What do you define as a normal temperature?
The climate has been both much hotter and much colder than it is now.
The figures for the 20th century show an increase of 0.7C. This mild degree of warming is well within expected fluctuations.
So far this century the temperatures have been stable or cooling.
Comment to LYDIOT
The Uk department of education has been taken to the high court by a father claiming that Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and sentimental mush.
The presiding Justice Burton will make a final ruling within a week but has already stated that the film does promote partisan political views. This is resulting in the government education system having to amend their Guidence Notes to make clear that:
1.) The film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument.
2.) If teachers present the film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1966 and guilty of political indoctrination.
3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.
The eleven inaccuracies are:
1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
2. The film suggests evidence from ice cores covering the last 650,000 years proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases. The court found that the film was misleading due to the fact that the actual evidence from those ice cores demonstrate that the CO2 rises actually followed temperature increases by 800 to 2000 years and so could not have been causative.
3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
4. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
5. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr. Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
8. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
9. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
10. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
11. The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government is unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.