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An Inconvenient Truth
There's a movie teaser line that you may have seen recently, that goes like this: "What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?" The answer is "I'd try." The teaser's actually for another movie, but that's the story that's told in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth": it starts with a man who, after talking with scientists and senators, can't get anyone to listen to what he thinks is the most important thing in the world. It comes out on DVD today.
The scariest horror film of 2006 was a documentary.
The first thing everyone wants to know, or at least to argue about, is whether Al Gore has his facts straight. The short answer is yes, he does. There are minor errors. They don't detract from Gore's main point, on which the scientific debate has ended.
And the main point is scary, and almost too big to think about or talk about. The earth is warming, because of us. Sometime in the next hundred years, our environment is going to change in big ways. We can't predict it with much accuracy yet, but the best estimates we have are that it's going to be -- measured in lives and dollars -- really bad.
In a way this film isn't really about that story. It's about a man telling that story -- someone who, after suffering a bit of a setback, asked himself, well, what can I do now? What's important to me? How do I want to spend my time?
What's important is a question a lot of nerds may be familiar with. We like to talk about important things. But how do you respond when you try to say something serious and the cool kids laugh at you? What do you do, when you put yourself out there, try to engage people's minds, and instead they make fun of your clothes?
The good news for anyone who's had a prom invitation rejected is that people can come back from worse disasters. His presidential bid didn't go so well in 2000. Gore had given talks on global warming before; after he was forcibly retired from public service, he took a Powerbook and Keynote on the road, sharpening and expanding his slideshow talk in airports and hotels.
Half of the film is that talk, and it's an engrossing talk. There are charts and diagrams and footnoted stats (and a Futurama clip) and it's about as fun as numbers and chemicals get. Turns out Al Gore has a sly sense of humor (but not a nasty one -- the film's only two political nudges are pretty gentle). Unless you're a climate scientist you'll probably learn something too.
But the other half, interwoven with the lectures, is a man picking up the pieces and rediscovering something important in his life, a message that he has to tell. That succeeds as a film.
And Gore's lecture succeeded too. Somehow, I'm not sure how, this documentary changed the way Americans look at global warming. In early 2006, global warming was still seen as one of those things that may be true or may not. Pundits were fairly evenly divided and both positions were routinely heard. It's now late 2006 and the debate has moved from "is global warming happening?" to "it's happening, we've caused it, and what if anything should we do about it?"
Most of the warming-deniers left are the real extremists out in Rush Limbaugh territory. We're not yet all the way to a serious, scientifically-informed debate, but somehow, overnight, this film pulled most of the fence-sitters over to where the scientists were years ago.
As for actually fixing global warming, it will take a miracle. Maybe two miracles. I think in the next few decades we're going to need to start an Apollo moonshot-type miracle of technology and engineering to beat back the greenhouse effect. Nanorobots. Reflective dust in the stratosphere. Giant mirrors at the Lagrange point. Bioengineered plankton to sink carbon or change the oceans' albedo. Something. That's just a guess.
But meanwhile, though we hope someone can build us an airbag before we crash the car into the tree, that doesn't absolve us from stepping on the brakes. Right now, we need a change in attitude, in our community and our politics, to start slowing the damage we're doing every day to our grandchildren's Earth -- to buy them time, and give them more options. The only way that happens is when the governments of industrialized and developing nations decide this is a priority.
And the only way that happens is for people everywhere to stop listening to the cool kids and, once again, pay attention to the nerds.
What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?
It's appropriate that you, theStorminMormon, should respond to this. The first people I thought of when I read the above quote was Mormon missionaries.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Consensus doesn't mean "right" either.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Its irrefutable that you're just dumb. Think about it man, if we don't have the facts thats even MORE of a reason to take steps to prevent it. We don't want to be caught with our pants down, and unfortunately (minus the tards like you) I think its too late. Our lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren are not something to mess with, they're not something to say "We don't know for sure so we shouldn't care" about. In any case, most people as ignorant as you are stubborn too, so I say we sacrifice the nay sayers to the heat gods and hope they're appeased.
The simple fact is that science produces testable theories which seek to correctly describe the world around us, while religion does not
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Hahahahaha!! Is that so? Then please conduct an experiment in which you demonstrate global warming. Not in some computer model (I do computer models, I know how "realistic" they are for weather-related systems) but using the world. Whoops! We've only got one! And no time travel (to repeat experiments with same initial conditions)! And, for that matter, no ability to tell the world what levels of pollutants to release into the atmosphere. In short: no experiments.
Guess climatology is a religion now?
As for your enshrinement of argument from authority, that has been well-enough dispatched by the AC who replied before me. So I'll let that stand instead of repeating it.
I'm not sure why you went off and attacked the concept of consensus because I wrote (correctly) that the scientific debate on this matter had ended.
