The former U.S. vice president, Al Gore, is now urging civil disobedience to stop coal plants. He told a New York audience recently, "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."

Global Warming and Reinventing Government have been Gore’s two lifelong causes. He is using the one to accomplish the other. His fundamental assumptions and views of global warming were well documented in his film, An Inconvenient Truth. Thousands of schoolchildren have viewed it. Gore was even awarded a Nobel Peace prize for the documentary in 2007 which he shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is telling that the very first Chairman of that IPCC group, John Houghton, had pronounced, "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen." True to script, Gore announced disasters and many listened.

As Gore urges civil disobedience to stop coal plants for the sake of carbon dioxide emissions, it is time to revisit several of those assumptions and implications he made in An Inconvenient Truth. Each of the fourteen highlighted here is a snapshot of the Global Warming doomsayers’ views. The added perspective shows the fraud of the catastrophic manmade Global Warming thesis:

Carbon dioxide drives the temperature of the planet. Gore assumes that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the causal factor of warming temperatures. But, for at least 240,000 years carbon dioxide has been a lagging indicator of any warming. That means that the earth warms and, later, there is an increase in the gas carbon dioxide. Roy Spencer, Climate Research Scientist in Huntsville, Alabama, notes that "the cooling effects of weather have a stronger influence on surface temperatures than the warming influence of greenhouse gases." The major greenhouse gases are water vapor (which accounts for 70–90 percent of the effect), carbon dioxide and methane. Many scientists work on the theory that the sun is the prime driver of Earth’s climate. Earth temperature and sun activity do correlate closely. Additionally, many scientists examine the larger cosmos. Their theories reveal an interplay between the sun and cosmic rays – sub-atomic particles from exploded stars. Further, they discern long-term temperature patterns as our solar system moves through the arms of our Milky Way galaxy. Again, those events correlate more closely to Earth’s temperatures than do manmade carbon dioxide levels.

Temperatures will rise 1.5–4.5 degrees Celsius when CO2 levels double from a pre-industrial level of 280ppm to 560ppm. Because Earth’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide changes has been overstated, the scientifically likely temperature result of such a doubling is 1.5–2.0 degrees Celsius. Earth’s current CO2 level is 380ppm.

Catastrophic Global Warming will cause sea levels to rise 20 feet. The work of scientists supports a sea level rise of about one inch per decade. In one hundred years it should rise 10–12 inches.

Catastrophic Global Warming is forcing island nations to evacuate their populations to New Zealand because of rising sea levels. Tuvalu was the poster child for this alarm, but neither Tuvalu nor any other islanders have evacuated to New Zealand.

Catastrophic Global Warming is melting Antarctic sea ice. But, Antarctic sea ice is thickening over the gigantic continent. This thickening reduces sea level. There is ice loss on a tiny sliver of the continent stretching out far northward. That is what Gore’s movie image relies upon. The ice shelf collapse there was more likely to have been driven by ocean current fluctuations.

Catastrophic Global Warming is resulting in extreme weather. Tornadoes? The US is home to one-third of all the world’s tornadoes. But, tornadoes have not increased. Drought? There is not greater incidence of drought. Record typhoons and cyclones? No. Hurricanes? There are about ninety-five hurricanes annually and globally. But, hurricanes are neither more frequent nor more intense. In 2004 the IPCC hyped hurricane-fears without any scientific soundness. Gore’s film footage implies that hurricane Katrina was an inescapable consequence of manmade globally averaged warming. Facts do not support that alarm.

Catastrophic Global Warming has caused global temperatures to be warmer now than they have been in 1,000 years. Gore’s graph displays a long level period ending in an upward sweep like a hockey stick, displaying the appearance of runaway temperatures. A young IPCC scientist named Mann created this hockey stick graph for a 2001 report, making the real Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age disappear. It was an enormously effective prop. Alarmists used it for their the-science-is-settled position. It made the 20^th-century temperature increase look unique. But, Mann’s methodology would have conjured any random set of numbers into a hockey stick. And, the temperature increase was not unique. In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report stating that this graph used flawed data. The IPCC has dropped the use of the Mann hockey stick from its 2007 Report. But, this piece of deliberate disinformation caused great damage to truth and science.

