The good news is that his message is incorrect on many many key items. It turns out that:

-There is not a concensus of all scientists as he claims. I have read many papers and articles disagreeing with him.

-CO2 rises in the atmosphere do not cause global warming. It’s the other way around! The proof of this is that CO2 rises are caused by Global warming. They lag temperatue rises and falls by about 800 years.

-The graph of the sharp rise in temp recently is based on unsound and hightly critisied work from a scientist (Michael Mann) who is funded by climate change funding (and so has a vested interest in keeping th esubject alive).

The is a lot more, and better written than I can manage onthe web, just do your own research before you assume Gore is correct. You’ll be surprised.

http://sitewave.net/news/s49p1835.htm

Acol.

#1 NASSA has discovered an error in their temp data due to a y2K problem. The warmest times are now in the 1930’s

#2 As a former archaeologist I know it was far warmer 1000 years ago than it is currently.

#3 If you look at the output of the sun and global temps there is a correlation.

for the information of one of the posters Mars is beyond the Earth from the Sun not between the Earth and the Sun

This not to say humans do not interfere with the environment but lets look to the actual causes not speculation.

The worrisome word that keeps getting tossed around is “consensus” that word has no place in science and throws a dark shadow on anything connected to it.

This completely short-circuits individual responsibility.

“If you truly believe that everyone has the same exact shot at the same exact things in our society…”

Not as an absolute rule, but as a general rule. Opportunity is equal.

“if you look at a picture of a glacier from 10 years ago…”

I was never arguing about individual glaciers.

“As soon as the handful of naysayers have hundreds of years of people agreeing with them, with evidence to back them up, I will definitely take another look at it.”

Dahling…the side you are arguing FOR doesn’t have all of those things.

No one is forced, darling. No one has to take that job at the bottom. In our system they can start their own business. But they CHOOSE to work for someone else. It’s all about choice and individual responsibility. To the risk taker go the rewards. That is why we are the richest nation in history. Even our poor live better than the middle class in Europe.

At the risk of being insulting, this is the type of statement someone that has never had to worry about their position in society would make; or even worse, someone that isn’t willing to see that different people face different challenges in life, based on where, and to whom they are born. If you truly believe that everyone has the same exact shot at the same exact things in our society, there is no need to get into the debate, because there is no way you will ever see it from my perspective; which happens to be based on anthropological science. It is ignorant to say that all people have the same chance to succeed in life, and if you want to say that they aren’t forced, well, tell me what else they would do. But like I said… I don’t see a point of getting into that if you truly think what I believe you do. (based on your comment)

I don’t think so. Might depend on whose measurements you believe.

So you mean, if you look at a picture of a glacier from 10 years ago, and sit it next to a picture of the same site today, where the glacier has almost completely melted away, that there is room for different interpretation, other than it melted? That doesn’t make sense.

Is this what Gore’s film says?? Or does it outright blame us?

He doesn’t blame anyone, he says what I have been saying; we can make changes, because what we are currently doing is hurting the environment. You don’t have to blame anyone to start making changes.

Does your knowledge of the history of science tell you that? When I think of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Springsteen, well, maybe not Bruce, but the others, I don’t see how you could say that.

Those men may have initiated or drawn attention to their discoveries, but many, many people had to agree with them, research them, and substantially prove them for them to be widely held as true. As soon as the handful of naysayers have hundreds of years of people agreeing with them, with evidence to back them up, I will definitely take another look at it.

Without addressing every point you made, don’t you think there is at least a little doubt in what you believe? I am at least admitting the gw crowd *could* be right, but they are dishonest, have ulterior motives, and haven’t proven their case.

I don’t have doubt, because I have seen too much evidence to prove global warming is related to what we are doing in the world. I also don’t think that all of the global warming crowd is as crooked as you say, there are many people that truly want to see positive changes occur in the world, so that our children won’t inherit a shitstorm of problems… I happen to be one of them.

No, it’s not silly. Anyone who truly believes the gw rhetoric should not drive a fossil based car. No, they aren’t the only solutoin but they are a big part of the problem. Like I’ve been saying, there is a lot of hypocrisy and dishonesty from the gw crowd.

“capitalism actually feeds off of those at the bottom to make more money for those at the top”

No one is forced, darling. No one has to take that job at the bottom. In our system they can start their own business. But they CHOOSE to work for someone else. It’s all about choice and individual responsibility. To the risk taker go the rewards. That is why we are the richest nation in history. Even our poor live better than the middle class in Europe.

