Global Warming: Real or Hoax?

This is the hottest topic these days. The media has grabbed every chance they can get to report on some new global warming topic, or to report on something that disproves global warming. So is it real or is it propaganda?

As the main sources used I will refer directly to "An Inconvenient Truth" and its rebuttal "The Great Global Warming Swindle", along with other supporting references sprinkled throughout. I use these two forms of media because one is the face of the movement, at least how mankind has come to see it, and the other is a direct rebuttal. Watching both of them created different emotions, both of which were their intended outcomes, but one certainly spoke more to my heart than the other. "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is much closer to the truth than "An Inconvenient Truth". This doesn't discount the fact that humans need to take care of the world we live in. But it does dispute the fact that global warming is man made.

Al Gore is presented as a philosophic politician, striving to accomplish a heart rending task of educating the world over about man made global warming, "one person at a time, one family at a time". This speaks directly to his audience, of course, presenting him as having the best interest of the world at heart.

Getting beyond this image and he begins to report his scientific data. His claim, and the basis for his whole lecture and the basis to man made global warming is that CO2 correlates directly with the temperature. As CO2 increases, so does the temperature; since humankind has drastically increased CO2 then this is proof that mankind is causing the earth's temperature to increase. Certainly, mankind has caused CO2 levels to increase, but I question whether it is enough to affect anything. I also questioned whether this caused the temperature to increase as well. My suspicions were confirmed when Gore went on to show the graph of CO2 and temperature historically. Then with a magic click of the button he then showed CO2 levels as of today. It was very dramatic. Supposedly CO2 drastically shot up. Gasp! But you would then assume that he would show the corresponding temperature increase as well for that time period, which should have shot up with the CO2 spike. Did Gore favor us with this proof? No, he didn't. Instead he shocks the audience even more by projecting an even larger CO2 spike for the future. And, of course, he didn't show the corresponding temperature spike. Why, you might ask? Because the temperature data doesn't match the CO2 data would be my guess.

So it was no surprise to me when I watched "Swindle" and the very thing they refuted was the evidence that Gore presented. Instead, by transposing the CO2 and temperature graphs over one another (Gore did the tricky thing of having them one above the other, thus not showing the exact correlation) you can clearly see that the CO2 increases came after the temperature increase, in fact by hundreds of years! With this evidence "Swindle" showed that it is in fact the temperature fluctuation that ultimately dictates the fluctuation of the levels of CO2. This explained quite well, more than I can say for Gore. As the temperature heats up it gradually increases the temperature of the ocean, which is the largest producer of CO2. It takes hundreds of years to change the temperature of such a large and deep body of water, which explains why there is a lag to the increase in the level of CO2. Conversely, when the ocean cools it pulls in more CO2, thus gradually decreasing the level of CO2.

"Swindle" goes on further to combat "Truth"s man made CO2 to temperature theory (which is the crutch holding global warming up). As evidence they pulled the level of CO2 over the last 100 years, the period of time that through industrialization the developing world began producing massive amounts of CO2, and compared it to the temperature. What the data showed was that there was a huge spike in the worldwide temperature that climaxed in 1940, thus accounting for most of the .5% increase in world wide temperature in the 20th century. Up until then there was relatively little man made CO2 production because cars and other manufactured goods weren't prevalent. After 1940 the temperature then began dropping for almost 4 decades. CO2? This was the post war boom so CO2 levels increased drastically do to cars, factories and other man made producers of CO2. Gore's theory should show that during this post war period the temperature should have increased along with the massive amounts of CO2, but it didn't. It decreased, so much so that in the 70s the world over began claiming "global cooling" (sound familiar?). In fact, when there was a world wide recession in the mid seventies, when man made CO2 slowed, the temperature began to increase again. Go figure.

Just as Gore tried to explain why CO2 is causing global warming (with the use of a cheesy cartoon of gangster CO2 beating up a traveling sun ray), "Swindle" explains how the earth cools and warms: the sun! The sun is a "violent beast" and has solar flares that affect our weather here on earth. Let me back up. Earth's atmosphere harbors clouds, which affect our weather immensely. These clouds are made by the combination of cosmic rays (due to supernovae) colliding with water particles. These form clouds and thus shield the earth from the heat and intensity of the sun. When there is a solar flare it disrupts and pushes aside the cosmic rays, thereby diminishing the clouds, which of course warms earth. A study was done that made two comparisons. The first was of the standard global warming argument, that of CO2 and temperature in the Arctic. When compared together there is no apparent correlation between the two. The second comparison is with solar flares and the temperature, which showed almost an exact correlation, which tells us that it is the sun that dictates the fluctuation of the earth's temperature, not CO2.

