Back in the 1990's, Al Gore made climate predictions in a documentary film, that were ridiculous, and wrong.
For doing that, fellow leftists awarded his film an award. And not just a participation trophy.
Gore's predictions of doom were way beyond the already excessive, and wrong, predictions of doom by real (leftist) scientists of the time.
A few real scientists criticized his exaggerations -- but most kept quiet.
Actual global warming, which had already been in progress since the mid-1970s, had been mild and harmless.
You can't scare people, and tell them how to live, by reporting that.
You can scare people by predicting a disaster.
Then they turn toward their government and demand that something be done.
And that is exactly what every leftist politician in the world wants to hear!
Gore's fictional documentary, which I wasted money to see, scared me into reading about real climate science to refute his scary campfire stories.
Scaring people about a coming climate crisis has been done every year since 1957.
Quietly, and with uncertainty, at first.
Now loud, hysterical, and with (falsely) claimed 100% confidence.
The predictions are still malarkey, but now the debate is over how many trillions of dollars of money leftist politicians will be handing out to alternative energy industry supporters.
We are told "the science is settled", the most anti-science statement in the universe.
Skeptics and their questions are marginalized with nasty character attacks, used to avoid debates.
And that's why this climate science and energy blog exists.
The following chart from Al Gore's film was intended to show Antarctica ice core reconstructions of global CO2 levels and average temperatures.
The real data show temperature changes led CO2 level changes by an average of 800 years.
Meaning that CO2 levels changes were caused, with a long delay, by temperature changes.
Natural causes of warming oceans, caused them to gradually release dissolved CO2.
Just like glass full of cold soda pop sitting outdoors on a hot day gradually warms up and loses its CO2 carbonation.
Gore's producer noticed that inconvenient trend on the chart, so he made sure the chart was placed at an unusual angle in the film, making it impossible to see the inconvenient, real CO2 vs. temperature relationship clearly.
After doing that, a glance at the chart makes it appear that CO2 levels and average temperature are highly correlated.
That optical illusion seems to support the false claim that CO2 had always controlled the temperature:
The Al Gore geometrically distorted chart:
