Q's from Gore's 2nd Movie
D Heald - on Gore's second movie: “An Inconvenient Sequel”
· Have any of the predictions from Al Gore’s first movie come true?
· The Earth’s temperature has fluctuated by large amounts over its history, long before there was any human influence. What forces caused that?
· Could it be believed those forces have stopped?
o Or are completely overpowered by human consumption of fossil fuels, realizing that fossil fuels contain Carbon that was originally in the atmosphere?
o If the Carbon was in the atmosphere originally, why did it not cause problems then?
· There is a balance between the incoming energy from the Sun and the loss of heat to outer space. How does the Earth lose its accumulated energy? (Would that not be a cooling function?)
· Given that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere during the Cambrian Era was nearly 20 times higher than today, the oceans did not boil away, and life exploded on Earth, why is CO2 considered such a culprit today?
· CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is at a geological historical low, presently, what happened to all of the CO2?
· Shouldn’t we worry about a risk of CO2 being too low?
· How could one explain that temperature during the Medieval Warming Period was higher than today, but CO2 levels were lower?
· Why has the Earth been warming since the Little Ice Age ~ 1650, prior to the rapid rise in consumption of fossil fuels? (About 2oC from 1650 to early 1900’s, and less than 0.8oC since.)
· How can Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick, eliminating the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age, be defended with so much documented confirmation by non- temperature data? (Iceland losing half its population, Finland 2/3s of its population during the LIA, Ice Fairs on the Thames in London, numerous paintings, etc. from the LIA, and vineyards at much higher latitudes during the MWP than is possible today, Vikings settling Vinland around 1000 – 1100 AD -L’Anse Aux Meadows – and perishing with the onset of the LIA? Native Americans in Port Aux Choix (5 completely separate waves of migration into and out of the area over 5,000 years, with fluctuation of temperatures up and down and no human component?)
· How can “back-radiation” heat the surface of the Earth to warmer than incident Sunlight can? (Violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics)
· There is extensive data about CO2 lagging temperature. (~1000 year lag on a 500,000 year timescale, and 6 – 12 month lag on a 50 year timescale.) How can that be reconciled with CO2-based theory?
· From the Vostok Ice Core Data, what explains the very periodic characteristic, peaking roughly every 100,000 years? If CO2 is really driving temperature, how can it be explained that temperature drops rapidly from a CO2 peak, and increases rapidly from a CO2 minimum, repeatedly? (Milankovitch Cycles)
· How could it be that the Holocene Optimum was substantially warmer than today? (Actually about 0.5oC warmer than today.)
· How can the Pause be explained?
· How can the missing Hot Spot be explained?
Questions from Gore's 2nd Movie
Demonizing Skeptics as Deniers
Ridley on Politics of Writing About Climate
This could also be inserted into the field above, or erased
Currently as a society, we are having a most difficult time discussing political issues. What is driving this? And why a rebirth in political culture would be a good thing.
Are "markets" dead as some would conjecture? Or is free enterprise what got us here?
At the heart of economics there are several possible economic schools of thought, the essence of these schools of thought and how they relate to our lives.
