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A rebuttal to An Inconvenient Truth
Jun. 15th, 2006 03:20 pm"Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, 'There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.' Patterson asked the committee, 'On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?'"
- Tom Harris, "Scientists respond to Gore's Warnings of climate catastrophe"
These statements directly contradict a graph Gore shows in the movie where the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and oxygen-based temperature estimates match up almost perfectly over the period encompassing the last seven Ice Ages, and where the current increase in CO2 levels appears vastly atypical compared with the natural range of variation.
My explanation: Patterson may have chosen a single highly misleading data point. 450 million years ago was likely toward the end of a period similar to, but less severe than, the more ancient "snowball Earth" periods in which reflective ice covered most of the planet and prevented sunlight from being converted to heat. It took massive amounts of volcanically-generated greenhouse gases to counteract all that lost heat, and once the ice melted, plants and phytoplankton regrew very rapidly and absorbed the excess CO2. For more information, see chapter 6 of the book Rare Earth by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee.
However, I don't have such easy answers to the other quotes from scientists in the article. Take a look at the full article and decide for yourself: are there really "hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of CO2 are causing significant global climate change"? If so, is Professor Patterson one of them? (The article doesn't assert directly that he is.)
One final note: even if you believe the climate definitely isn't warming, you'll still find it hard to deny that a switch to renewable energy sources, far from being "a waste of billions of dollars," is vital to saving civilization from a far less controversial near-future event: the end of the Oil Age.
- Tom Harris, "Scientists respond to Gore's Warnings of climate catastrophe"
These statements directly contradict a graph Gore shows in the movie where the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and oxygen-based temperature estimates match up almost perfectly over the period encompassing the last seven Ice Ages, and where the current increase in CO2 levels appears vastly atypical compared with the natural range of variation.
My explanation: Patterson may have chosen a single highly misleading data point. 450 million years ago was likely toward the end of a period similar to, but less severe than, the more ancient "snowball Earth" periods in which reflective ice covered most of the planet and prevented sunlight from being converted to heat. It took massive amounts of volcanically-generated greenhouse gases to counteract all that lost heat, and once the ice melted, plants and phytoplankton regrew very rapidly and absorbed the excess CO2. For more information, see chapter 6 of the book Rare Earth by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee.
However, I don't have such easy answers to the other quotes from scientists in the article. Take a look at the full article and decide for yourself: are there really "hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of CO2 are causing significant global climate change"? If so, is Professor Patterson one of them? (The article doesn't assert directly that he is.)
One final note: even if you believe the climate definitely isn't warming, you'll still find it hard to deny that a switch to renewable energy sources, far from being "a waste of billions of dollars," is vital to saving civilization from a far less controversial near-future event: the end of the Oil Age.
