Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
“Trump’s Meeting With Al Gore Gives Environmental Activists Hope” according to the New York Times, reporting on the Global Warming activist and former VP’s visit to Trump Tower last week. Gore is quoted by the Washington Post as saying:
I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground … I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the president-elect, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that. [Emphasis mine]
What “common ground”?
- Donald Trump has repeatedly called human-caused catastrophic climate change a “hoax”.
- President-Elect Trump, less than a week after meeting with Gore, picked a hard-line climate skeptic (who the New York Times called “a fossil-fuel advocate and climate-change denier”) to head the Environmental Protection Agency!
- Al Gore’s 2006 An Inconvenient Truth movie is largely responsible for alarming the media and the general public on this issue, and he plans to release another alarmist movie next month!
The figure is a frame-grab of the most dramatic moment from the movie, where Gore notes the remarkable correlation between Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Temperatures over the past six Ice Ages. Gore then goes on to misrepresent the meaning of that data (click here to view a short excerpt from his movie). I’ve annotated the image with Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Temperature values, which are hard to see in the movie clip.
ISSUES I HOPE TRUMP RAISED WITH GORE (OR WILL RAISE IN FUTURE MEETINGS)
Issue #1. Correlation between CO2 and Temperature:
Gore correctly notes the fact that both CO2 and Temperatures go up and down together over the 650,000 year record, and says:
The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside. …[Emphasis mine]
Misrepresentation #1: The the CO2 warming effect is NOT more powerful than the others.
Look at the Ice Core record! Temperatures begin their rise precisely when CO2 levels are at their lowest. Temperatures begin their fall precisely when CO2 is at its highest.
Thus, Gore’s claim that CO2-caused warming is the “one relationship that is more powerful than all the others” is false!
Even when at its highest Ice Core levels, CO2-caused warming is powerless compared to something else that causes Temperatures to drop! We know that something else has nothing to do with Human activities, because virtually all of the Ice Core record is before the advent of Humans on Earth.
Of course climate Skeptics accept the reality of the Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect and that CO2 is a “Greenhouse” gas. Along with water vapor (H2O) which is by far the primary “Greenhouse” gas, CO2 is partially responsible for the Earth’s surface being dozens of degrees warmer than it would be if the Atmosphere was pure nitrogen. [See my WUWT series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. By the way, I also accept that the majority of recent CO2 increase is due to human activities, mainly burning of unprecedented quantities of fossil fuels, and that some small fraction of recent global warming is due to human activities. ]
Bottom Line #1: The Ice Core record has NOTHING to do with CO2-induced warming. The Ice Ages prove that CO2-induced warming is weak compared to Natural cycles that determine the ups and downs of Temperature.
Issue #2. Current CO2 levels exceed those in the Ice Core record, and continue to rise:
Gore points to the Ice Core Temperature range, which is about 10⁰C (18⁰F), and correctly says:
In the parts of the United States that contain the modern cities of Cleveland, Detroit, New York in the northern tier. This is the difference between a nice day and having a mile of ice above your head. Keep that in mind when you look at this fact.
He then, again correctly, extends the CO2 graph upwards to show that the CO2 level in 2006 is above the highest levels recorded in the Ice Core data, and says:
Carbon dioxide having never gone above 300 PPM, here is where CO2 is now. We give off where it has never been as far back as this record will measure. If you will bear with me I would like to emphasize this point. It’s already right here. Look how far above the natural cycle this is, and we’ve done that.
Gore then mounts a platform and ascends high above the stage (see my graphic) and further extends the CO2 graph upwards to a projection of the likely level in 50 years, which is nearly 600 ppm. He says:
But ladies and gentleman, in less than 50 years it’s going to continue to go up. When some of these children who are here are my age, here’s where it’s going to be in less than 50 years. You’ve heard of off the chart. Within less than 50 years it’ll be here.
There’s not a single fact or day or number that’s been used to make this up that is in any controversy. The so-called skeptics look at this and say, “So, that looks seems perfectly okay.” On the temperature side: If this much on the cold side is a mile of ice over our heads, what would that much on the warmer side be? [Emphasis mine]
Misrepresentation #2: Even if CO2 does rise to nearly 600 ppm in 50 years, the resultant Temperature increase will be a small fraction of what Gore implies. The CO2-induced warming effect is NOT linear.
Let us look at the numbers. The range of CO2 in the Ice Core record is roughly 200 to 300 ppm, a difference of 100 ppm. The corresponding Temperature range, from -8⁰C to +2⁰C, is a difference of 10⁰C. Gore implies that CO2-induced warming is in that fixed proportion, i.e., a 100 ppm CO2 rise CAUSES a 10⁰C Temperature rise. This is a total falsehood, and his scientific advisers knew it, which is why Gore never specifically makes the claim. Instead, he subtly implies that relationship and guides his audience to come to that wrong conclusion on their own.
