June 2, 2006 4:40 PM PDT
Gore film calls for environmental action
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To some, "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary opening today about global warming and Gore's crusade to raise environmental awareness, will be scarier than anything Hollywood has produced in years.
The film tracks Gore and the multimedia lectures he gives around the world. His talks connect greenhouse gasses to recent draughts, hurricanes, floods, famine, heat waves, melting glaciers and global epidemics. And there's more to come, unless political action is taken, the movie asserts.
Video: Gore's crusade to halt global warming
Watch a trailer for the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
Gore presents endless charts, numbers and diagrams of temperatures and carbon dioxide and water levels to argue that global warming is real and alarming, and that the U.S. is responsible for almost a third of greenhouse gas emissions.
His conclusion: "Maybe we should be preparing against other threats than terrorists."
So is Gore being an alarmist or a soothsayer?
Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, saw the movie and said Gore calls it like it is. "He didn't say the world is going to end, or that all these consequences are going to happen tomorrow," Schmidt said. "I thought it was a good balance of evidence and caution."
Schmidt agreed with Gore that global warming is being caused by humans. "It is unquestionably human-driven, there is no other possibility," he said. "The idea that there are two sides to this, that there are all these dueling scientists, that's media fabrication."
Not surprisingly, the film already has its preemptive critics. The free-market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute aired television ads in 14 cities the week before the movie premiered, arguing that it's alarmist. "Carbon dioxide--they call it pollution," the ads said. "We call it life."
But Bob Epstein, co-founder of Environmental Entrepreneurs, a network for business people trying to combine environmentalism with entrepreneurialism, said Gore was spot on.
"We are already seeing the consequences and we already have the solution," Epstein said.
Schmidt agreed that there are things that can be done immediately to slow global warming, such as improving energy efficiency and reducing the use of carbon emitting fuels. He also thinks the Gore film will raise awareness, even if it falls short of sparking real political action.
"It will probably expose people to more science than they have seen since high school, probably not even then. I think that's a good thing," he said. "Do I think it's going to cause some seismic shift in the political outlook in the U.S.? I'm not terribly optimistic about that."
Cambrian Period had a spike of CO2 up to 7000 ppm. Evidently the dino's were driving around in SUV's and of course we all know the Earth ended shortly thereafter. Except for the various ice ages inbetween periods of much higher temperatures, the earth's climate has always been just like it is today (heavy sarcasm). Ah and then it is possible they may find oil under the Antarctic from the old tropical vegetation that used to be there. You see, back when the continents were moving around and ocean currents were changing...oops they still are. Oh yes and then the sun varies its output and did you know that the Martian ice has been melting and receding recently too? All those darn Martians breathing out CO2 like the cows and chickens and humans are here on earth. Or maybe it is caused by all the politicians breathing hot CO2 out into space and it is traveling clear across to the Martian ice cap and melting it. Too bad public schools have such an abysmal record on teaching basic science. Ignorance is not bliss. It could cost the U.S. and Europe dearly, while China and India laugh. Predicted next doomsday scenario: Just wait until the magnetic field of the earth reverses.
CNET, don't make me lose respect for you.
C|NET is also famous for its obsession with the XXX registry, and allegations of secret hurricane machines.
use Keynote to make multi-media presentations. The current Chief
Executive would have a difficult time even switching on a computer.
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/05/
inconvenienttruth
Many of my colleagues in the press would agree with you. There have been plenty of articles obsessing about whether this politico has a Blackberry or whether that one uses an iPod. The latest is "CBSTV's" post about Al Gore using a Mac.
If these political hacks were Linux kernel developers and had to deal with undocumented libraries and race conditions and buffer overflow errors and bizarre driver incompatibilities and spending hours trying to debug your code because you stupidly used a colon instead of a semicolon, then perhaps that would mean they wouldn't come up with some of the braindead proposals they have in the past.
Knowing how to use Keynote -- a program designed to be as easy to use as possible -- hardly gives enough geek cred to even be worth mentioning, by that standard. We might as well be applauding some hack for being able to use a cell phone.
Let me know the next time some politico configures Sendmail for multiple machines, writes a Unix shell, or debugs weirdnesses in X11 makefiles on their own.
More broadly, though, I doubt that measure-politicians-by-geekiness yardstick is the right one.
It is an interesting bit of political theater, in much the same vein as gossiping about Britney's baby or Brangelina's clothing preferences or what Alyssa Milano and Moby think about Net neutrality.
But we don't elect politicians based on their Mac vs. PC preference or MP3 vs. FLAC -- or at least we shouldn't. We elect them, at least in theory, based on whether they'll support laws that are constitutional and wise.
That, it seems to me, is the acid test of whether a politician is a good one or not. I'd prefer a lazy philandering draft-dodger and high school dropout who takes the Constitution seriously rather than a computer science & econ PhD-equipped Rhodes scholar who stays up all night tweaking models and devising technocratic ways to micromanage the economy and expand the power of government beyond Constitutional limits.
iPod or Creative music player? Boxers or briefs? Steak or tofu? Ligne Roset or Ikea? Cessna or Piper? Mac or PC?
How trivial and, in the end, uninteresting -- at least given the goal of creating and maintaining a constitutional republic.
