 3:51 pm #

   

   To the Author,

   I find it ironic that you spend your post criticizing Al Gore with comparisons to the IPCC’s report but don’t care to emphasize that the two agree on the most basic and important point: Serious consequences from climate change are assured and in fact imminent. It doesn’t really sound like you care much about this fact, so the question arises: Why do you care some much about what Al Gores says, or how much money he makes doing it? Other people all over the world make more $ for doing worse things. Why not post about blood diamond exporters in Central Africa or high profit political corruption?

   To Mr. MacRea,

   I see a lot of correlation between CO2 levels and the Earth’s temperature. Also, your statement that “You’ll also see that CO2 levels right now are exceptionally low…” is flatly ridiculous.

7. Andrew on 28 Sep 2009 at 3:53 pm #

   

   I would also like to point out the irony in the title of this blog. About half the things I’ve been told regarding climate change conform to the author’s opinion.

8. Paul MacRae on 30 Sep 2009 at 2:14 pm #

   

   Andrew,

   You raise some very good points and I hope I can answer them to your satisfaction.

   When I started serious research on my book on global warming (or the lack of it) more than two years ago, I began with Gore’s Earth in the Balance. I was astounded at how devious his analysis was, especially when it came to the relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide. In this book, as in the movie Inconvenient Truth, Gore implies, without stating it directly, that high levels of CO2 cause high temperatures. In fact, as scientists acknowledge, it’s the other way around: rising temperatures cause CO2 levels to rise 800 or so years later!

   But even if rising and falling CO2 caused rising and falling temperatures, Earth in the Balance doesn’t state what causes CO2 to rise and fall. The best Gore is willing to say is “variations in solar intensity” in the caption for a chart. One small footnote, in effect. Why? Because once it’s recognized that changes in solar intensity (called the Milankovitch Cycles, which Gore nowhere mentions) cause changes in temperature (which lead, for example, to ice ages and interglacials), followed, several centuries years later, by changes in CO2 levels, then Gore’s argument falls apart.

   At that point, I knew I had a book because Gore is lying to, or at least seriously misleading, the public on global warming. In effect, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is the Watergate story of our time; it’s a scandal. In fact, one Japanese scientist has called it the greatest scandal in scientific history.

   Gore is either lying or exaggerating in almost every “fact” in his books and movie, as a British judge found a couple of years ago. That’s one reason why I have no respect for the man and mention him as an example of bad science. The other reason is that so many people trust and believe Gore, even though the information he is giving them is mostly wrong.

   You point out, correctly, that Gore agrees with the IPCC on most points, except that Gore exaggerates wildy. The IPCC predicts, at most, 50 cm on sea level rise in the next century; Gore predicts 20 feet. I think there’s a problem here. Why doesn’t Gore just give the IPCC’s “facts” if they’re so scary? Why the need to exaggerate and outright mislead?

   As for the IPCC: I am pretty sure that it, too, is exaggerating the dangers of warming. You say you see a lot of correlation between the earth’s temperature and CO2 levels. Really? Right now the earth’s temperature is falling, not rising. The temperature has been flat or falling for the past decade, despite rising CO2 levels. Where’s the correlation? Seriously: how can you claim a meaningful correlation when CO2 levels are rising while temperatures are flat and, lately, falling, and when climate scientists are even predicting a decade or two of cooling? How does that fit the IPCC’s anthropogenic warming hypothesis?

   In my book, I cite a lot of research showing that the IPCC models consistently overestimate warming by as much as two or three times. I show that carbon dioxide is not the major warming agent that the IPCC wants everyone to believe. See my comment above on carbon saturation–the CO2 band in the atmosphere is almost certainly saturated, which means very little additional warming will occur no matter how much CO2 we put up.

   Finally, I respect science like I respect nothing else, and what I respect most is science’s total commitment to the truth, wherever it leads. For science, truth is and must be sacred; truth is the foundation of science. When scientists depart from the truth to mislead, exaggerate and outright lie, to spread alarm based on inadequate empirical evidence (computer models are not empirical evidence and they have almost always been wrong in their predictions), then they have ceased to be scientists.

   I believe that many in the IPCC, in their zeal for an ideological position (environmentalism, basically) have lost that commitment to truth at all costs. As for Gore: he’s a politician. Truth is not important to him. And yet, as noted above, he is the voice of global warming for most of the public. It strikes me as just as important to correct his errors as you feel it is to correct mine.