Gore points out that CO2 levels 50 years in the future will approach 600 ppm, and asks:
If this much on the cold side is a mile of ice over our heads, what would that much on the warmer side be?
He knows that his audience will assume, incorrectly, that Temperatures will rise in proportion, by about 25⁰C (45⁰F).
Again, his scientific advisers did not allow him to project the implied future Temperature rise (the White dashed line in my graphic), because they knew it is a total falsehood.
Bottom Line #2: So, how much might temperatures rise if CO2 doubles in 50 years, from 300 ppm to 600 ppm? Temperature rise due to a doubling of CO2 is called “Climate Sensitivity” and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates it is between 1.5⁰C to 4.5⁰C. Thus, Temperatures would rise far, far less than the 25⁰C implied by Gore. (Based on the failure of the IPCC’s Climate Model projections to match the Temperature record during the current, roughly 20-year, statistical “pause”, I personally think the actual value is closer to 1⁰C than the center of the IPCC’s estimated range.)
Issue #3: Proper interpretation of the Ice Core data. CO2 rise and fall LAGS behind Temperature rise and fall by HUNDREDS of years.
The graphic expands a 50,000-year portion of the Vostok Ice Core record to reveal a simple fact about what Gore called the “very complicated” relationship between Temperature and CO2.
Temperatures rise and fall BEFORE the rise and fall of CO2! This occurs for each and every Ice Age. (Thanks to Joannenova.com.au for the expanded graph.)
Even the Warmist website, RealClimate, run by scientists from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, agree on this quite obvious fact. They try to explain it away:
…At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.
Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.
The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend.
The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.
The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.
OK, at least RealClimate recognizes that “CO2 … could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.”
So, what happened after that first 1/6th of the warming in each cycle? Did the Laws of Nature suddenly change and make CO2-induced warming more powerful than the Natural cycles that initiated the warming?
If so, how to explain the fact that the Ice Core record shows that CO2 is at its highest levels when the cooling cycle is initiated! So, CO2 suddenly loses its power when there is too much of it?
They also say “The lag is only 800 years.” Don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.
In 2013, Scientific American reported a paper, Published in Science [Abstract only, paper is pay-walled], [ADDED 18 Dec 2016 – A version of this paper is available free without need to register: http://epic.awi.de/32547/1/parrenin2013s_accepted_all.pdf ] where a French team “show CO2 lagged temperature by less than 200 years, drastically decreasing the amount of uncertainty in previous estimates.” OK, perhaps if analysts torture the data with sufficient vigor they can reduce the lag to less than 200 years, and perhaps they may even be correct. However, repeating myself, don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.
Bottom Line #3: CAUSE must come before EFFECT. Al Gore’s misuse of the Ice Core data to push his activist, catastrophic human-caused global warming arguments have no basis in Science.
Gore is a snake oil salesman that does not have the acumen to understand the basic issues. But that is not his purpose. He has found his snake oil and made himself rich off of it. And that is his purpose.
“Temperatures rise and fall BEFORE the rise and fall of CO2! This occurs for each and every Ice Age.”
That isprecisely why that duplicitous so’n’so separated the two graphs, other waise he couldn’t have made the claim that he did! Lying b!%&!*d!
Politicians and most of the press and public are probably artistically oriented.
Artistic people are probably heavily influenced, even blinded, by a beautiful black-backgrounded pictures with bright red and blue and yellow lines. It shows a scary situation, and they were frightened, and now cannot see anything except that.
We cannot expect to win with logic alone.
We need advertising experts.
“We need advertising experts.”
That’s right! We have to compete on their level.
I am curious.
If CO2 ends an ice age (it has happened several times according to Al Gore) — where does this CO2 come from? Oceans must warm before they release stored CO2. Aren’t the glaciers melting and pouring cold water into the oceans? And atmospheric temperature rise has only a small effect on water temperature?
Do the melting glacier waters sink down to the bottom of the oceans and force warmer water that has been sitting on the seabeds (being warmed by the earth’s core) to rise to the surface releasing CO2?
Do ice ages impair the cycle of cold water sinking and bottom water rising thus allowing seabed water to heat to higher temperatures while the ice age is in progress? Then something else causes the glaciers to melt sending cold water down and driving warmer water up?
So do ice ages impair the cycle of cold water down and warmer water up? Considering that ice ages last so long maybe no circulation of cold water down and warmer water up is the actual norm.
What if all the glaciers melt and there is no cold water to be sent down? In our present time cold water is created at the poles and sinks down and sends warmer waters up. But that bottom water never really warms much due to the constant circulation.
So am I full of shiit or does this have possibilities? I believe in the sun (and earth tilts etc.) but also think the earth’s hot core has to have something to do with this.
