Why did al gore lie in his movie "an inconvienent truth" that when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the -

Question

temperature increases while showing the graph that goes back by 450,000 years?

Answer 1

Why did al gore lie? He's a politician... he can't help it!

Answer 2

Propaganda is why he lied he wanted to run for president in 2012.

Answer 3

The historic lag of CO2 behind temperature is PROOF that the recent warming is caused by us.

In the past warming started for other reasons (almost certainly an increase in solar radiation).  Then hundreds of years later CO2 was released from warming oceans.  The process takes hundreds of years, it simply can't happen fast.

But in the recent warming THERE IS NO LAG.  CO2 and temperature are going up together.  The only explanation for this is that CO2 is the main cause of the warming.

CO2 can be a cause (greenhouse effect) and an effect (warming ocean waters release CO2).  In the past the lag shows it was just an effect.  The lack of that lag shows this time, it's mostly a cause.

Answer 4

Al Gore didn't lie so much as he oversimplified. He made the relationship between CO2 and temperature sound clearer than it really is, but the basic idea is correct. If you are interested in learning more about the subject, the link Ken gave is very helpful. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc... It lays out why Gore didn't lie, per se, he just didn't give as clear a picture as he could have.

Gore is a politician making a movie. AIT is sound-bite-ridden, but it's not patently wrong. He's trying to tell his message and create an impression before most people's attention would wander -- this is a movie, after all, not a book. I think his oversimplification is disrespectful to viewers, but again, not blatantly false (minus the items mentioned in the review at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=2... ).

Answer 5

He wanted to push the barrow on carbon trading and the facts didn't suit is argument. I too have seen that graph and he did turn it up the other way to make it fit his propaganda.

Carbon Trading scheme will be the biggest scam since we were lead to believe oil and coal are fossil fuels and they aren't.

Answer 6

Are you claiming the greenhouse effect is 'a lie'?

I explained the 800 year lag to you in a previous question.

He didn't lie about anything.  CO2 causes warming.  It's called the greenhouse effect.  All Gore did was point to the obvious correlation between CO2 and temps.  He didn't say that they follow eachother perfectly.

What he said was true.  As CO2 goes up, so does global temperature.  That there's sometimes an 800 year lag doesn't change that fact.

Besides which, who cares what Al Gore says anyway?

Answer 7

What you're saying is true, but completely irrelevant. Historically CO2 levels did lag temperatures by an 800 year period. This doesn't negate the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. In fact, the reason for the lag is quite obvious (to anyone but a GW denialist, that is): an enhanced greenhouse effect wasn't the initial cause of the warming. This is a completely different scenario than what we have today because CO2 *did* rise before temperatures this time (and thus this warming bears all the signs of an enhanced greenhouse effect).

To answer your question: Gore didn't lie. I'm pretty sure he never mentioned which led the other on his graph. He only stated that they "fit together." So if he did lie, it was a lie by omission. Why did he lie? Probably because he either didn't know, or didn't want to waste time in his film explaining such a trivial thing.

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Edit: That's not a lie either. When CO2 levels go up, temperature follows. Got anything else (I admit to not having paid much attention when I watched Gore's film).

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Edit: Funny indeed. Well, it would be, if I could bring myself to care.

Answer 8

Who says he lied?

Show me some verified data to convince me.

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OK as a scientist with degrees in chemistry and biology and a healthy dose of physics, that video was loaded with scientific problems.  Although it was "s**y" and I could see how it could boondoggle those who don't know the particulars.

I skipped the intro that attempts to scare you into trusting they are the real source of truth to get to the folks talking about their theories:

1)  Weather balloon data shows that the earth isn't increasing in temperature at all.  This is a load of hooey.  Atmospheric scientists know the various levels of the atmosphere are largely independant and non-mixing.  It's like oil sitting on top of water.  They don't mix.  So you don't consider them togethor.  Especially since the problem is in the lowest layer, ours.  My favorite part out of this segment was when they suggested that light hitting the surface of earth just bounces off if there is no atmosphere, as if it were a perfect mirror, showing a lack of understanding of physics.

Then they try to substantiate that because the upper level atmosphere data doesn't jive with the theoretical models of temperature at the surface that there is a problem.  That's like taking the temperature of a dog and when measuring the temperature of a frog suggesting there is a problem with the frog model.

2)  CO2 is not an important variable greenhouse gas because it is not the most prevalent.  Hogwash.

It's true it is not the most prevalent.  But it IS the greenhouse gas whose concentration varies most.  Water vapor, by contrast, is mostly consistant in its concentration in the atmosphere.  Since there isn't any large change in the amount of water vapor occurring, you can't blame global increases or decreases of temperature change on it.

It's like this:  Say the earth is covered by 1 million tons of water vapor and 100 thousand tons of carbon dioxide.  Both of these trap heat from the sun.  Now for some reason the carbon dioxide increases to 200 thousand tons.  Do we expect that because there is more gas able to trap heat from the sun that it won't?  Likewise, if the carbon dioxide goes down to 50thousand tons, there will be less gas around to trap that heat.

Answer 9

The 800 year lag in some of the major climate shifts is well known by climate scientists.  It's because CO2 was not the primary (or the initial) driver of the climate at the start of the warming process.  

Basically, it went like this:

Something else started the warming process.  As the oceans slowly heated up they released CO2 into the atmosphere.  The increased CO2, in turn added to the warming process. Eventually (remember, these cycles were over 1000's of years) the initial cause of the warming probably subsided and the CO2 was left as the primary climate temperature driver.

It's explained well here:

"The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it right.)"

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

Here's another independent analysis of the same factor:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags...

Edit:

So does that mean you accept my links and admit that the 800 year lag time you mentioned has no bearing on the truth of AGW?  Or are you the one trying to lie here?  Because anyone that posts a link to "The Great Global Warming Swindle" and suggests it present truthful information is either intentionally deceptive or simply ignorant.  Which one applies to you?  Do yourself a favor and don't believe every video you find that agrees with your ideology.  The mocumentary TGGWS has been thoroughly discredited. And if you'd spend a little time doing some research, you'd know that.

You still haven't said how Gore lied.  As CO2 goes up, temperatures do indeed go up.  And as I explained above, the lag time doesn't change that fact.

Answer 10

Lying is just a habit with Al-gore.  This whole global warming thing started out as an April fools joke anyway.  It's going to be really funny when everybody finally gets it.

Answer 11

He did lie, but it still worked to his favor. Ever hear of that old saying, about how someone trips and falls into a pile. But comes out, smelling like a rose. The science used in that episode was so misdirected everybody laughed. But (Ken) has a link to a realclimate url, explaining it.

Answer 12

al gore didn't lie about anything