Global warming is a controversial theory that claims that increased carbon dioxide (CO2) due to industrialization is causing temperatures to increase around the world, to the detriment of our environment. AL Gore, Vice President under President Clinton from 1992 to 2000 and the loser in the closely contested election for president in 2000, is a leading advocate of this theory. Promoters of this theory call for international treaties, like one proposed in Kyoto, Japan, to force the United States and other Western countries to limit their production of carbon dioxide by regulating business.
The theory is very widely accepted within the scientific mainstream. On February 2, 2007, an internatonal panel of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments issued a report concluding:
- The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone."[1]
There are many scientific critics of this theory of global warming. For example, Dr. Fred Singer observed that "CO2 changes have lagged about 800 years behind the temperature changes. Global warming has produced more CO2, rather than more CO2 producing global warming."[2]
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