Because my main problem is with the idea that consensus is scientifically valid. It is not. Please read "Aliens Cause Global Warming" by Michael Crichton: http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches/speeches_
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
I disagree. Despite the orator, there's really very little political about this film.
I find it very hard to believe that in 100 minutes of film that Al Gore doesn't suggest that the government do something about Global Warming or whatever he is talking about. Here's a little hint: when you propose things for the government to do on our behalf and try and rally support for those things, then that is politics.
It is a very common yet skewed perspective that sees politics as just a sporting event between two parties.
Stop being obtuse.
I'm not being obtuse. You're just not understanding my point. There are two arguments here: the argument about whether or not global warming exists, how bad it is, and whether or not it's our fault, and the argument about how that argument is conducted. I'm not arguing the merits of the global warming debate. I'm making an argument about the form of that argument: it's the philosophy of science as opposed to science itself.
As for your "evidence" itself, we're talking an extremely complex system and you want me to accept your 2 + 2 = 4 analysis? I'm a systems engineer, complex/chaotic systems are what I study. The whole point of these systems is that a relatively minor variation in starting condition escalates to enormous changes just a few steps down the road. 2 + 2 = 4 may be true, but 2.000001 + 1.999997 may be -17. That's the point of complex systems, and the reason I don't buy your pat analysis.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Oh, put this lie to rest already. It only shows that objwiz is not believable.
Only in America would that comment be labeled "Insightful".
Give it up already... global warming is real.
I've become convinced that (1) there is such a thing as global warming, and while (2) I'm not convinced it's entirely due to carbon dioxide emissions, (3) we probably ought to do something about it.
Thing is, as far as I can tell, the solutions proposed by Gore and other environmentalists are nothing short of looney. Their so-called solutions would largely shut down the economy of the United States for very little benefit, as emissions by third world countries increase drastically. Losing the economic powerhouses the United States and other industrialized countries have become is worse than futile, because it's these powerhouses that are likely to be the only true fix for our predicament.
Instead of trying to shut down emissions we ought to be figuring out ways of actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Promoting plant growth is one good idea, but there are others and there's no reason we can't split our efforts. In the meantime we should also try to climb out of the "mankind is a disaster" intellectual pit and find the other mechanisms by which our climate is changing, and actively oppose them - whether it's "natural" or not.
Bunny huggers tend to believe that the Earth should remain undespoiled and that we are killing nature. The fact is, the climate changes naturally, we see ice ages, and species die out all the time. Humanity is reaching the point where we can not only change the climate accidentally, but also on purpose; and if we fail to regulate the Earth's climate we risk our own existence.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I'm continually amazed at the ubiquity of the notion that any problem can be solved by passing a law.
Not as amazing as the lunacy of the notion that nothing can be solved by passing a law, so there's no point in trying.
Fuel shortages? No problem - just impose a 55 MPH national speed limit and there'll be plenty for everyone. (You'll recall how well that worked out.)
For the point that it was intended, yes it worked. It wasn't popular, and not everyone obeyed it, but it was less unpopular than high prices and waiting in line at gas stations and it did save gas. Your point?
Reality check (1): Any elected officials putting such measures into law would be turned out of office at the next election - if not sooner - and their successors, well-knowing why they were elected, will immediately repeal those measures.
Nonsense. Most laws would not impact consumers directly, but power plants and Detroit. The problem isn't that they can't do it or that it's even that expensive, but that they are lazy and greedy. Ford and GM wanted to ride out the bigger & heavier SUV bonanza forever, and then got slammed by higher gas prices. If GM had had a line of fuel efficent cars like the Prius that you mocked, they could have been making money hand over fist after Katrina instead of wallowing in bankruptcy court for months.
And you're also ignoring the fact that a lot of environmental action is on the local rather than on the national level, driven by citizens. California and Seattle are good examples of this.
Reality check (2): China, IIRC, has under construction over 50 new coal-fired power plants.
Ah, the "China isn't doing anything now, so we shouldn't have to either" defense. Yawn. Here's your reality check: the U.S. produces an incredibly high amount of pollution for the size of our population. You go asking China, a devloping nation with vastly lower per capita income, to take action before the wealthiest country in the world and you're asking for a punch in the nose.
Reality check (3): Arbitrary restrictions on peoples' behavior do not work. See the 55MPH thing, the War On Fill-In-The-Blank, any 4th of July in a state that outlaws fireworks, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
Problem: your analogies are worthless. We aren't talking about controlling behavior, we are talking about controlling supply. Xcel Energy isn't going to smuggle black market coal burning power plants up from Mexico into New Jersey. Sammy Hagar might not be able to drive 55, but he will have to pay a $3,000 gas guzzler tax if he buys a Mustang GTO.