-Declan
Don't put too much faith in the belief that the climate system is "self regulating" or the results we are measuring are just part of natural "cycles". Those tendencies may exist within the complex interplay of forces that create the climate but could be overpowered by the influence of a positive feedback loop. It's most likely happened in the earth's past, only to be "unstuck" by external impact or mega volcanoes or both. Look at Venus as a runaway greenhouse experiment or Mars that may have had a past life-favorable climate that has "cycled" into a hostile one. Who's to say a little human input into our atmosphere won't have future dire consequences? Humans- being what they are- it's likely that little will be done to address the changing makeup of our atmosphere until the evidence is overwhelming and the chances to avoid disaster are all but gone. We have virtually doubled the CO2 in the air and the tipping point to drastic and deadly change may already have been reached. Let's hope we can keep getting away with this vast climate experiment we are all participating in because it's too expensive and too much trouble for politicians and corporations to change their act. In a few short decades we will know the answer. Good luck with that!
You should see the presentation before you make assumptions
about what is in it. This issue is very carefully explored and very
accurately.
One of the main points made details how extreme the CO2
imbalance is and how much higher the current and projected
levels are than they ever where, The historical peaks he
mentions are higher than the one you noted.
This is not a political debate piece and it is too bad that most
people will remain closed minded about it due to the political
party or church they have committed to being a member of.
None of the facts are manipulated or taken beyond context. The
facts he lays out are very straightforward, documented carefully,
and not at all exagerated.
After all, the most powerful political and financial movement in
human history (the American republican/right) is going to go
after this with a lot of energy with folks like you ;leaqding the
charge.
I think he knows beter than to make a high school mistake of
misrepresenting facts.
make all of these assumptions about wat it says.
The acts of climate temperature and CO2 level trends are very
carefully laid out and compared to curent trends.
I am curious though, if you assume the film takes liberties with
these acts; when you discover that it is neticulously accurate will
you be objective enough to consider an opinion change based
on the acts?
Will your church or political party let you change your mind
when the messanger is not of their liking? Are you brave enough
to even go see this film? If so will you do so privately, discretely,
hoping no one sees you?
Ha
Google 'climate change' and any one of the following:
'American Meteorological Society'
'American Geophysical Union'
'American Association for the Advancement of Science'
'National Academy of Sciences'
After that, try reading any of the hundreds of peer-reviewed
articles on the topic.
Hint: You may learn something that conflicts with the bloggers.
it is global warming. Who buys this crap anyway?
Sure, taking care of our environment is important. But, don't try to give that impossible scenario as presented on that looney movie "The Day After Tomorrow." What a bunch of morronic nonsense. Did anyone catch that part of this movie where they said/implied "The Mexican Govt will allow Americans on their land in exchange for the cancelling of their foreign debt." In other words "black mailing." I won't help you unless you tell me I don't owe you a thing. These excuses for movies are so thick on politics. These are the same clowns that gave us "Independence Day", which is also filled with the same political message. No wonder, it was produced by the same boys as "The Day After Tomorrow."
I don't take Gore seriously at all. Man-Bear-Pig creator, and creator of the Internet, can take his policies elsewhere.
The problem - your specific problem as Americans, and our problem as human beings in general - is that the US have an election system that lets someone to be elected president even without 50% + 1 votes.
That is a REAL tragedy. Because if Gore was elected when he should (and he had the votes for that - in any other democratic country besides the USA) we wouldn't were having this conversation...
I think it's a good thing that he took part in this film because it created a lot of media buzz which will make people aware about Global warming.
Excerpt:
It was five years before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change. Page six of The New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of ?geologists.? Only the president at the time wasn?t Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn?t warning about global warming ? it was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age.
The year was 1895, and it was just one of four different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be ?wiped out? or lower crop yields would mean ?billions will die.?
- Holy Global Warming Batman
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by TinySmash
June 5, 2006 2:31 PM PDT
- This seems to be a heated issue no matter where you talk about it. On one hand you got Rusch saying how its so arrogant to think we could affect the planet, and on the other hand there was a comment made earlier to the effect of how we could be so arrogant to think we can keep consuming and not affect the environment. Is global warming happening...sure it is, I cant look at the scientific data and say its not. Are humans the cause of it...I bet we are a part, not the sole reason, but we sure play our role.
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See all 108 Comments >>So we know its getting warmer and its something that should heed our attention. However, there seems to be so much sensationalism about what will happen; whether its florida being underwater, huge storms as shown in The Day After Tommorrow, or worries about humans being wiped out. The way I see it this is the only world we have and we have to be good stewards, but we are not going to change the worlds habbits or our own make a substantial effect. So, since we are warming up anways what better way to learn how global warming works then to see it in action.
We have never actually been around to study what would happen as the earth heats up. Sure we can look at sediment samples or ice cores and everything, but that is nothing compared to being a part of the phenomenon. Maybe once we lean how global warming implements itself and its effects we will be better armed to reign it back in.
Global warming is real, as for being alarmed about it, I'm not. However it would be reckless to not try and curb our emissions, can't hurt any right now at least. I guess I am sort of excited about seeing a change and seeing whether it lives up to the hype. But it would be sorta neat to be farming the permafrost in canada, and to have some near extinct fish species find new breeding grounds in the costal shallows that used to be Florida.