The Pilot's "view" states that CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas and the chief culprit in Earth's rising temperatures.
This is just not true. As a scientist I find myself constantly explaining that 99.96% of the Earth's atmosphere is 78.08% Nitrogen, 20.95% Oxygen and .93% Argon with the primary greenhouse gas being water vapor - not CO2. The end of the last glacial period was about 12,500 years ago and for many of us the Earth is not only warming, in Maine the crust is still rebounding roughly 1 cm per year from the weight of nearly two miles of ice recently melting.
Ice core data over the last 600,000 years show the Earth has repeatedly warmed and cooled and yes there is a correlation between rising temperatures and rising atmospheric CO2 levels but this correlation isn't as we have been lead to believe. The increase in CO2 over the last 100+ years is partially man made but the prehistoric rise in CO2 had nothing to do with man. These increases were likely due to the world's oceans, tundra, and permafrost belching massive amounts of CO2 as the oceans an and soil warm. I'm not saying the Earth isn't warming - I'm just saying that suggesting CO2 at 400 PPM (parts per million) and the associated infinitesimally weak greenhouse effect is causing global warming is like saying umbrellas cause rain.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/
http://web.mit.edu/angles2008/
http://serc.carleton.edu/
Update March 1st 2017 - Turns out the 400,000 year saw tooth temperature and CO2 graph (below) that Al Gore used from the very beginning was misrepresented. Five years after Al Gore started to use this graph more data was filled in and it turns out that CO2 lags temperature by 400 to 1000 years. Even after molesting the data and assuming gas bubble migrate the conclusion from one highly respected group was CO2 lags by only 150 years which they used to dismiss the whole subject. I don't know what it's called when you dismiss science that doesn't fit the prescribed narrative but I for one continue to shake my head in disbelief.
Al Gore's graph which made so much sense... At the time.
With more data points it clear CO2 lags Temperature