Take my word for the correctness of all above. After all I am a poet and who is more credible than a poet?
Eugene WR Gallun
Dammn! Somewhere above I wanted to throw in that Al Gore says the temperature of the earth’s core is several million degrees. Well, maybe it is better i forgot and left it out.
Eugene WR Gallun
Al who?
Gore’s film reminded me of [DELETED – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law Ira]
Not even intelligent propaganda.
“the lag is only 800 years”. It’s been roughly 800 years since the MWP. So, how much of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 levels can be attributed to the MWP?
The lag is 800 years for longer cycles. Consider a 1st order lowpass filter and a variable frequency sinewave – the lag will not exceed a 1/4 cycle of the sinewave.
Also with CO2 change due to temperature change being 10 PPM per degree C, not much of the 120-plus PPM increase from pre-industrial to now is from warming of the world. CO2 now is at least 110 PPM more than it was during or 800 years after the holocene thermal maximum.
The questions Trump should direct to Al Gore are:
1) Why did it take from 1958 to 1988 before anyone panicked about atmospheric CO2 levels, aka The Keeling Curve?
[I DELETED the rest of your questions because they have nothing to do with Climate Science. Sorry, Ira]
CO2 has NOTHING to do with climate change, as others have previously noted, the climate change happened ie. temps went up then did the CO2 went up later (some 7-8 centuries later)…please let us stop using terms like GREENHOUSE GASES as it is specious – it is an ATMOSPHERE and it is doing its job just fine as it always has for us humans
“Temperatures rise and fall BEFORE the rise and fall of CO2! This occurs for each and every Ice Age. (Thanks to Joannenova.com.au for the expanded graph.)”
“They also say “The lag is only 800 years.” Don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.”
The natural driver of Earth’s climate on scales of millenia is the Earth’s orbital eccentricity.
Explained by the Milankovitch cycles….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
The most important one seemingly being obliquity.
This leads to most change in the energy of the sun impacting the latitude of greatest sensitivity – 65 deg N.
The weaker the insolation there then the less likely it is that winter snows will thaw over the higher latitudes of the NH landmass. Over millenia this builds with feed-back from albedo, and then into temp, which feed into atmospheric WV (GHG).
What this does is to regulate the Earth’s carbon cycle such that when cooling more CO2 is absorbed by the oceans and when warming more is free to stay in the atmosphere with the oceans less able to absorb.
That is why there is a lag in the Vostock ice-cores proxy temp vs atmospheric CO2.
CO2 is a FEED-BACK and not the DRIVER of long-term climatic change.
Becasue CO2 is a GHG it can both drive a change and feed-back into a change.
It only depends on which comes first.
The natural state of affairs is for the Earth’s reception of solar energy to be reguated by it’s orbital characteristics and then CO2 increases/decreases to feed-back into the change.
The current warming is not due to changes orbital characteristics.
http://www.climatedata.info/forcing/milankovitch-cycles/files/stacks_image_6997.png
Yes, but the current warming period is both longer and more stable than the previous warming periods.
? Previous interglacials? What periods do you mean.
Q1. What is the CORRECT temperature for the planet?
Q2. Where did humanity arise from – equatorial (warm) or polar (cold) places and which is preferable?
Q3. If man ‘had’ to alter the planets temperature, up or down, what precisely could they do to achieve this and how long would it take?
Q4. What other beneficial projects could the already-spend (wasted) $trillions have been used for?
Q5. How many MORE $trillions are we going to throw at this ‘problem’?
Years ago, my wife and I watched An Inconvenient Truth together. I found it hilarious, she found it terrifying. You need not be a scientist to see that CAGW is mostly speculation, you merely need to be thoughtful and understand what constitutes evidence.
For instance, regarding point #3, my wife found the graph totally convincing. I went back later and paused the DVD to take a look at these two lines. As someone who plays around with charting in the stock market, I’m aware of the difference between a leading indicator and a lagging indicator.
Gore didn’t superimpose his two lines because if he did, it would be obvious CO2 is a lagging indicator (temperature goes up first, then CO2 follows it up). Gore’s whole argument depends on it being a leading indicator. So he separated them and let your imagination do what his “data” couldn’t.
The movie is full of dishonest manipulations like that.
I’ve always wanted to ask Al Gore:
With that fact in mind, when would you rather live — the high carbon dioxide periods or the low ones?
I guess Al Gore is just a glutton for punishment. He got officially dressed down over his first propaganda effort, An Inconvenient Truth, and now he is going to do it all over again. Where’s that judge? Clear your calendar.
As for cause/effect of CO2 change and temperature change: From 400,000-plus to 200 years ago when the sum of carbon in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere was essentially constant, CO2 variation in the atmosphere was a positive feedback mechanism that applied to temperature changes from other causes such as the Milankovitch cycles. Now, we are transferring lots of carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere and atmospheric CO2 increasing from that and causing/contributing to the increase of temperature.
