---

DBKP’s Global Warming Climate Change Pop Quiz

Sharpen your wits, it’s time for the “Global Warming Climate Change Pop Quiz”!

1. During the past billion years, the Earth’s climate has fluctuated between warm periods – sometimes even completely ice-free – and cold periods, when glaciers scoured the continents.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

2. Ice ages have occurred at widely spaced intervals of geologic time – approximately 200 million years – lasting for millions, or even tens of millions of years.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

“Ever since the Pre-Cambrian (600 million years ago), ice ages have occurred at widely spaced intervals of geologic time – approximately 200 million years – lasting for millions, or even tens of millions of years. For the Cenozoic period, which began about 70 million years ago and continues today, evidence derived from marine sediments provide a detailed, and fairly continuous, record for climate change. This record indicates decreasing deep-water temperature, along with the build-up of continental ice sheets. Much of this deep-water cooling occurred in three major steps about 36, 15 and 3 million years ago – the most recent of which continues today.”

3 From 2000 to 2009, Al Gore’s net worth rose from $1-2 million to $98 million.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

According to public disclosure information, Gore was worth somewhere between $1 million and $2 million in 2000. Not quite eight years later, Gore is estimated to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million.
-Gateway Pundit

4. During the present ice age, glaciers have advanced and retreated over 20 times, often blanketing North America with ice.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

5. Our climate today is actually a warm interval between these many periods of glaciation.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

6. Al Gore’s carbon footprint is larger than most American’s.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

Al Gore’s Carbon Footprint

Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
-Business Week

7. Some scientists believe “sudden” climate changes have occurred in the past.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

8. Prior to now, has there ever been periods when all the ice melted on the earth’s polar caps?

a. No
b. Yes

Answer: Yes. One example, the Late Cretaceous period, from 145 – 65 million years ago. Another, the Eocence period:

Called the Eocence, “between 52 and 57 million years ago, the Earth was relatively warm. Tropical conditions actually extended all the way into the mid-latitudes (around northern Spain or the central United States for example), polar regions experienced temperate climates, and the difference in temperature between the equator and pole was much smaller than it is today. Indeed it was so warm that trees grew in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and alligators lived in Ellesmere Island at 78 degrees North.

9. After the Eocene, the Earth entered into a long cooling trend.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True.

The Eocene was followed by a long cooling trend. Between 52 and 36 million years ago, ice caps developed in East Antarctica, reaching down to sea level in some places. Between 20 and 16 million years ago, there was a brief respite from the big chill, but this was followed by a second major cooling period so intense that by 7 million years ago southeastern Greenland was completely covered with glaciers, and by 5-6 million years ago, the glaciers were creeping into Scandinavia and the northern Pacific region.

10. During this period, 3 to 5 million years ago, there was a “global warming cycle” where the sea was much warmer around North America and the Antarctic than it is today. Warm-weather plants grew in Northern Europe where today they cannot survive, and trees grew in Iceland, Greenland, and Canada as far north as 82 degrees North. It was during this period that Australopithecus afarensis, believed to be one of the earliest hominids, or man’s earliest “ancestor” who walked upright, lived during a global warming “cycle” 3.5 million years ago in area of northern Ethiopia, Africa, which, at the time, was a mixture of savannah and woodland.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

11. A third major cooling period began 3 million years go which led to tundra-like conditions over north-central Europe, the once-humid environment of Central China replaced by a “harsh” continental steppe, arid and open grassland expanded on the sub-Saharan Africa, arid replacing more wooded, wetter environments of the Australopithecus afarensis.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

Australopithecus afarensis, Failed in Efforts to Expand
Carbon Emissions Needed to Halt Cooling Period

12. Scientists believe the new cooling period led to the demise of Australopithecus afarensis whom scientists believe evolved into a hominid called Paranthropus boisei who developed an enormous jaw with massive chewing muscles and huge back teeth needed to chew the now sparse and tough food gleaned from the arid soil.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

13. Some scientists believe the cooling period which destroyed Australopithecus afarensis’ habitat, led to mankind’s further “evolution”.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

14. Scientists believed the cooling period was caused by:

a. Three million years ago the axis of the sun changed so that the Earth pointed away from the Sun for longer periods.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

15. Even though there is ample scientific evidence that the Earth has gone through prior global warming cycles where the polar ice caps melted, scientists have yet to come to an overall scientific consensus as to why they occurred.

a. True
b. False

Answer. True

16. During the past 130,000 years the Earth has gone through several warming-cooling cycles.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

17. “Around 14,000 years ago (about 13,000 radiocarbon years ago), there was a rapid global warming and moistening of climates, perhaps occurring within the space of only a few years or decades.”

