10 More "Inconvenient" Questions for Al Gore and His Fellow Man Made Global Warming Believers
GrassTopsUSA Guest Commentary
By Gregg Jackson
09-14-07 

1. Al, you asserted in your movie "An Inconvenient Truth" that 9 of the 10 hottest years on record occurred after 1995. According to NASA's most recent data, the ten hottest years on record in the U.S., beginning with the hottest year, are: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939. Not only is 1998 not the "hottest on record" as you claim in your "documentary," but only 4 of the "hottest years on record" occurred after 1995 -- quite a stretch from "9 out of 10." We also know that according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only .03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001 -- which is in the range of temperature error and not statistically significant. We now know that Michael Mann's infamous "hockey stick" theory purporting to demonstrate a sharp increase in "warming" in the 1990s has been debunked and discredited by the National Academy of Sciences and the U.N.'s IPCC. Why then do you still continue to cite the incorrect "9 out of 10" figure and debunked "hockey stick" figure?

2. Al, you claim in your movie, "A survey of more than 928 scientific papers in respected journals show 100 percent agreement (that man is responsible for global warming)." Is it not true however that this information that you cite in your movie was originally published in a non-peer reviewed essay section of Science Magazine by a social scientist from UCSD named Nancy Oreskes which was highly flawed and has been subsequently discredited in that only 13 (or 2%) of the 928 articles she cited as supporting the consensus view of anthropogenic global warming explicitly endorsed the "consensus view" and that several of the studies actually opposed it?

3. Al, you wrote your book "Earth in the Balance" and movie "An Inconvenient Truth" to begin a "debate" on global warming. Why is it that you consistently refuse to debate noted climatologists and other scientists who dispute many of your claims such as noted Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, MIT professor of meteorology Richard S. Lindzen, and author of the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism" Christopher Horner?

4. Al, in your movie you show a picture of Lake Chad in Africa which has dried up and state, "Now we're beginning to see the impact (of global warming) in the real world." How do you justify your implication that man made global warming is responsible for the drying up of the lake when it is a fact that the lake has dried up many times in the past, the last time being 2,000 years ago (well before the introduction of SUVs or airplanes)? Why did you conveniently omit the fact in your movie that an enormous population explosion and overgrazing have contributed significantly to the lake drying up?

5. Al, in your movie you also attempt to demonstrate how global warming may lead to significant increases in infectious diseases. (You list 15 resurgent diseases including West Nile, Lyme, and Malaria.) Yet, Malaria for example, was much more prevalent in the "Little Ice Age" and in the 19th century when the earth was colder than it is today especially in non-tropical locations such as Scandinavia, Siberia, Scotland, and Canada. Even the Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, a malaria expert, doesn't believe global warming would have much of an impact on the spread of that disease. Aren't malaria and other vector borne diseases more the result of poverty than temperature?

6. While it is an empirical scientific fact that the earth's climate (temperature) is always naturally changing (increasing or decreasing), by claiming that the recent one half a degree Celsius increase in the earth's temperature over the last 100 years is due to human carbon emissions, isn't it you that is in "denial" of the axiomatic fact that the earth's warming (and cooling) are natural variations and not human induced?

7. Al, you claimed in your movie that human induced global warming is melting the "Snows of Kilimanjaro." Yet, two of the most widely known peer reviewed studies regarding this topic attributes other more plausible causes for the melting of the glaciers. Thomas Mölg of the Tropical Glaciology Group from the Department of Geography at the University of Innsbruck in Austria authored a paper entitled "Solar-radiation-maintained glacier recession on Kilimanjaro drawn from combined ice-radiation geometry modeling," which was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2003. Mölg concluded that his study "qualitatively demonstrates that solar radiation is the main climatic parameter maintaining modern glacier recession on Kilimanjaro summit, but also suggests that retreat on the inner ice cap margin might have been supported by a secondary energy source." In short, solar radiation was the primary driver of the Kilimanjaro glacial retreat. Additionally, two major articles on the subject appeared in the International Journal of Climatology and The Journal of Geophysical Research in 2004 which concluded that modern glacial retreat on Kilimanjaro resulted from a reduction in precipitation at the end of the 19th century -- not global warming. Other prominent climatologists have speculated that the most likely secondary cause was deforestation in the mountain's foothills which upset necessary conditions for glaciation. Can you cite any peer reviewed scientific studies that conclude that global warming is the primary cause of the Kilimanjaro glacial retreat?

8. A number of scientific studies have demonstrated that solar radiation has had a significant effect on climate in the past. In 1999, a paper in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews pointed this out. A team of Dutch and Russian scientists who authored the paper found that substantial increases in the carbon isotope coincided with global cooling events at about 850 B.C. and 1600 A.D. The latter date corresponds to the so-called Little Ice Age and indicates in general that climate reacts strongly to small changes in radiation. A recent Danish Meteorological Study demonstrated a correlation between sun spot activity and the earth's temperature which was almost identical. NASA data too has shown that solar activity correlates more closely with glacial temperatures than CO2 -- and that CO2 actually follows temperature increases. Based on these studies and others, doesn't it seem more plausible that natural variable solar activity -- not carbon emissions -- is the more likely cause of climate change?

9. We had been warned of a coming ice age in the 1920s, global warming in the 1930s, another imminent ice age in the 1970s, and now in 2007 global warming once again is said to be the most significant threat to civilization. Since every other apocalyptic prediction turned out to be false, why should this one be any different? Moreover, former European Commissioner for the Environment and current EU V.P. Margaret Wallstrom stated, "this is not a simple environmental issue (global warming) where you can see it as an issue where the scientists are not unanimous. This is about international relations; this is about economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big business throughout the world." Don't you agree with Wallstrom that this global warming issue is not really about the environment but more about "leveling the playing field for business" ( i.e. international wealth redistribution)?

10. To those such as Hillary Clinton who said, "The U.S. has not lead but fled on global warming" and should now "rejoin our allies at the negotiating table" I ask: Is it not a documented historical fact that your husband and former co-president Bill Clinton walked away from the Kyoto negotiating process when he disengaged from the global warming negotiations at the Hague in November of 2000? And isn't it also true that George W. Bush re-engaged in "talks?" Also, why did neither you nor your husband send the signed Kyoto Global Warming Treaty to the Democrat controlled Senate for ratification? You had 3 years to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. And why isn't your new Senate Democrat majority led by Senator Reid calling for ratification right now?

Gregg Jackson is the nationally best selling author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue by Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z" (JAJ Publishing Aug 2006) and talk radio show host heard on Boston's Talk Station WRKO.