The Reason Global Warming is Manmade!

Al Gore's Global Warming presentation!

A good demonstration for why climatologists view greenhouse gases as the cause for global warming is here presented by Al Gore.

Nobody can longer be unaffected by the apparent overwhelming evidence presented for human made global warming.
The question is no longer if global warming is caused by man, but what can be done to fight this and what can we do to prevent a coming future world wide disaster.

Note: The inconvenient truth of this presentation is that the two most important presented evidences which tries to proof that the current global warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gases turn out to be false.

The first is the argument that the current warming change is unprecedented. This is false. The graph that Gore uses is the so called Hockey Stick Graph which shows that the temperature was relative stable during the last 1000 years before the industrial revolution. Then it increases rapidly during the 20th century. The reason it is false is resulting from a normalization error caused by changes in tree ring growth used in the measurements caused by the fertilization effect on tree growth from increased levels of CO2.

The second proof which Gore uses is that ice cores taken from Antarctica shows that an increase in the CO2 level increases the temperature and a decrease in CO2 lowers the temperature. This is false.
It's the other way around. Changes in temperature changes the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is caused by biological and hydrological effect from temperature changes.

Then we have the question of the current and predicted CO2 levels. This comes down to which scale that is applied. A common technique to exaggerate a value is to zoom up the scale to make the number seem to be larger than that it really is and to start the scale not from zero but from a high value.
Viewers of Al Gore's film get a false perception of the current level as it seems to be several hundred percents instead of just 30 % increase and the future value seems to be several thousands percents. What he should have done, if he had been honest, should have also been to show how many percents increase there were in absolute numbers.

What matters are the real values. These values are still small to what they have been in the distance past and still low compared to the current water vapor level which is the most important greenhouse gas.

Fig 1. Graph which shows the global temperature variation during the last 1000 years.

Fig 1. This graph is taken from the UNEP/GRID-Arendal site

This graph shows that the average temperature in the northern hemisphere have been increasing rapidly since the industrial revolution coinciding with the manmade release of large amounts of greenhouse gases, primarily of Carbon Dioxide or CO2. CO2 is the most important Anthropogenic (manmade released) greenhouse gas and is the prime driver for the observed 0.6-0.7 Centigrade temperature increase observed during the 20th century. Temperatures from the year 1000 to 1900 were relative stable.

Note: This graph know as the hockey stick graph has major calibration flaw. The notion that the temperature before the industrial revolution was more stable than now is wrong, we know this from historical and geological records.
Learn more on the flaw of the hockey stick climate graph HERE!

Fig 2. Data records of CO2 and temperatures from Antarctica

Fig 2. Figures from NASA

These graphs show temperatures and CO2 recordings from ice cores taken in Antarctica going back 400000 years. The time scale is reversed with the current time on the left. Here we can see the effect of several glaciations and the brief periods of warming in between. When there are high concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere it causes higher world temperatures. When the CO2 levels are low then the temperatures are low. This shows that CO2 is the decisive working greenhouse gas affecting earth's climate. More alarmingly, the current level of CO2 is substantially higher than in any time during the last 400000 years and the level is rising at an accelerating rate.

Note: Although a relationship between CO2 and temperature exist and the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the conclusion that the different levels of CO2 are the driving force of temperature changes is actually not supported from these graphs.
VIEW temperature CO2 Overlap high resolution HERE! Here we see the same ice core data but with a better resolution. If you look closely you'll see that temperature increase occur before any increase in CO2. In fact there is a time delay between the two of several hundred years. Also, when temperature drops then high level of CO2 lingers a long time after, sometimes several thousands of years, before they also drops. What this indicate is that the relationship between temperature and CO2 seems to have to do more with biological and biochemical equilibrium than to any temperature changes driven by the concentration of CO2.

There can be several reasons for this. Warmer climate create more biological activity which may drive up the levels of CO2. Warmer oceans tend to release CO2 to the atmosphere. Higher temperature may release more methane from permafrost areas which are converted into CO2. The basic driver for this is not well known and is subject to speculation.

According to this graph over Phanerozoic Carbon Dioxide data the levels of CO2 during the last millions of years have been exceptional low. In fact today plants are short of breath, biological speaking, when they try to absorb CO2 for their photosynthesis process.

Fig 4. Global temperature record from 1850 to 2006

Fig 4. Global Temperature recording credit Global Warming Art

This graph shows the temperature variations from 1850 until the present day. Here we can see that the temperature has increased considerably. The temperature increase has coincided with increased levels of CO2 beginning with the 20th century. From 1940 and 1970 there were a slight cooling period. This was caused by industrial pollutions of SO2 Sulfur dioxide and other aerosols. However, because of the effort to curb pollutions from soot and acid rain this cooling have been overtaken now by a much stronger warming trend which is caused by the continuing increase of CO2.

The climate are effected by a number of factors apart from the effects of greenhouse gases such as CO2. Aerosols for example can cool the climate and powerful volcanic eruptions can throw out large amount of particles that shield the earth from sunlight thus cooling the climate. Also changes in the amount of the sun irradiance or heat transfer has an affect on the climate. This however is a small effect and the variations are estimated to be about 0.1% between solar maxima and minima in the 11-year solar cycle. This is such a small change that the resent warming cannot be attributed to the sun, therefore it must be caused be greenhouse gases. Based on current computer simulations with the predicted increased levels of CO2 and other climate data and models it is not unlikely that the average temperature will increase by as much as 5 degree Centigrade or more during this century. This scenario will lead to sever climatic calamities, so drastic action to curve the release of greenhouse gases is necessary.

Note: This may be true if one doesn't acknowledge the effect from low cloud cover modulations caused by high energy cosmic radiation which are modulated by changes in the sun's solar wind and magnetic activity. This effect correlate much better the observed data than the from increased levels of CO2. The size of the cloud cover modulation seems to correspond the previous century temperature increase. It also corresponds to the temperature drop between 1940 and 1970. If temperatures were primarily driven by increased levels of CO2 then we would have been seeing an accelerating temperature increase during the last century. We didn't do that. In fact we saw about the same amount of temperature increase at the beginning of the century as we saw during the end. And of course, right now the temperature increasing should be accelerating. As we enter the new millennium we can see clearly that the temperature increase is slowing down. Although it has to be said that the number of years since year 2000 are to few to make a definite analysis.

Solar physicists predict that the current solar cycle will be strong. They also predict that the next cycle after this one will be much weaker, indicating that the global temperature in the not so far future will start to cool.

So, it is likely that we now are reaching or we may even have pasted the tipping point for the resent global warming trend. There are more and more indications now that this is the case.

If this is the case when history is written after the current global warming hysteria bubble burst it will be compared to the last days of the dot-com bubble. More and more people are now joining research looking for a connection between global warming and the increase in greenhouse gases. More and more start researching the impact on nature from the expected temperature increase of several degrees. Even increasing numbers of business people and investors try to cash in on the hysteria.

Soon we may see that many climatologists will be out of work.

Revealing video which shows the current state and the history of the scientific discipline of climatology.