The Gore tip-off is best illustrated by his rogue’s gallery of prematurely extinct species…among which he included a coelacanth (look it up). When I saw that, I guffawed out loud. It is distinctive in appearance and was thought to be extinct since the Late Cretaceous (66 milllion years ago). However, the reason why its image is familiar is because it was discovered in 1938 as a living species, a notorious SURVIVAL–not an extinction. It would be on a level of Gore showing a panel of famous dead men, and including Donald Trump (wishes don’t count). Well, once you catch him red-handed in a lie, how much else can you believe?
I will again bring up the point that there is an equilibrium vapor pressure (atmospheric concentration) of carbon dioxide above seawater, fixed by seawater temperature and chemistry. There will be rates of CO2 going into the water AND coming out of the water…as well as rates of it coming and going from and to other repositories. The main point is that Le Chatlier’s principle (homeostatic maintenance of equilibrium) will cause any seawater rates to adjust in order to maintain the equilibrium vapor pressure. If there is more CO2 than equilibrium, it will go into solution. If there is less, it will come out of solution. All that the seawater “sees” is the vapor pressure. It doesn’t care if there are other sources in the world; it will adjust as necessary to maintain equilibrium. So, it seems obvious that the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere means that the equilibrium condition is shifting, not that any particular source or sink is overpowering the others. If this is true, it also means that it doesn’t matter what the human contribution is to the sources; the ocean will adjust its rates to meet the equilibrium condition, regardless. The question is: Why is the equilibrium changing? (Speculation for chemists: maybe the solubility of carbonates is affected by the pH of seawater, and we are witnessing a subtle interaction of chemistry and temperature–which drives the CO2 concentration in the air.)
Lastly, I spent a good chunk of my professional life designing laser weapons to shoot through the atmosphere at targets, mostly in the 5 to 10 micron wavelength bands. And the answer always was that our main problem with distance propagation was absorption by (1) water vapor, and (2) carbon dioxide. So, there really is no denial possible that these molecules will absorb AND RE-RADIATE long-wave infrared radiation when they are in thermal equilibrium with the radiation. There is no better barrier to an infrared laser than a simple cloud. As good as a foot of steel (maybe better). So, the “greenhouse effect” metaphor is a real effect. You can count on it. Clear skies at night, cold night. Cloudy skies, not so cold. I’ve lived by that fact in my neck of the woods for my entire life. But the effect does not rely on the atmosphere doing any heating from its own heat; it relies on the heat from the Earth surface being effectively scattered into upward and downward components. (Yes, a photon emission will make a molecule “colder” and an absorption will make it “warmer.” But the air is already a mixture of warmer and colder molecules–the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution–and the “warmer” ones will cause spontaneous IR emissions, too.) It is more accurate to think of these gases in the atmosphere functioning as a beam splitter or partially reflective mirror. The molecules are not getting any warmer or cooler from the radiation. Their conductive contact with the Earth will make them warmer or cooler, as it always does.
Is it true that CO2 has never exceeded 300ppm before now?
RoHa: Great question! When Al Gore says in his movie that CO2 has NEVER been above 300 ppm, he is referring ONLY to the Ice Core data as compiled and currently understood. The Ice Core record is smoothed, so, if there were short periods of several years where CO2 was substantially above 300 ppm, that would not be detectable. There were most certainly periods millions of years ago (well prior to the 650,000 years of the Ice Core record) when CO2 was well above 300 ppm, perhaps 4000 ppmv or even higher. There may also be relatively short periods during the historical era (say the past 6,000 years) when CO2 was substantially higher than 300 ppmv. If any WUWT reader can shed more light on this issue, please post a comment. advTHANKSance. Ira
Ira,
I agree, the ‘300 ppm’ is cherry-picked. Here’s a chart based on NOAA and IPCC data:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SoxiDu0taDI/AAAAAAAABFI/Z2yuZCWtzvc/s1600/Geocarb%2BIII-Mine-03.jpg
Thanks for that chart, db.
TA, you’re mighty welcome. (As usual, click in the charts to embiggen.)
Great post, but all of the detail is unimportant. Algore said it best, he and The Donald had a “sincere search for common ground”, and they found it. They both agree that human caused catastrophic climate change is a hoax. Al was probably explaining to TD how to make money from the scam.
Ira Glickstein,
Thanks for a good compilation, condensed to 3 points.
However, when
“They also say “The lag is only 800 years.” Don’t they recognize that CAUSE must come before EFFECT (unless they have some magical view of science)? Any lag at all disqualifies the second item from being the CAUSE.” –
They go from one fallacy to another.
Cheers – Hans