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.

Go buy the nerd's DVD.

Comments

Nothing inconvenient about the results

[Josh Lindenmuth]

I don't think the reason that nobody initially wanted to listen had to do with the story, but rather the storyteller. Gore was about as charming and captivating as an endangered sea turtle. Had some other high profile public figure attacked the problem with the same gusto, there may have been a little more initial acceptance of the core message, which I actually feel would have harmed the result.

Why? Because if anyone else had tried to get congress to act on Global Warming, there would have never been An Inconvenient Truth. Had Gore been more successful in convincing congress to join the Kyoto treaty or strengthen EPA guidelines, I don't believe there never would have been the movie. Which just means that the public would remain uncommitted/unconvinced, and future administrations would have just reversed what the more convincing version of an Al Gore could have achieved in Congress.

What's amazing is that Al Gore's movie really IS engrossing. He comes across as a man with a mission. While he may sensationalize the risk a little at times, he delivers a message that is irrefutable: we must act now. I believe he has helped increase awareness of the problem, and the greater the awareness the greater the chance for long term change. Governments will act on ridiculously expensive endeavours only in the face of overwhelming public support ... An Inconvenient Truth is one big step in the right direction.

Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results

[gcranston]

It's not really a bandwagon jump if he's BEEN AT IT SINCE HE WAS IN UNIVERSITY!

And where are these arguments against Global Warming being our fault? Seriously, where? And nothing from a newspaper, industry report, or Congressional committee counts on this issue. I'm asking where are the bona fide scientific papers in refereed journals? There aren't any. Saying there is evidence either way on this is like saying cigarettes might not kill you because I have this report from Imperial Tobabcco, and another from the Senate Committee on "Taxes on Tobacco make us piles of money" that say they're healthy.

Please, for our sakes, pull your ignorant head out of your ass and read something.

Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results

[Rei]

That is the real issue - and most people see that. To put it another way, what most people say about global warming is "there is a scientific concensus", and "you can't understand it unless you are a climatologist". Both of those arguments are obviously ad hominum - trust the message because of the messenger.

The issue is the complexity of the problem at hand. It's not a subject that you can learn the intricacies of with a cursory read. As a consequence, pretending that you know why something is right or wrong when you aren't familiar with all of the evidence and science at hand is doing a disservice to the discussion. I know you don't want to have to rely on others. You'd love to have a little experiment in your hands, or a simple equation, or whatnot that demonstrates it. Sadly, the issue is far too complicated for that. You'll have to rely on Peer Review -- the process that has gotten us almost all of the scientific advancements of the past century. I hope that's not too much of a leap of faith for you.

The problem is that there are alternate explanations that have not been eliminated. For example, a possible posit is that atmospheric effects act as an amplifier of the solar input. In other words, a 10% increase in solar activity causes a 100% increase in temperature, with about a 1000 year step response function (or delay before the results show). So a slight increase in solar activity 100 years ago can cause an exponential rise in temperature today.

You seem to have the strange impression that models don't already account for amplification effects (they do), or that the rammifications of changes of solar input haven't been extensively studied (they have). In the latter case, there was yet another report, this one a rather major one, released last year which determined that, even with amplification, solar input couldn't cause more than (1/5th?) of the observed warming. In the former case, the models are so bloody detailed that they take into account how the current windspeeds in China kick up dust (and what kinds), and where they deposit it in the oceans, and how that fuels plankton populations, and how those particular plankton respond... I've briefly chatted with the head of NCAR about their models; they're really incredible. They showed a demonstration of their model operating on the short term, predicting the path of Hurricane Katrina (it was presented to the White House as an "experimental product", but wasn't included in the official predictions). They superimposed the actual hurricane over it. Not only did the path match, but even the rain bands matched. They then superimposed their damage predictions over the actual damage, and again, it matched up near perfectly.

I can't wait until their new supercomputing facility comes online. Unfortunately for NCAR, their computer use requirements are growing notably *faster* than Moore's Law.

The global warming activits do not see what is wrong with what they propose - they say that the changes needed will not put us back in the stone age. But they are talking about taking my money away from me and transfering it to their priorities (for certain values of them and me), at gun point. (I'm assuming here that I am not allowed to opt out).

Because if you could opt out of Kyoto, everyone who produced large amounts of CO2 emissions would, and it would be a pointless gesture. I can just imagine applying your "Opt Out" message to other things in life. Hey, I never got a chance to opt out of these whole "No Murder" laws. They're forcing me, at gunpoint, not to murder people. Can you imagine? What an indignity!

give them the other options, and say choose!

Okay. Here are the options that are currently achievable with modern technology.

1) Cut CO2 levels.