Catastrophic Global Warming has dried up Lake Chad. Lake Chad has been totally dry several times before humans were adding any CO2. That situation is due to over-extraction by communities.

Catastrophic Global Warming has been shrinking the snows of Kilimanjaro. By the time Ernest Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1936, half of the snow was already gone. This is before man began releasing CO2 into the atmosphere to any extent by burning fuels for energy. No temperature on the mountain is above freezing. There has been no temperature change in fifty-five years. Shrinking is likely to be a circulation issue and lower precipitation, not a rising temperature issue.

Catastrophic Global Warming increases mosquito-borne malaria. Malaria was endemic to most of the developed world just fifty to one hundred years ago. We eliminated malaria in Europe and the United States while the world warmed. 600,000 people died of malaria in Siberia. Malaria sickens 300 to 500 million poor people annually, killing as many as 2.7 million each year. In sub-Saharan Africa, one in 20 children dies of malaria. The approximately forty million humans killed by malaria since 1972 have died because a politician, William Ruckelshaus, as the Environmental Protection Agency’s first head, banned the beneficial pesticide DDT.

Catastrophic Global Warming is quickly melting Arctic sea ice. Arctic sea ice decreases during the summer melt season, and Arctic temperatures have risen faster than anywhere else. But, the Arctic region was warmer in the 1930’s. That could not have been caused by mankind. And, Artic sea ice has recovered from 3 million square kilometers to 14 million square kilometers. Ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska has more recently been at its highest level ever recorded.

Catastrophic Global Warming is killing polar bears. Factually, that claim was based on a single sighting of four dead bears the day after an "abrupt windstorm" in an area housing one of the increasing bear populations. Global polar-bear population has increased dramatically over the past decades.

Catastrophic Global Warming is melting Greenland’s ice. Greenland has been warmer. Its ice did not melt – except around its edges. There has been no net warming – and perhaps a slight cooling – since 1937. Vikings colonized and farmed Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period. The return of colder climate drove them away.

And, lastly, for An Inconvenient Truth,

Catastrophic Global Warming has caused mass extinctions. Warming extends ranges for plant and animal species. Biodiversity is enhanced. That’s why the greatest concentration of biodiversity is in the tropics. Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are shown to increase plant production, while lowering water requirements and reducing stress. Animals thrive on more abundant plant-life. Enriched CO2 has yielded an additional one-sixth production which would not have happened in its absence.

Each of these fourteen scenarios would have been an environmental bad had it happened and had it been empirically proven to have been caused by humans. The alarming events did not happen. The scary scenarios all came from computer climate models. There has been no empirical proof substantiating Gore’s claims and implications.

The hypothesis of catastrophic globally averaged warming resulting from human-caused carbon dioxide increases has failed. Failed hypotheses should be rejected.

The catastrophic Global Warming hypothesis fails to show that changes in carbon dioxide drive changes in temperature. Changes in carbon dioxide do not account well for the highly variable climate we know the Earth has had, including the Roman Warming (200 B.C. to A.D. 600), the cold Dark Ages (A.D. 440 to A.D. 900), the Medieval Warming (A.D. 900–1300 when CO2 levels were much lower than today), and the Little Ice Age (1300–1550 when there were few sunspots). The catastrophic Global Warming hypothesis is a feeble theory made seemingly true by pure repetition.

The catastrophic Global Warming hypothesis fails to explain the reality of the last one hundred years. Half of our modern warming occurred from 1905–1940, when carbon dioxide levels were still quite low. The net warming since 1940 is a minuscule 0.2 degrees Celsius. An interlude of global cooling occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, when CO2 levels were increasing. It totally fails to explain the absence of warming in the last ten years, despite a continuing rapid increase in CO2 concentration. If greenhouse action by carbon dioxide drove warming, the upper air should have warmed faster than the surface, but observations show the opposite has been the case. Although computer models say temperatures should have risen, Alabama temperatures have fallen for 115 years. Citrus crops used to be common. What could you do about this catastrophe? Buy jackets and get out of the citrus business. In other words, adapt.

