Science backs Gore's premise [View All]

Source: Chicago Tribune

By Jeremy Manier | Tribune staff reporter
October 13, 2007

The scientific consensus on global warming looked much different when Al Gore left elective office in 2001 than it does today.

Most of the remaining doubts some scientists harbored about the impact of human activity on global temperatures have disappeared in the last few years. Gore's recital of climate facts in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" contains some flaws, but most experts agree he is correct on the biggest point: The earth is on a path toward a perilously warm climate and the release of greenhouse gases is playing a key role.

The research behind that conclusion has been coming for decades, but some of the most dramatic findings emerged only in the last few years.

Perhaps most striking is a thawing in the last few months around the North Pole, where the amount of sea ice reached an all-time low in September, with 27 percent less ice than the previous record set in 2005. Satellite images of the Arctic show what some researchers say could be the start of a feedback loop that causes the Arctic ice to shrink permanently...



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