June 14, 2018
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 2 of the Climate Change Series. It focuses exclusively on Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth” published in 2006. Note: He also produced a film by the same name in which he was a primary character.
For this series I am not going to provide any personal perspectives in the cover letter as I don’t want to unduly influence you with any of my biases. Instead, I plan to provide points of debate to assist you in coming to your own conclusions. The points of debate that will be featured in the cover letter will focus on the following:
I plan to do this in cover letters for segments 2 through 7.
The answers for this segment are:
The next segment will be a counterpoint to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” To provide the counterpoint, I selected “Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1,500 years” by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 2 of the Climate Change Series. It focuses exclusively on Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth” published in 2006. Note: He also produced a film by the same name in which he was a primary character.
For this series I am not going to provide any personal perspectives in the cover letter as I don’t want to unduly influence you with any of my biases. Instead, I plan to provide points of debate to assist you in coming to your own conclusions. The points of debate that will be featured in the cover letter will focus on the following:
- Is there a 20th century temperature rising trend acknowledged?
- Is that trend attributed to fossil fuel emissions?
- What is the evidence cited to support or not support point 2 above?
- Is the trend attributed to natural causes?
- What is the evidence cited to support or not support point 4 above?
- Are severe climate consequences predicted by the author?
- Is there any additional scientific information presented concerning the debate?
I plan to do this in cover letters for segments 2 through 7.
The answers for this segment are:
- Is there a 20th century temperature rising trend acknowledge? Yes
- Is that trend attributed to fossil fuel emissions? Yes
- What is the evidence cited to support point 2 above? Increased carbon dioxide emissions from human-related sources (burning of fossil fuels) with (a) a positive warming feedback effect from water vapor, and (b) a linear temperature impact from future CO2 increases all supported by scientific consensus. Plus, the “Hockey Stick” and observed changing climate consequences around us.
- Is the trend attributed to natural causes? No
- What is the evidence cited to not support point 4 above? None
- Are severe climate consequences predicted by the author? Yes, (a) Increased hurricane duration and intensity, (b) a fifteen-fold increase in severe storm insurance claims, (c) increases in the number and severity of droughts (U.S. will lose 60% of its current soil moisture), (d) unprecedented deterioration of coral reefs (e) new and unfamiliar diseases plus new strains of diseases once under control, and (f) a worldwide increase in sea levels of 18 to 20 feet.
- Is there any additional scientific information presented concerning the debate? Yes, Michael Mann’s very controversial “Hockey Stick” which depicts the “Medieval Warm” and “Little Ice Age” geological periods as regional and with very small temperature changes from those of history followed by a significant temperature rise in the last half-century. Note: The “Hockey Stick” will be expounded upon and challenged in future segments (6, 7, & 8). It is a significant point of debate.
The next segment will be a counterpoint to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” To provide the counterpoint, I selected “Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1,500 years” by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.
Happy Learning,
Harley
CLIMATE CHANGE – SEGMENT 2
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH BY AL GORE (2006) - EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: This is not about any scientific discussion or political dialogue. It is about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations, to rise to this new occasion. This is the moral, ethical and spiritual challenge.
WHAT EXACTLY ARE GREENHOUSE GASES? What all greenhouse gases have in common is that they allow light from the sun to come into the atmosphere but trap a portion of the outward-bound infrared radiation and warm up the air. Having some amount of greenhouse gases is beneficial. Without them, the average temperature of the Earth's surface would be right around zero degrees Fahrenheit – not a very nice place to live. Carbon dioxide (CO2) usually gets top billing in this because it accounts for 80% of total greenhouse emissions. When we burn fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) in our homes, cars, factories, and power plants, or when we cut or burn down forests we release CO2 into the atmosphere. Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas that increases in volume with warmer temperatures, thereby magnifying the impact of all artificial greenhouse gases.
A SCIENTIFIC HERO: ROGER REVELLE: Revelle expressed concern about the unprecedented absorption of CO2 in the oceans as well as in the atmosphere. I will never forget the graph he drew on the blackboard, nor the dramatic message it conveyed: that something profoundly new was happening to the atmosphere of the entire planet and this transformation was being caused by human beings. He knew that this path our civilization had taken would send us careening toward catastrophe, unless the trend could be reversed.