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

18. After a few thousand years of recovery, the Earth was suddenly plunged back into a new and very short-lived ice age known as the Younger Dryas.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

19. After about 1,300 years of cold and aridity, the Younger Dryas ice age seemed to have ended in the space of only a few decades.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

20. The earth’s present “warming cycle”, the Holocene, began around 11,500 years ago.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

21. New data shows that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

22. Global warming climate scientists’ findings and conclusions that global warming was “unprecedented” and would lead to the destruction of the planet in short order due to mankind’s carbon emissions was based, in large part, on research done by geoscientist Michael Mann and some of Mann’s colleagues, including Phil Jones, head of the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

23. Mann’s research included what has been called the 1999 “Hockey Stick Graph” which concluded “the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1000 years”.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

24. Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

25. In 2006, Mann and his colleagues reconstructed northern hemisphere temperatures for the past 2000 years using a broader set of proxies than was available for the original study and updated measurements from the recent past.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

The new reconstruction has been generated using two statistical methods, both different to that used in the original study. Like other temperature reconstructions done since 2001 (see graph), it shows greater variability than the original hockey stick. Yet again, though, the key conclusion is the same: it’s hotter now than it has been for at least 1000 years.

26. Phil Jones, the head of the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who published some of the foundational data used to support the claim that global warming exists, announced he would relinquish his post while the U.K. school conducted an investigation into allegations of scientific and professional misconduct.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

Jones’ announcement comes as he and his allies, who published some of the foundational data used to support the claim that global warming exists, have been pummeled by waves of criticism. As CBSNews.com reported last week, the leaked files show that prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data, plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing, and concealed apparently buggy computer code from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information law.
CBS News

27. Penn State, where Mann is a professor in the University’s meteorology department, has opened an investigation into Mann’s work.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

The reverberations have extended beyond the campus of the University of East Anglia and the CRU. E-mail messages from Michael Mann, a professor in the meteorology department at Penn State University who has argued that mankind is threatening “entire ecosystems with extinction in the decades ahead if we continue to burn fossil fuels at current rates,” appeared in the leaked files. Now Penn State has opened an investigation into Mann’s work, and the U.K.’s weather agency has been forced on the defensive as well.
CBS News

28. Since 2000, Phil Jones has received some “$19 million worth of research grants”, a “sixfold increase over what Jones had been awarded in the 1990’s.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he’d been awarded in the 1990s.
Hot Air

29. Over $90 billion has been spent globally this year on “green stimulus”-largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes.

a. True
b. False

Answer: True

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls “green stimulus”—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.
Hot Air

30. During the global global cooling cycle 3 million years ago, Australopithecus afarensis Climate Control scientists believed the cooling trend was due to the massive amount of non-carbon emissions generated by African gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, Bonobo monkeys, and Australopithecus afarensis hominids.

a. True
b. False

B. False

31. Seeking to expand humanoid and African primate carbon emissions by 8,000,000,000,000, 000%, Australopithecus afarensis politicians enacted an “Emergency Global Warming Humanoid Primate Expand Carbon Emissions Referendum”: a carbon expanding emission tax of a 1 banana per 10 bananas tax per primate and 8 bananas per 10 bananas tax on Australopithecus afarensis humanoids who “walked upright”, and were therefore deemed as “upper-class” primates.

a. True
b. False

Answer: False

By LBG

Source – PBS.org – The Big Chill
Source – Mother of Man 3.2 Million Years Ago
Source – A quick background to the last ice age
Source – Airborne Fraction of Human CO2 Emissions Constant over Time
Source - Global Warming Bombshell
Source – Climate myths: The ‘hockey stick’ graph has been proven wrong
Image - Australopithecus afarensis

Sphere: Related Content