In the movie, Gore highlights the receding ice cap of Kilimanjaro along with the steadily increasing global temperatures over the past 15 years. He talks about 2005 as the worst hurricane season ever in America. These statistics combined with compelling video shots of Kilimanjaro and dried up lake beds are enough to scare the hell out of anyone. But if you take a step back and look at the big picture, there are some pretty obvious flaws. Just like watching a magician, don't look at the hand he wants you to look at - the trick is in the other hand.
The most basic and critical flaw to the whole argument is "the sample." For Gore to say that the 2005 hurricane season was the worst on American record is true. What he fails to tell you is that we've only been counting hurricanes since the 1930's - and that's only if they actually hit land. If they spun off to sea or didn't hit the U.S., they didn't count. I don't need to call Chuck Gaidica to find out that there have been a few hundred million hurricane seasons prior to 1930. Not a good sample. By the way, it wasn't the force of Katrina that caused most of the damage of New Orleans and expense to taxpayers. It was the floods created by the breached levee's - made possible by inept local politicians.
Now let's talk about the receding ice cap of Africa's Kilimanjaro. Yes, Mr. Gore is right again. It is receding - just like it did in 1880. That was well before the modern era of greenhouse gases and Henry Ford's Model T. Why did it recede? Scientists found that leading up to 1880, the region shifted from a very humid to a dry climate. This meant less cloud cover which exposed the glacier to more direct sunlight, thus leading to less snowfall to replace the sublimating ice. This "non-internal combustion caused" recession of 1880 occurred on Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda. There are no written records of this type of recession occurring prior to 1880, but I'm willing to bet that in the 4 billion years prior to 1880, it probably happened a couple more times.
Let's go back to "the sample" for a moment. Record keeping on our weather began about 120 years ago - and only the last half is really accurate. So all of our record highs and lows and our averages are all based on the past 120 years. The simple problem with this is that we've been having weather for about 4 BILLION years. This means that the past 120 years represents .00000325% of our weather history. Not a good sample. I think we can all agree that .016% would be a better sample. I'll do the math for you - .016% represents about 650,000 years. Still not a great sample, but better than .00000325%.
Are we experiencing global warming? Yes, of course we are. We are currently in the early stages of what geologists call an "interglacial period." An interglacial period is the time frame that falls between "glacial" periods - or Ice Ages. In the past 650,000 years there have been 4 interglacial periods with 7 instances of global warming. Each instance of global warming ranged from 40,000 - 100,000 years. Each of the 4 glacial periods, or "Ice Ages" or "global cooling" had similar time ranges. And that's ONLY in the last 650,000 years.
Our current interglacial period began about 10,000 years ago and could go for another 30,000 to 90,000 years no matter what. So lets check our human ego's at the door and realize that the earth is a much bigger place than we think and we have a lot less effect on its outcome than Mr. Gore would have us believe. This doesn't mean we don't have real issues of smog, toxic waste, etc. Those are real issues that have a negative effect on our current lives. My point is that global warming is NOT new and has been happening since the beginning of time - over and over again. We need to understand that the earth's orbit is not a circle, but elliptical. Because of this, along with the "wobble" effect of the earth's rotation on its axis, there are great variances as we fly around the sun. These variances alter the amount of the sun's radiation on earth, which alters our annual weather patterns as well as help create glacial and interglacial periods. So I would expect our current global warming trend to increase slightly for the next 20,000 years before it starts to level off.
Thanks Al Gore, you give liberals a bad name. I must say, I AM thankful to Mr. Gore for inventing the internet. Because without it, I wouldn't have been able to look up all this information on a Sunday night. Now, back to the football game.