Your call! Take your pick. Yes, there are some proposed methods, but they haven't been studied enough to know what their effects would be, or if they're even possible to implement. Studies are ongoing, but for most, it could be decades before we could start to implement them -- if ever.

Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results

[glsunder]

No. You strongly discourage people from buying polluting devices and encourage efficiency. You do that by taxing low efficiency vehicles and using that money to subsidize high efficiency ones (in their size class). If fluorescent bulbs save energy over incandescents, then you do the same with those, and whatever else. Taxing fuel might put us 5 or so years ahead of schedule by doing it this way, but taxing fuel will hurt the poor more and risk the economy much more.

Granted, this results in people making the changes more slowly, but you're not jolting the economy. People can still buy SUVs, but instead of buying one that gets 11mpg, they either have to pay a big premium, or buy one that gets 30mpg. Overall, you push up the efficiency standards, while letting people still have a choice and you don't cause a sudden price increase in transportation costs.

The big problem is GM and Ford. They're screwed and they know it. If we raise the efficiency standard by very much, we're basically banning American made cars in America. Politicians can't let those companies be devastated (huge layoffs != votes), so you won't see the US seriously tackle GW until the American corporations get their shit together. Unfortunately, we have a chicken and the egg situation - the corps won't do anything unless they have to.

the final conclusion is essentially...

[xlurker]

I have seen the movie; it is well done.

There are some conclusions that I think are inevitable... The final ultimate conclusions is essentially:

• Wind or solar energy-farms should be build in gargantuan scales. If one is dubious about such large scaling, just think of Google, they use tens of thousands of computers to power the search machine, all are centrally controlled and maintained.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, says it can't be done with energy-farms on colossal areas. These farms are used for sequesteration and also as an energy source. This does not depend on changing human nature, it will work and it will pay itself of. All it needs is for someone to propagate the idea.

Runup to that conclusion:

Sadly recent news and statistics can let one only draw the following conclusions:

1. it is not possible to change human habits even if the first world nations reduce CO2 emmisions, the second and third world nations will compensate by buying oil and coal no longer being bought by first world nations [1]
2. for us as a developed and civilized world to (really don't want to sound melodramatic) survive this, we will need to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere. As much as I would like humanity to finally change its habits and maybe become a bit more conscious of itself as a whole: what I would like has little influence on what "is" ; in particular little influence on 6 billion+ people ... (e.g. China will likely overtake the US concerning CO2 emmisions in 10 years...)
3. Since (1) will happen no matter what, reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere by reducing emmisions will not be enough
4. the conclusion from (3): sequesteration of CO2 requirement: large amounts of energy
5. the amount of energy needed for (4) will be large, it cannot come from other limited sources such as gas or atomic thus it must come from renewable sources: wind, solar, tidal/water (I exclude fusion since this is still too uncertain for the next 30 years)
6. no matter what the source of energy, the industry needed to provide the amounts of energy will be huge, it cannot only be used for sequesteration but also (obviously as an energy source)
7. a second conclusion of (1) is that humanity cannot change one of it's habits: consumption of resources / pruduction of goods, both need energy; if we cannot solve the problem by reducing consumption of energy, then we solve the problem by producing more means of producing energy
8. based on (7) look for systems that have a positive energy return on energy investment scale the good candidates to very large levels basically I think (8) is the only way to go for humanity, (8) is then applied to (4) examples of (8) can be found : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_energy_develop ment
9. first example: a wind turbine produces enough energy for a bit more then 300 homes, the US has approx. 300 million citizens, and maybe 80 million homes, thus 1000*1000 wind-turbines would supply enough energy for all households and sequesteration of CO2 just lining them up next to each would not work since there is only so much wind availible, spacing them at a distance of 1km to each other might work, thus one would need 1 million square kilometers, the US itself occupies 10 million square kilometers. wind turbines could be setup on the same areas used for agriculture the energy return on energy investment is more than twenty-fold, amortization after approx. 3 years. Amount of time to build: decades
10. a further maybe quicker to implement example for (8) would be to create large industries that create huge amounts of solar panels, not based on silicon but instead on the energy/resources-cheaper version: copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar panels [2] [3] claims th

NASA Climate Model on your Laptop

[HoneyBeeSpace]

If you'd like to recreated a lot of the stuff from the movie, using real data as inputs and getting similar results as what Gore gets, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2, re-arrange the continents, change the vegetation cover, or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM. Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

Re:I'm REALLY Serial!

[rk]

Actually, By the time Piltdown Man was revealed as a hoax, many anthropologists' models of human evolution were already regarding it as an aberration and disregarding it. I imagine quite a few of them blew sighs of relief when they heard it was a hoax. There were a few at the time of discovery believed it to be a hoax, too. I suppose time will tell on the global warming debate, too.