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1、An Inconvenient Truth: 不可忽视的真相,“By far the most terrifying movie you will ever see.”,“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken,What An Inconv
2、enient Truth (AIT) isand is not,An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) purports to be a non-partisan, non-ideological presentation of climate science and moral common-sensea meditation on “what matters.” In reality, AIT is a colorfully illustrated lawyers brief for climate alarmism and energy rationing. The on
3、ly facts and studies considered are those convenient to Gores scare-them-green agenda, and he often distorts the evidence he cites. This Power Point presents a few highlights from my Skeptics Guide to An Inconvenient Truth, available at CEI.org.,Carbon dioxide (CO2): a “pollutant”?,AIT introduces CO
4、2 with a picture like this (pp. 24-25). The black stuff is steam, not smoke, and CO2 is as invisible as oxygen.,AIT never mentions that CO2 is plant food, an aerial fertilizer. Rising CO2 levels help trees, crops, and green things generally grow faster and larger, produce more fruit, use water more
5、efficiently, and resist pollution stress. Experimental data indicate that the 100-ppm increase in CO2 levels since pre-industrial times has increased average yields by 60% for wheat, 33% for fruits and melons, and 51% for vegetables. An extraordinary positive externality, courtesy of the Industrial
6、Revolution! Source: Idso et al. (2003),Kilimanjaro: a victim of global warming?,AIT “blames” CO2-induced warming for the disappearing Snows of Kilimanjaro (pp. 42-43). But snows have been disappearing since 1880 due to a sudden shift from moist to dry conditions. There was “no evidence of a sudden c
7、hange in temperature at the end of the 19th century.” 20th century temperature records “do not exhibit a uniform warming signal.” Source: Molg et al. (2003),The Snows of Kilimanjaro have been disappearing since 1880decades before mankind could have had much impact on global climate,More snow disappe
8、ared before Hemmingway published his famous novel (1936) than after. Source: Kaser et al. (2004),In 1880, CO2 levels were approximately 290 parts per million, only slightly above pre-industrial levels (280 ppm). Source: Etheridge et al. (1998),Even in recent decades there has been virtually no warmi
9、ng at the Kilimanjaro summit,Satellite measurements of air temperatures at Kilimanjaro show a trend of +0.01C/ decade since 1978, essentially zero.,“Rather than changes in 20th century climate being responsible for their demise, glaciers on Kilimanjaro appear to be remnants of a past climate that wa
10、s once able to sustain them.” Source: Cullen et al. (2006),“Within the next half-century40% of the worlds people may well face a very serious drinking water shortage”(AIT, p. 58),The water that feeds Asias seven major river systems comes from melting snow, not melting glacial ice. Data going back fo
11、ur decades show no trend in Eurasian snow cover for the months of November, December, January, February, and March. Figure based on Rutgers University Global Snow Lab,Snow cover in southern China increased 2.3% annually during 1951-1997. Source: Dahe et al. (2006),“as Dr. Lonnie Thompsons thermomete
12、r analysis of the ratio of oxygen-16 to oxygen-18 in ice cores shows, the vaunted Medieval Warm Period MWP.was tiny compared to the enormous increase in temperatures of the last half-century” (AIT, p. 64),Thompson analyzed the isotopic oxygen ratios in three Andean and three Tibetan ice cores. Data
13、from four of the six cores indicate the MWP was as warm as or warmer than the late 20th century. The graph illustrates data from the Quelccaya ice core. Source: CO2Science.Org, analysis of Thompson et al. (2003),“Its a complicated relationship, but the most important part of it is this: When there i
14、s more CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature increases because more heat from the Sun is strapped inside.” (AIT, p. 67),Ironically, Gores 650,000-year graph shows that each of the previous four interglacial periods was warmer than the present, even though CO2 levels were lower. Example: During the
15、peak of the last interglacial (130,000-127,000 years ago), summer surface temperatures in Arctic Canada and Greenland were 4-5C warmer than the present, and large portions of Siberia were 4-8C warmer. Source: Otto-Bliesner et al. (2006),AIT implies that changes in CO2 levels were the key driver of c
16、limate change over the past 650,000 years. In reality, temperature changes preceded CO2 level changes by hundreds to thousands of years. Source: Fischer et al.(1999),“And in recent years the rate of increase has been increasing. In fact, if you look at the 21 hottest years measured, 20 of the 21 have occurred within the last 25 years.” (AIT, p. 72),There has been no increase in the rate of warming since the mid-1970s, when the second 20th century warming period began. For the past 30 years,