   CO2 levels are very low right now. For most of the past 250 million years, CO2 levels have been two to 10 times higher than today’s levels, and sometimes higher than that. The planet didn’t “burn up,” but it got very green since plants love higher levels of carbon dioxide (the ideal is about 1,000 ppm; that’s what greenhouse growers put in their greenhouses). Below about 200 ppm, plant life dies. The average over the past few hundred thousand years has been around 280. That is very low, geologically speaking. Even 400 ppm, the current level, is very low, geologically speaking. If you do a bit of reading in the geological history of the planet, you will probably come to agree that today’s CO2 levels are not unnaturally high, they are unnaturally low.

   Again, I hope this answers your questions. If you think I’m wrong, get back to me.

   Paul

9. Steffen Lund on 15 Dec 2009 at 5:57 am #

   

   Dear Mr MacRae

   I have been reading trough your discussion above and find it very intersting (if not thrilling) that you so rigously maintain that CO2 is not the culprit, that warming is not occuring, and that the data presented in the graph on the top of the page is, at best, misleading if not false. I really hope you are right.

   I may have missed something, but are we not seeing rising sea levels? Are we not seing receeding ice caps? Because if we are, how does that correspond with falling average temperatures?

   thank you for your time, and for the discussion.

   Steffen

10. Incognito Erikk on 22 Jan 2010 at 5:30 am #

    

    Mr MacRae

    Interesting you haven’t replied to Steffens comment, a simple argument yet it flaws all your previous discussion.

    So if global warming is a big ‘scientific swindle’ what are the motives behind creating this swindle, bearing in mind Gore wasn’t the first person to propose this?

    However, what are the motives for attempting to disprove sound scientific evidence? Well if your an American Republican the motives seem to be endless. Interest in oil is a blindingly obvious example.

    It seems to me that everyone other than republican america is decided that Global warming is occurring as we speak

11. Paul MacRae on 23 Jan 2010 at 5:26 pm #

    

    Erikk and Steffen,

    Sorry I haven’t replied sooner–I’m putting most of my energies into getting the book ready for publication at the moment.

    To answer Steffen’s questions:

    Are we seeing rising sea levels? Yes, just as we have for the past 15,000 years since the glaciers started to melt. Sea levels then were about 400 feet lower than today’s, and there was a very sudden sea level rise early in this process–feet per century. Today, sea level rise has flattened out to about 2-3 mm a year (IPCC’s figures), or a few inches per century.

    The sea level in previous interglacials was at least 4-6 metres (up to 20 feet) higher than today’s interglacial, so we can expect that, naturally, even if humans didn’t exist, sea levels in this interglacial will rise to at least those levels. At worst, human activity might be accelerating this process by a percentage point of two. That is, the oceans might rise 20 feet in 2,000 years rather than, say, 2,200 years. In other words, there is always “background” sea level rise until the point where the planet stops warming and starts cooling back into the glacial phase. At that point, our problem will be falling sea levels and a planet that becomes, for most of the northern hemisphere, unliveable.

    The same is true of the Arctic. As an interglacial proceeds, the Arctic ice naturally recedes, as do most of the planet’s glaciers–that’s why it’s called an interglacial. Actually, with two cold years (2008-09), the Arctic ice is coming back to what is considered “normal,” but I’d expect more melting whether humans were here or not because that’s what happens in interglacials. The Arctic, by the way, was as warm as today in the 1920s and 30s, before the planet turned colder again in the 1940s and before carbon emissions are considered large enough to create a problem.

    Our problems will really begin when the climate tide turns back to glacial conditions. The Arctic will then begin to ice up again, as will most of the northern hemisphere over several thousand years. Personally, I’d prefer warming over cooling, an interglacial over a glacial, any day.

    I hope this answers your questions, Steffen and Erikk. And, again, my apologies for not responding sooner.