Doh, how could we ignore something as huge as the sun and discount its effects on the earth's climate? It seems like an obvious answer, yet climate scientists ignore this very important element to earth. There have, in fact, been four global scares in our recent past. 1895: ice age. 1920s: global warming. 1975: global cooling. 1981: Global warming. A comparison was made in "Swindle" that this is akin to a man having car trouble. So he pops the hood of the car and ignores the engine (sun) and the transmission (atmosphere) and instead gets underneath the car and looks at a small nut and blames that.

How then has this gotten this convoluted? In the 1970s in England it became a serious political issue, one that resulted in serious amounts of money. According to "Swindle" Margaret Thatcher was having rioting and coal miner revolts that were seriously grinding England's everyday life to a halt, since they relied upon coal so much. She resolved to remove this power from them, and thus from coal (a huge CO2 producer), and move towards nuclear power instead. But she needed a propaganda piece to prop herself up on. She went to the scientific community and told them that whoever could prove that CO2 is the cause of global warming would receive money. Keep in mind they were in a period that they were calling global cooling, so she was taking the opposite extreme because temperatures around the world had just started rising and was going to use it against the coal miners. The IPCC eventually came up with a study (that disregarded all known climate science up to then, according to "Swindle") that proved this. From then on this industry became big money as governments began giving their own grants to fund this type of research. This is, to this day, a billion dollar industry, up from around a $170 million (in the United States) in the early 90s. Huge money = huge profit = lots of jobs = huge influence.

Gore himself is in this for propaganda reasons. And he hints at this throughout his "An Inconvenient Truth". He says many times through about various global warming topics that "this is a political issue", as though by stating it himself then this will allay the fears and not have him accused of pushing this subject for his own political goals. And this most certainly was, as he himself has said he has been working on the global warming message his whole career, and was one of the stances that has helped him be successful.

He also states that we should reduce carbon usage to zero, even though he is causing more carbon usage monthly than many humans in a lifetime. His answer? He says he is buying "carbon credits", which are verifiable reductions of CO2 usage elsewhere, to offset the amount that he is using. And, pray tell, where is he purchasing these from? Why, a company that he is the CHAIRMAN of and, essentially, part owner. He stands to make a ton of money from pushing such a method to combat global warming. He has set himself up with a great piece of propaganda and can now sit back and reap the benefits. In fact, he states "If we do the right thing we are going to create a lot of wealth". We know where his mind is.

Other bits of propaganda are his comparison to the tobacco companies and the "memo" that was discovered that revealed the tobacco companies wanted to deceive the public on the dangers of smoking. He says an anti "global warming" entity, which he doesn't name nor reference who or what they are, wants to "switch global warming from fact to theory". Of course he will pull on the heart strings and make a comparison to what most deem as despicable, those big tobacco companies. The documentary is full of other heart strings being pulled as well, such as showing his child and talking about him in the hospital , claiming no one wants to lose a child, then connecting this to global warming. Or shows war and the atomic bomb and connects it to global warming. His sister died of lung cancer from smoking, and tied it back to global warming. He mentions the Declaration of Independence, Emancipation, Suffrage and creating jobs. All meant to pull the heart strings and cause knee jerk reactions.

Finally, Gore says that, and this is the source of the title of this documentary, that scientist were ridiculed, black listed and ostracized for supporting man made global warming. All because they came to An Inconvenient Truth. Funny, really, because this seems to be a preemptive measure. World renowned scientists are afraid to talk against global warming because they will be ostracized and pushed aside, that they will lose their funding. In fact, some of the scientists interviewed said they have been receiving death threats for opposing global warming. This is happening today to scientists because of the overwhelming hype that the media and politicians have created.

What it all comes down to is one big piece of propaganda. Follow the money and you will find who will benefit. You will certainly find that Al Gore will be one of those benefiting, as he already is.