IT IS EVIDENT IN THE WORLD AROUND US THAT VERY DRAMATIC CHANGE IS TAKING PLACE:
HURRICANES: There is now a strong, new emerging consensus that global warming is indeed linked to a significant increase in both the duration and intensity of hurricanes.
THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY: Over the last three decades, insurance companies have seen a 15-fold increase in the amount of money paid to victims of extreme weather.
DROUGHT: A reason for the paradoxical effect of global warming is that while it produces more evaporation from the oceans to fill the warmer atmosphere with increased moisture, it also sucks moisture out of the soil. Scientists are now telling us that if we do not act quickly to contain global warming pollution, we will soon barrel right through a doubling of CO2 and move toward a quadrupling, in which case most of the United States would lose up to 60% of its soil moisture. How do we debate something as cataclysmic as this?
INFRASTRUCTURE AT RISK BY 2010 DUE TO PERMAFROST THAW: Since the 1970s, the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap has diminished precipitously. There are now studies showing that if we continue with business as usual, the Arctic ice cap will completely disappear each year during the summertime. At present, it plays a crucial role in cooling the earth. Preventing its disappearance must be one of our highest priorities.
CORAL REEFS: In 1988, the second hottest year on record, the world lost an estimated 16% of all its coral reefs. The deadliest cause of the recent, rapid and unprecedented deterioration of coral reefs is believed by scientists to be higher ocean temperatures due to global warming.
DISEASES: Global warming increases human vulnerability to new and unfamiliar diseases, as well as new strains of diseases once under control.
SEA LEVEL RISE: If Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, or if half of Greenland and half of Antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, sea levels worldwide would increase by between 18 and 20 feet.
WE ARE WITNESSING AN UNPRECEDENTED AND MASSIVE COLLISION BETWEEN OUR CIVILIZATION AND THE EARTH: The fundamental relationship between our civilization and the ecological system of the Earth has been utterly and radically transformed due to the powerful convergence of three factors.
CONSENSUS AS STRONG AS THE ONE THAT HAS DEVELOP AROUND THIS TOPIC IS RARE IN SCIENCE: There is a misconception that the scientific community is in a state of disagreement about whether global warming is real, whether human beings are the principal cause, and whether its consequences are so dangerous as to warrant immediate action. In fact, there is virtually no serious disagreement remaining on any of these central points that make up the consensus view of the world scientific community.
THE POLITICIZATION OF GLOBAL WARMING: The truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives.
The rationale offered by the so-called global warming skeptics for opposing any action to solve the climate crisis has changed several times of the years.
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH BY AL GORE (2006) - EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: This is not about any scientific discussion or political dialogue. It is about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations, to rise to this new occasion. This is the moral, ethical and spiritual challenge.
WHAT EXACTLY ARE GREENHOUSE GASES? What all greenhouse gases have in common is that they allow light from the sun to come into the atmosphere but trap a portion of the outward-bound infrared radiation and warm up the air. Having some amount of greenhouse gases is beneficial. Without them, the average temperature of the Earth's surface would be right around zero degrees Fahrenheit – not a very nice place to live. Carbon dioxide (CO2) usually gets top billing in this because it accounts for 80% of total greenhouse emissions. When we burn fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) in our homes, cars, factories, and power plants, or when we cut or burn down forests we release CO2 into the atmosphere. Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas that increases in volume with warmer temperatures, thereby magnifying the impact of all artificial greenhouse gases.
A SCIENTIFIC HERO: ROGER REVELLE: Revelle expressed concern about the unprecedented absorption of CO2 in the oceans as well as in the atmosphere. I will never forget the graph he drew on the blackboard, nor the dramatic message it conveyed: that something profoundly new was happening to the atmosphere of the entire planet and this transformation was being caused by human beings. He knew that this path our civilization had taken would send us careening toward catastrophe, unless the trend could be reversed.
IT IS EVIDENT IN THE WORLD AROUND US THAT VERY DRAMATIC CHANGE IS TAKING PLACE:
- Almost all of the mountain glaciers in the world are now melting, many of them quite rapidly. There is a message in this.
