“... The reason for the close correlation of CO2 and temperature in the ice cores is that once the transition has been initiated by Milankovitch forcing,”
...which is a forcing impact that Gore *never* mentions!
Geez, none are so blind that refuse to see. You keep arguing a strawman here, while defending Gore, who does *not* say what you are saying about the matter.
And you still have the uncomfortable set of facts due to the science on this:
1. Warming caused some CO2 release in the past.
2. Ice age was initially driven by forces other than CO2.
3. Other feedback effects like albedo were more important and earlier than the CO2 changes.
“So Gore is not wrong to tie the ice core temperature and CO2 record to current trends in both.” - he was wrong not to acknowledge the science that shows that ice-age warming came prior to the CO2 rise.
“So That was my point. And the judge in the British case doesn’t know enough about climate science to understand this point. Neither do 99.8% (being generous) of the American populace.”
The Judge is yet another person who has more education than Al Gore.
How much of the temperature change from 1898 to 1901 was due to natural variability?
How much of the temperature change from 1998 to 2001 was due to natural variability?
I haven't seen the movie. Gore does say, according the linked article:
"The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside" [the climate system or atmosphere, I presume -- unfortunate quote cutoff]
Which is correct. Which is what point #5 in my profile expands on. The complicating aspects are partly the triggering aspect of weak Milankovitch forcing. Gore's movie and Powerpoint weren't designed or intended to be rigorous scientific presentations. So saying "the relationship is very complicated" covers a lot of pertinent research findings.
1. Warming caused some CO2 release in the past.
2. Ice age was initially driven by forces other than CO2.
3. Other feedback effects like albedo were more important and earlier than the CO2 changes.
You characterize these as an "uncomfortable set of facts". And yet you know the approximate direct effect of doubled CO2 on global temperatures will be about 1 C, augmented by positive feedback processes, notably water vapor increase (just supported in a new publication, by the way). So they are not "uncomfortable" at all; they are part of the body of knowledge of how the climate system has worked in the past and how it is being affected by anthropogenic factors now.
The Judge is yet another person who has more education than Al Gore.
I'll certainly grant that regarding the nuances of British jurisprudence; given his interpretation of the science evinced in the decision (read the article I linked), I'll certainly not grant that regarding climate science.
How much of the temperature change from 1898 to 1901 was due to natural variability? ... How much of the temperature change from 1998 to 2001 was due to natural variability?
Quantitative answers to this question are impossible. There was less anthropogenic forcing present in the earlier time period than the latter. However, variability in the latter period was dominated by El Nino -- La Nina events in the Pacific Ocean. If that variability is removed, there is a consistent approximately 0.2 C per decade warming trend that is predominantly due to anthropogenic forcing factors since about 1975.