    Paul

12. D S on 30 Dec 2010 at 2:34 pm #

    

    Mr. MacRae,

    hope this helps prove your point to other disputers.

    http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/video-refuting-al-gore-on-co2-levels-and-temperature/ -Demand Debate

    also Mr. Gore exclaims how the ice caps are shrinking and ice shelves are falling off of Antarctica but he fails to mention that every year a new south pole marker has to be put into the ice because Antarctica’s ice is growing and the markers move about 2.3 meters per year

    http://www.phys.psu.edu/~cowen//amanda/images/line-of-spoles-small.gif – picture proof

13. Cactuscool on 01 Feb 2011 at 2:14 pm #

    

    Knows nothing about the scientific(al) accuracy of Mr. Gore’s presented facts but thinks that people need to start admitting this:
    something is wrong with the environment and something is wrong with our actions toward the environment.
    we obviously need to make some kind of change if not for this specific environmental issue, but another

14. Alex Bice on 18 Jul 2011 at 1:56 pm #

    

    i love how you say everything is wrong but you provide no contradictory evidence or even resources to support your statements. Something Mr Gore does every time he gives a global warming speech might i add.

15. MAM on 22 Jul 2011 at 2:50 am #

    

    I know the answer, why temperatures rise before co2 rise!!!!

    Because there are other greenhouse gases than co2 too! Its h20, ch4 and o3! But the fact, that there are other greenhouse gases, does not mean, that co2 hasnt any impact on earths temperature!

16. Hatersgonnahate on 01 Dec 2011 at 7:56 pm #

    

    Ok, here I go; a lot to get through here.

    Interesting format for the article, perhaps not to everyone’s taste but that is rather irrelevant, as almost all of the points raised by the author are accurate and justified. “An Inconvenient Truth” was Al Gore’s way of keeping his name within people minds and to use scare tactics into a response from the general American public. The information within was blow infinitely out of proportion, actually hindering the scientific validity of his few accurate points. CO2 may be on the rise, but it has been fluxuating continuously from as far back in the ice cores as we can see. There has to be one rise in temp and CO2 that is the fastest , perhaps it is inconvenient that it is the most recent rise.

    The very act of Gore manipulating “data” to fit is hypothesis is at it’s roots, contradictory to real scientific methods, and indicates that by not showing the data in its true form, he has nothing to hide, (or more appropriately, nothing worthwhile to show us.)

    How about solar activity for an explanation for the temperature rise? The recent activity from solar coronas is higher than it has ever been, and is therefore a perfectly valid hypothesis for the rise in temperature. I am not saying it is the solution, but the lack of an answer does not mean that you can make up your own.

    Sea level rising is not a problem if the north pole is melting, as the ice is held in suspension within the water, much like an ice cube. If the ice melts, a huge flood of water isn’t going to devastate the planet in a “day after tomorrow” – esque manner; the amount of H2O does not change, only it’s state of matter.

    Temperature rise will have a positive feedback effect. Ice is the most reflective natural substance known, (roughly 95% of the suns rays are reflected off ice) and as the temp rises slightly, a little ice melts, reducing the amount of energy reflected, melting more and so on.

    That is just a few of the point covered, and i hope that i have put to rest some queries and supported the author slightly. However, we need to look for alternative methods of energy, if not for the simple reason that we are running out of fossil fuels. I do not claim to know the detailed causes of global warming, i can only hope to offer some suggestions. However, we dont HAVE to know the answers to everything.; some answers will elude now that will be revealed in the future, and we cannot cast out explanations as fact until we are sure. If you have read this far then congratulations; you must be as bored as me when i am writing this at 3 am with nothing better to do.

17. Hatersgonnahate on 01 Dec 2011 at 8:08 pm #

    

    Oh just in response to comments – Incognito erikk: good to see a valuable contribution to the discussion. (I loved the snide political agenda by the way, riveting stuff.)

    Alex Bice – Al Gore supports his view with scientifically twisted facts – statistics are a POLITICIAN’s (Gore is not a scientist) best friend as he can make them say what he wants. The author gives an example of this through the CO2 graph, they fit together excellently, but the temperature rise comes first. Also, just beause you state that something has been proven wrong, doesnt mean you must immediately find and alternative – it means that you can discredit falsifications and search for the actual answer.

    MAM – if you “Know the answer” congratulations, as you currently know what no one else on the planet is entirely sure of; perhaps a Nobel prize is in order.

18. smartypants on 09 Dec 2012 at 8:28 pm #

    

    your all near sighted and a 3rd grader would be smarter! you dont care about the enviroment because you are all pawns of the government and corparate giants!!! some people like Al Gore actually care! I think you all are a smart as a dumb rock ( no offence intended to dumb rocks)

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