When Gore rides the lift to the top of the carbon dioxide curve and suggests that the temperature might keep rising right along with it, is that correct?
TED: Records taken from ice cores do show the close relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature over the past 650,000 years. Gore basically says that the full relationship is very complicated, but that the main point is carbon dioxide and temperature have always moved together. This implies that, in the past, when carbon dioxide has increased it has led directly to a warmer Earth. However, past changes in carbon dioxide levels are at least initially an effect of abrupt climate change, not a cause. What happens in an ice age is a sudden shift in ocean circulation, pushed by a cooling trend in the northern hemisphere because of periodic shifts in the Earth’s tilt and orbit. The trigger that causes the ice age is in the Northern Hemisphere, and the huge Northern forests and ecosystems begin to slow down as tundra spreads across Asia and North America. But ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica tell us that both hemispheres go through ice ages and interglacial warm periods togethe
