Friday, June 23, 2006
An Inconvenient Movie
The plan is to see Al Gore's movie this weekend with some friends and in preperation I found a TCS article written a month ago entitled "Questions for Al Gore." Climatologist Roy Spencer hits on a lot of good points, notably reminding us there is not a total consensus that global warming is an unnatural phenomenon. It sounds like this film is a "documentary" in the same way Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was "good." The only people that buy the label are already too invested in it to consider otherwise.
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3 comments:
First there was doubt if global warming existed. It's been proven that it does, so instead they are asking if it is natural. So the question is, what would it take to convince you that it is not a natural phenomenon or at least partially artificially induced?
Jason
I don't doubt there's a human component - you can't be a part of a system without affecting it.
I just read a lovely article in Scientific America - the editor was formerly a believer in the "Skeptical Environmentalist" line of that Scandinavian guy (it's late and I'm too lazy to go check his name :-P ). On seeing actual photographs of glacial recession he decided it's beyond time for skepticism, and that action is necessary.
Great line, but didn't he notice, not too long ago, the whole north American continent was pretty well buried under ice down to Wisconsin?
I understand it's a frightening issue - actually, I don't. I don't understand it at all. I'm in Siberia, and just lived through the coldest damn winter of my life. At the moment, a bit of global warming sounds nice.
But joking aside, I'm not sure it really matters very much. Climate change is climate change, and the world has been hell-hot and icy-cold both, and more times than we can count. Life goes on, and we couldn't stop that if we wanted to, nuclear arsenals unleashed.
"I'm not sure it really matters very much. Climate change is climate change, and the world has been hell-hot and icy-cold both, and more times than we can count."
People die too. So should murder matter. I mean they're going to die eventually so should it matter if it happens now or later? How about artificial life support? Should we keep people alive when they should be dead?
The flaw in your arguement is that there is a difference between a natural change and an artificial one. As humans it has become our nature to do unnatural things. I don't mean that in a bad way either. Walking on the moon is unnatural. So are blogs. But so are causing mass extinctions without a meteor strike.
Since our own survival is at stake, we have to try to at least control our impact on the planet before it bites us in the ass.
Oh David, I found an article about the movie. It looks like your inconvient truth is that Gore's science is accurate.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/51387.html
There may not be a total consensus on the science, but that doesn't mean it's not true. It's pretty hard to have a total consensus on anything. If that was the basis of your defination of a documentary, then there can never be any documentaries period.
Jason
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