Fire, Ice & Paradise is an educational book for the non-scientist, including politicians, regarding the many factors affecting global climate change.  Eighteen drivers of climate change are identified and discussed in the book.  While the book is intended to encourage the reader to come to his or her own conclusions, the author does offer his opinion and interpretation for the reader.  Meant for a broad audience, Mr. Gore's name is not in the text in hopes that all interested parties might read and learn from its contents.

The bottom-line summary of the author's opinion after research of the scientific literature is that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a major contributor to current global warming nor to Earth's paleoclimates.  This conclusion is reached by considering the following key factors:

1. Changes in atmospheric CO2 content FOLLOW changes in Earth's temperature.
2. CO2's ability to temporarily trap heat radiated from Earth's surface declines very rapidly, logarithmically, as CO2 levels increase.
3. Empirical evidence from the present and the past 500 million years show that trends of rising or falling CO2 levels often diverge from rising or falling trends in Earth's temperature.

In addition to being shown to not being a significant driver of current temperature change, CO2 is shown to be a positive factor in Earth's ecosystems, a benefit to the plant (food) kingdom and thus the animal kingdom, which includes humanity. 

All of the above are critical points that need to be considered in policies being formulated relative to global climate change that can have momentous effects on energy providers and the economy.  Evidence for the scientific conclusions are supported in the book and in verbal presentations by many simplified charts and graphs.