It is fraud to spread alarmism of catastrophic "human-caused global warming" based upon projections generated from computer climate models which have substantial uncertainties and are markedly unreliable. It is fraud upon fraud to throw scarce resources at Global Warming when such expenditures will have inconsequential results except to impoverish us, notwithstanding that Al Gore believes it will be good for our spirituality to work together on such a common cause. There are real and achievable global causes of diseases, malnutrition, sanitation and energy that are valid projects and worthy efforts – efforts that Bjørn Lomborg endorses in his book, Cool It. No global efforts toward expensive CO2 cuts are valid or worthy. Current Climate policies are health and wealth destruction policies.

Doomsayers are claiming that climate can be adjusted in some predictable way, but it can not. It is fraud to claim that it can. As published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Richard Lindzen of M.I.T. has conducted studies that thwart the greenhouse effect. What that means is that "just because the greenhouse effect is real, it does not follow that an increase in intensity will necessarily lead to a significant increase in mean global air temperature, as climate alarmists are wont to claim…Hence it is not inconceivable that an increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration may result in no warming at all. Or even a cooling!...Much more research will be required before we can determine that the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content even constitutes a problem, much less specify its magnitude and prescribe ameliorative measures for dealing with it."

The magnetic attraction of government funding for global-warming research, the political climate of fear-based policies seen in both climate issues and economic issues, and doom-sopping journalism works to push events into a downward spiral of exaggeration and hype. Al Gore rides this emotional wave. He has refused all debate with climate scientists. It is after all, for him, not about truth. For him truth is simply inconvenient.

COOL It and Six Other Books to Lower Your Global Warming Fever

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Bjørn Lomborg (2008) tells us to stop the focus on carbon dioxide cuts. Stop throwing good resources at global treaties and global command and control plans. They will have inconsequential results upon climate. You will fail to do any real good, cautions Lomborg. Put global warming into perspective. There is useful common sense packed into this slender and readable work from this Danish environmentalist.

The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so by Lawrence Solomon (2008) checks to see if those who differ from the "consensus" claimed by Gore and the UN really are just crackpots. Surprising himself with his findings, Solomon's efforts revealed the skeptics to be more accomplished and more eminent scientists than the Gore & co. group who have gone along.

Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor by Roy Spencer (2008) says that the policies being advocated by environmentalists and politicians in the frenzy over global warming are sure to fail and bound to harm people. Governmental funding for research has predictably created biased scientists, but Washington, too, has been corrupted by this hyped "problem" and the money being thrown at it. Spencer shows with a light touch that he knows people as well as he knows weather.

Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery (2008) presents the case of how the Earth tells its own climate tale. This reasoned perspective of natural climate change driven by our own sun refutes the alarmists' baseless fears of man-made global warming caused by increases in carbon dioxide. The authors argue for humane policy consequences.

The Chilling Stars: A Cosmic View of Climate Change by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder (2008) calls the carbon dioxide theory feeble and presents a far more robust theory of galactic cosmic rays. Based upon Svensmark's research at the Danish National Space Center, The Chilling Stars offers the broadest perspective yet presented on climate change. If confirmed by further research, sub-atomic particles from exploded stars affect Earth's climate more than man-made carbon dioxide.

Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming edited by Patrick J. Michaels (2005) presents essays by climate experts which reveal what is and what is not known in climate science. Cautioning that bad policy will result from flawed scientific assumptions, each expert carefully notes what has been predicted and what has been observed. Major discrepancies raise major questions about any policy created to "fight" climate change.

Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media by Patrick J. Michaels (2005) is a premier presentation of the cycle and culture of exaggeration. Never shy, Michaels does tell it like it is. What he reveals is not professional and is not pretty. Spencer's Climate Confusion echoes these same sad discoveries of scientific ignorance and fraud.

For websites on global warming, the two kings still reign:

• http://www.worldclimatereport.com/
• http://www.co2science.org/

September 27, 2008

Floy Lilley [send her mail] is an adjunct faculty member at the Mises Institute. She was formerly with the University of Texas at Austin's Chair of Free Enterprise, and an attorney-at-law in Texas and Florida.