“Also, Mars is closer to the sun; perhaps that has something to do with it”

It’s warmING, not warMER (than earth).

“100% inaccurate”

I don’t think so. Might depend on whose measurements you believe.

“Then why have the hottest 10 years on record occurred within that same time frame”

Well, the sun is getting hotter now.

“It is definitely not gaining any ice mass. The ice is thinning.”

http://www.physorg.com/news4180.html

“That leads us to believe that what we are doing to the environment MUST have SOME effect.”

Is this what Gore’s film says?? Or does it outright blame us?

“How come the word of one can cancel out the word of many?”

Does your knowledge of the history of science tell you that? When I think of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Springsteen, well, maybe not Bruce, but the others, I don’t see how you could say that.

Without addressing every point you made, don’t you think there is at least a little doubt in what you believe? I am at least admitting the gw crowd *could* be right, but they are dishonest, have ulterior motives, and haven’t proven their case.

Now, I would also like to address some of the things from you most recent comment.

The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don’t trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world.

While I may not agree with everything the UN does, I thought the point of the organization was to give everyone a voice as to what happens in the world. I don’t understand why so many people see capitalism as the American way; because that just isn’t true. America was founded on the principle of freedom for everyone, and capitalism actually feeds off of those at the bottom to make more money for those at the top. If being against that “taking advantage of people for my own personal gain” is anti-American, well, then I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing, because America has become way to obsessed with personal wealth, and less about community and societal health and well being (both in our own country, and in our relationship with the rest of the world). It is true that no one is “owed” anything, but seriously, how many billions of dollars do you need to live comfortably, when there are people starving and living on the street? That seems more un-American to me.

Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don’t seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming.

The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars?

The suns rays do cause global warming. They do so, because they can’t escape the atmosphere, because of the CO2 being released into it. As a result of that warming, the ice caps ARE melting. As a result, they don’t reflect as much of the sun’s rays, and as a result, there is more warming. It is a delicate process that once the balance has shifted, it snowballs out of control. I have said that more than once, yet you don’t seem to be hearing it. That can account for the similar situations occurring on Mars, even though, again, Mars doesn’t have the same atmosphere, and it is pretty much like comparing apples and slugs. Also, Mars is closer to the sun; perhaps that has something to do with it?

It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now.

100% inaccurate. The 10 hottest years on record (as recorded world-wide) have been within the last 15. The hottest being 2005.

Because that famous “hockey stick” graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods … left them off the graph altogether.

While I don’t know what graph you are referring to, the graph that Gore uses in his documentary, shows not only the warming and cooling patterns as far back as 800k years, it proves that the current warming trend isn’t normal. It definitely accounts for all warming and cooling trends; which strengthens the argument that what is happening right isn’t normal.

Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon.

I don’t know where you got this idea, but I personally don’t think that people who are willing to fudge data because of funding issues are scientists, and should never be compared to scientists.

What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why?

According to this graph, it seems as though that time period’s increase in temperature is represented; it shows that ours is higher, though. Also, realize that when people do research, and new information comes along (like those ice core samples we talked about earlier), they integrate that into their models in order to show the most accurate representation available. Perhaps that could account for some of that change.

Additionally, with:

Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying “we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?”

How come the word of one can cancel out the word of many?

Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer?

Please show me the data that authenticates this claim. The reason I ask, is because all of the data and evidence I have seen shows the exact opposite. In fact, the continental shelf of Antarctica is breaking of at increasingly rapid rate.

In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.

Perhaps that is because they are measuring the temperature in the US. Climate change and increase of temperature occurs differently in different parts of the world. The effect of 1 degree temperature change in somewhere like the equator, can be as much as a 10 degree difference effectively, at the poles. Just because it is only 0.3 degrees warmer here, doesn’t mean that it isn’t much warmer elsewhere.

There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.

Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years.

Many of the glaciers that have been visited by man are melting, or in the case of many major ones, are completely gone. I can’t speak for the ones we supposedly haven’t seen, because, if we haven’t seen them, how do we know what is happening with them? We obviously can’t prove if they are melting or growing.

As far as the radar interferometry, it is the opposite of what the core drilling/ice sampling says, and from what I have seen and heard about ice sampling, it is a pretty precise science. Melting trends change with weather patterns; remember there used to be an ice sheet that covered Canada and much of the US, and it melted during one of the warming trends. No warming trend got hot enough to melt enough of the icecaps to cause a rise in the oceans and a change of the trans-Atlantic current, but that is changing. Antarctica is doing the same thing as the North American ice sheet did; melting.

Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.

Again, this is not about us “starting” anything, it is about us accelerating it. This process of warming and cooling is natural, but because of our strain on the environment, it is increasing quicker than it normally would.

Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.

That is incorrect. There have been a steady and rapid increase in ice flows in Greenland, causing the ice that is over land to be broken off, and shifted into the sea. While this process is still going slowly, at the current rate, it could completely melt in the next 50 years. It is definitely not gaining any ice mass. The ice is thinning.

Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.

I would like to see where you got this data, because according the data that I have seen, while there have been periods of time where there were comparable warming periods to what is occurring now, the hottest, and most rapidly growing, warming trend we have seen is occurring now (even if it is currently only slightly higher).

During the last 20 years — a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels — global temperatures have actually decreased. That’s right … decreased.

Then why have the hottest 10 years on record occurred within that same time frame? Something isn’t adding up here.

Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?

I am unsure as to what you are basing this assumption on, because there is active research into the subject, and new data is incorporated into what we already know about global warming. New data is just making the case for GW more succinct and valid.

The point I am making here, and that I have been making from the beginning, is that Global warming is part of a process. It has happened before, but never so rapidly. That leads us to believe that what we are doing to the environment MUST have SOME effect. Any changes that we make can only benefit the environment, and we must act before it goes on too long. Ice caps are melting, not increasing, and the increase of cold water will certainly affect the trans-Atlantic current, which will drastically affect weather and storms across the world. Deny it if you want, but it is still going to happen whether you believe it or not.

Then you, Michael, and all those scientists are all driving hybrids, right? There is also a lot of peer pressure in the scientific community to go along with the gw arguments.

What you cited as proof are largely coincidental facts. No direct connection has been made.

As for Mars, if the temperature of the sun is increasing at the same time as gw here and gw on mars, then would those two “coincidental” facts be worthy of the same status as those others you cited?

Here are some thoughts that I found:

* The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don’t trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world.

* Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists.

* Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don’t seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming.

* The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars?

* It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now.

* It wasn’t all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about “global cooling” and another approaching ice age?

* How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that’s frightening.

* Because that famous “hockey stick” graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods … left them off the graph altogether.

* The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world’s biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India.

* The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world’s dominant capitalist economies.

* Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon.

* Because global warming “activists” and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree.

* What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why?

* Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying “we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?”

* Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer?

* In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.

* There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.

* Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years.

* Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.

* Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.

* Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.

* During the last 20 years — a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels — global temperatures have actually decreased. That’s right … decreased.

* Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man?

* Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?

* On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled “Another Ice Age?” Here’s the first paragraph:

“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.”

As for the scientists, I’m not saying they are wrong, but that they have obviously not proven their case but they act like they do.

What more do you need for them to prove their case? As Michael mentioned the ice core samples, which have been measured over many years, as well as the discovery of that determine atmospheric conditions up to 800,000 years ago until now, both show a definite difference in our rate of GW over the last 30 years or so. It also correlates directly with data that shows our consumption and output of CO2, and our levels of deforestation over that time; a correlation that is very apparent, and one that has been cited as the “proof of the pudding”. If these scientific findings don’t count as proof that we have some stake in GW, then what will convince you? Again, I understand skepticism, but in this case, the correlation is compelling enough for even the biggest cynic to see at least how it is related.

As for Mars, if the sun is heating up, and Mars and Earth both have GW at the same time, isn’t that something you would suspect is more than coincidence? It needs to be looked into.

I wouldn’t think that it is coincidence, because as I said in my comments in response to your skepticism, GW happens naturally, but the point that I, and Gore, am making, is that we have rapidly accelerated the issue, and as a result, we are looking at some pretty serious consequences if we don’t start making changes now. GW on Mars should not, and cannot, be equated in any way with our planet, because it does not posses the same atmosphere, and bio-conditions as our planet does. Everything on our planet works together, and when one thing is upset in the balance, it tips, and causes problems… we just happen to be upsetting the balance more rapidly than it would have occurred naturally, given we didn’t do what we have been doing for the last century.

Not denying gw, just not so sure of the cause.

“I also don’t see how Gore’s plan for saving the environment is anti-capitalist.”

I wasn’t referring to his agenda so much as the Greens. Gore has socialistic tendencies, but I never thought they were too much to worry about.

As for the scientists, I’m not saying they are wrong, but that they have obviously not proven their case but they act like they do.

As for Mars, if the sun is heating up, and Mars and Earth both have GW at the same time, isn’t that something you would suspect is more than coincidence? It needs to be looked into.