Friday, March 28, 2008

Message to Al Gore – The Skeptics have Science on Their Side


Al Gore’s message to climate change skeptics is, as usual, long on polemics and devoid of facts. According to Gore, if you don’t believe climate change is man made, you’re like the believers in a flat Earth.

Memo to Gore: Al, the science is almost all on the skeptics’ side. The Earth has experienced hundreds of periods of climate change. In fact, the Earth is in a constant climate-change mode. So far there is no proof that man caused or is causing climate change, but there is an enormous file of scientific evidence that climate changes have occurred naturally.

Are sea levels becoming too high? Only 18,000 years ago, during the last major Ice Age, they were over 400 feet lower than today. During previous warmer periods when the Earth lost almost all its ice, even at the Poles, sea levels were higher than today.

Al, what is the optimum sea level? Today’s? Then what is mankind to do to stop the next Ice Age, or the next Hot Age?

Is it too warm? It was warmer 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, and mankind flourished. It was in the Little Ice Age that followed, and lasted until 1850, that the sort of suffering from violent weather, disease, and malnutrition you predict for global warming plagued mankind.

It was warmer during the Holocene Climate Optimum 5,000 years ago, and civilizations grew and flourished. Ditto for the Roman Warm Period of 2,000 years ago.

Do you see a pattern here, Al? Natural global warming occurred three times since the last Ice Age, and mankind not only survived, but prospered. Only 1,000 years ago, vineyards bloomed and farming was widespread where both are marginally possible today.

Harvard and Smithsonian scientists studied over 240 climate studies and concluded the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today.

Al, your vaunted “hockey stick” of global temperatures by tree-ring proxies has been proven to be fundamentally flawed and useless. Yet it was the centerpiece of your “Inconvenient Truths” presentation.

Wow, talk about an inconvenient truth!

And your famous picture of polar bears on a shrinking ice berg was taken in August, when you would expect to find polar bears on shrinking ice bergs. Didn’t you give us the impression that it was unusual?

That’s not science, Al, that’s lying.

Al, it hasn’t warmed up since 1998, and it’s been cooling lately, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Did the Southern Hemisphere decide not to participate in global warming?

Or is it happening naturally, the way it has hundreds of times in the past?

Al, you may call us skeptical, but we call you gullible.

Your pronouncements continue to demonstrate that your mediocre scholastic achievements are a true reflection of your abilities.

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