Gore is an owner in the company he is paying...so he's taking the money from one of his pockets to the other. I'm not impressed considering all of his moralizing on the subject.
People pay money to their own charities all the time, take Bill Gates for example. Either way, it doesn't address my rebuttal to you about the large amount of time, effort, and money being spent by individuals and corporations concerned about GW. They ARE walking the walk, so they must think there's something serious going on.
Didn't the climate cool markedly from 1000AD to about 1650 AD? Was this due to CO2 suddenly dissipating from the atmosphere? Peer reviewed paper?
Where is the huge increase in CO2 starting in the 18th Century (give me a peer-reviewed paper) that caused the warming observed until 1940?
The questions are utterly irrelevant, because again, no one is stating that CO2 concentration is the ONLY forcing that drives major temperature changes on the climate scale. Because forcing #17 is strong and causing a positive trend in the system in year 1500 doesn't mean it cannot be negligible compared to negative forcing #9 in 1600, and forcing #31 might be the major factor toward another positive trend in 1700, and so on. All the global climate forcings that we know about during the 20th century were negligible compared to the major observed upward trend in CO2.
In other words, I'll turn the question back to you: We know when they happen volcanic eruptions can have a major cooling impact on the climate. If a major volcanic eruption were to occur today, there would be a significant cooling trend over the next year or two until the particulates settle out of the atmosphere. If there was a major warming trend in some other 2 year period a few decades later wouldn't that therefore mean that there was some sort of anti-volcano eruption that sucked particulates out of the atmosphere? Why not?
I don't want GCM results, I want peer-reviewed studies of the proxy data which proves that changes in CO2 concentrations caused the above major climate changes.
Not only do you reject the well-accepted GCMs out of hand, but you're demanding full proof beyond theory which is extremely rare to attain in ANY science. See my response at the end.
Let me say it again: Hansen, in 1988, posed the theory of CO2-driven global warming. In the scientific method the burden is on the person who makes the hypothesis to show "it cannot be proven false" (read any reference on the 'scientific method').
See my earlier post on the hypocritical demands of absolute proof in this area whilst readily accepting other theories. Hansen's 1988 global temperature projections are certainly looking remarkably accurate nearly 20 years later so he must have been onto something.
The 'consensus' was that the sun revolved around the earth. Ten years ago the medical profession scoffed at the idea that bacteria caused ulcers. The "maturity" of a theory has nothing to do with its validity.
The word maturity is not used in the sense of how long it has been around, but how well it has stood up to scrutiny. CO2 driven GW in the 20th century has stood up remarkably well in the last 20 years to countless well-funded attacks, and still stands today as by far the most plausible explanation offered.
Yes, discussion and trial/error are part of the scientific method. But a scientific fact is not established until the theory "cannot be proven false." AGW proponents have a long way to go.
Yes, if you're waiting for absolute "fact" to be established, you'll continue to wait. Since gravitation and relativity are also only "theories", and not absolutely established facts, you would also never make any progress and be stalled many years behind in the fields of physics and astronomy as well.
