What are specific examples used by Al Gore in support of global warming in "An Inconveinent Truth"?

Question

What are specific examples used by Al Gore in support of global warming in "An Inconveinent Truth"?

Answer 1

Mr. Gore communicates several specific and two or three rather irrefutable examples of global warming occuring presently.

1. The simultaneous melting of 3297 of 3300 temparate glaciers (3 are increasing in size slightly due to localized cooling conditions), particularly in the last 100 years.

2. An examination of the study of historical ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.

3. The unprecedented (in recorded human history at least) melting of the Polar glaciers in Greenland (these have since started to catastrophically melt since Mr. Gore filmed his movie a couple of years ago.)

4. The "hockey stick" temperature graph vs. atmospheric CO2 content. Historically speaking the ice-cores (and for the last 5000 years tree-ring core samples) correlate quite nicely exactly with temperature and CO2 concentration , deviating for things like volcanos and other events which cause cooling (due to increased atmospheric sulphur oxides) which are released by volcanos periodically and temporarily lower planetary temperature (for 1-7 years typically).

Most scientists now agree that these are very strong evidence to support the conclusion that humans have had a non-trivial impact on the CO2 content of the atmosphere and that further use of CO2 may change the planet's weather and rainfall and water storage locations in ways that will be bad for current society.

Mr Gore goes further in making the observation that in areas where desertification has occured due to global warming (which it apparently has), there is a corresponding increase in violence and the probability of war between nations affected.

There are some rather common sense extensions that suggest that stronger hurricanes and typhoons would be the direct result of increased temperature of the tropical oceans where these storms originate and travel through.

Certain "interested parties" (such as Exxon and company) have funded "contrarian" scientists whose "job" it is to put plausible denial into the public forum  - most notably Dr. Soong(sp?) and Dr. Sallie Baliunas who counter that variations in the Sun's radative output accounts for all of the changes we have seen in the environment.

This opinion however is not well accepted as both Dr's were previously involved in industry efforts using similar "research" to thwart regulating Freon type gas harming the ozone layer, and were largely discredited or professionally ignored when they produced papers suggesting that the sun was causing damage to the ozone layer. It was only when the regulations and subsequent elimination of CFC's started to have their intended effect and the ozone layer in the temperate zones at least started to stablize and it seems that our restraints have had a positive effect on the ozone layer independent of whatever the sun may or may not be doing to the ozone layer.

Mr. Gore does not mention them by name but cites examples of previous corporate resistance to scientific investigation of their practices (notably the Tobacco scandals of the 1990's).