- The correlation between temperature and CO2 concentrations over the last 1,000 years, measured in the ice core record, is striking. Nonetheless, the so-called global warming skeptics often say that global warming is really an illusion reflecting nature's cyclical fluctuations. To support their view, they frequently refer to the Medieval Warm Period. But the vaulted Medieval Warm Period was tiny compared to the enormous increases in temperature the last half-century.
- Global-warming skeptics launched a fierce attack against another measurement of the 1,000-year correlations between CO2 and temperature known as "the Hockey Stick," a graphic image representing the research of climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues. But, scientists have confirmed the basic conclusions in multiple ways.
- If you look at the 21 hottest years measured, 20 of the 21 have occurred within the last 25 years. The hottest year recorded during this entire period was 2005.
HURRICANES: There is now a strong, new emerging consensus that global warming is indeed linked to a significant increase in both the duration and intensity of hurricanes.
THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY: Over the last three decades, insurance companies have seen a 15-fold increase in the amount of money paid to victims of extreme weather.
DROUGHT: A reason for the paradoxical effect of global warming is that while it produces more evaporation from the oceans to fill the warmer atmosphere with increased moisture, it also sucks moisture out of the soil. Scientists are now telling us that if we do not act quickly to contain global warming pollution, we will soon barrel right through a doubling of CO2 and move toward a quadrupling, in which case most of the United States would lose up to 60% of its soil moisture. How do we debate something as cataclysmic as this?
INFRASTRUCTURE AT RISK BY 2010 DUE TO PERMAFROST THAW: Since the 1970s, the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap has diminished precipitously. There are now studies showing that if we continue with business as usual, the Arctic ice cap will completely disappear each year during the summertime. At present, it plays a crucial role in cooling the earth. Preventing its disappearance must be one of our highest priorities.
CORAL REEFS: In 1988, the second hottest year on record, the world lost an estimated 16% of all its coral reefs. The deadliest cause of the recent, rapid and unprecedented deterioration of coral reefs is believed by scientists to be higher ocean temperatures due to global warming.
DISEASES: Global warming increases human vulnerability to new and unfamiliar diseases, as well as new strains of diseases once under control.
SEA LEVEL RISE: If Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, or if half of Greenland and half of Antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, sea levels worldwide would increase by between 18 and 20 feet.
WE ARE WITNESSING AN UNPRECEDENTED AND MASSIVE COLLISION BETWEEN OUR CIVILIZATION AND THE EARTH: The fundamental relationship between our civilization and the ecological system of the Earth has been utterly and radically transformed due to the powerful convergence of three factors.
- The population explosion which drives demand for food, water, and energy – and for all our natural resources. Almost 30% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year is a result of the burning of brush-land for subsistence agriculture and wood fires used for cooking. Wildfires are becoming much more common as hotter temperatures dry out the soil and leaves. In addition, warmer air produces more lightning.
- And that brings me to the second factor that has transformed our relationship to the Earth – the scientific and technological revolution. Mistakes in our dealing with Mother Nature can now have much larger, unintended consequences, because many of our new technologies confer upon us new power without automatically giving us new wisdom.
- Global warming's pace is now accelerating so rapidly that even in our own lifetimes, we are beginning to see the consequences.
CONSENSUS AS STRONG AS THE ONE THAT HAS DEVELOP AROUND THIS TOPIC IS RARE IN SCIENCE: There is a misconception that the scientific community is in a state of disagreement about whether global warming is real, whether human beings are the principal cause, and whether its consequences are so dangerous as to warrant immediate action. In fact, there is virtually no serious disagreement remaining on any of these central points that make up the consensus view of the world scientific community.
THE POLITICIZATION OF GLOBAL WARMING: The truth about the climate crisis is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives.
The rationale offered by the so-called global warming skeptics for opposing any action to solve the climate crisis has changed several times of the years.
- They acknowledge that the globe is indeed warming, but in the very next breath, they claim it is just due to "natural causes."
- Another related argument used by the deniers is that yes, global warming does seem to be happening, but it will probably be good for us.
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 02_cc_long_an_inconvenient_truth_--_segment_2.pdf |