Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
... An Inconvenient Truth is one big step in the right direction.
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
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Of course, I'll probably rent it (along with "Who Killed the Electric Car") tonight for a uber-geek double feature.
Because this seems like an ad for the dvd, not a story. At any rate, this needs to be filed under politics, not science. Or, as a compromise, both.
They laughed at Galileo Galilei, they laughed at Gandhi and they now laugh at everything inconvenient.
Since when does public opinion influence truth?
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.
Consensus is NOT proof. I don't know how else to say this. When someone tells you that there is a consensus among scientists on a certain issue, they have proved nothing about the issue itself.. I'm not arguing that global warming is not real, or is not the fault of humans. But I'm tired of people trying to strong-arm me into acquiescing to the point using blatantly un-scientific methods.
The troubling side-issue no one wants to talk about here is that in our modern world of super-specialization it has become increasingly impossible to fact-check our experts. There are at least 3 distinct parties in this conversation: scientists, the media, and the public at large. If either scientists or the media have a bias at all on this issue anyone who believes the tired-old "scientific consensus" argument can be led around just like those religious fools they love to mock: a subject to an irrational trust in authority. Scientific consensus is the argument used to sell us toothpaste and mouth rinse - not to argue substantively for the biggest scientific crisis the world has faced.
This troubling side-issue of authority vs. science won't go away. We are in danger of becoming a society where science is the new priesthood, universities are the new temples, and PhDs are the new bishops of a timid and trusting flock. I'd say this corruption of science is almost as alarming as global warming, and far easier to demonstrate. Any true follower of science must reject "consensus" for what it is: argument by authority. It is, fundamentally, the same monstrosity that corrupted organized religion 1,000s of years ago. It must be rejected if science is to escape the fate of those organized religions.
I don't mean for this to distract from the central point of global warming. That's an important issue as well. The trouble is: how do we make up our minds about the issue if we reject scientific consensus as proof? The only thing I can think of is to understand as much of the issue as we can for ourselves rather than from the media. That's something I definitely need to work harder on.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
The popular belief here is that all climiate scientists agree with Gore's conclusions about Global Warming. It would seem that is not the case. From this article.
"I can assure Mr. Gore that no one from the South Pacific islands has fled to New Zealand because of rising seas. In fact, if Gore consults the data, he will see it shows sea level falling in some parts of the Pacific." -- Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist, associate professor, University of Auckland, N.Z.
- - -
"We find no alarming sea level rise going on, in the Maldives, Tovalu, Venice, the Persian Gulf and even satellite altimetry, if applied properly." -- Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, emeritus professor of paleogeophysics and geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden.
- - -
"Gore is completely wrong here -- malaria has been documented at an altitude of 2,500 metres -- Nairobi and Harare are at altitudes of about 1,500 metres. The new altitudes of malaria are lower than those recorded 100 years ago. None of the "30 so-called new diseases" Gore references are attributable to global warming, none." -- Dr. Paul Reiter, professor, Institut Pasteur, unit of insects and infectious diseases, Paris, comments on Gore's belief that Nairobi and Harare were founded just above the mosquito line to avoid malaria and how the mosquitoes are now moving to higher altitudes.
- - -
"Our information is that seven of 13 populations of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (more than half the world's estimated total) are either stable or increasing..... Of the three that appear to be declining, only one has been shown to be affected by climate change. No one can say with certainty that climate change has not affected these other populations, but it is also true that we have no information to suggest that it has." -- Dr. Mitchell Taylor, manager, wildlife research section, Department of Environment, Igloolik, Nunavut.
- - -
"Mr. Gore suggests that the Greenland melt area increased considerably between 1992 and 2005. But 1992 was exceptionally cold in Greenland and the melt area of ice sheet was exceptionally low due to the cooling caused by volcanic dust emitted from Mt. Pinatubo. If, instead of 1992, Gore had chosen for comparison the year 1991, one in which the melt area was 1% higher than in 2005, he would have to conclude that the ice sheet melt area is shrinking and that perhaps a new Ice Age is just around the corner." -- Dr. Petr Chylek, adjunct professor, Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax.
- - -
"The oceans are now heading into one of their periodic phases of cooling.... Modest changes in temperature are not about to wipe them [coral] out. Neither will increased carbon dioxide, which is a fundamental chemical building block that allows coral reefs to exist at all." -- Dr. Gary D. Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, Calif.
- - -
"Both the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are thickening. The temperature at the South Pole has declined by more than one degree C since 1950. And the area of sea ice around the continent has increased over the last 20 years." -- Dr. R.M. Carter, professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia.
- - -
"From data published by the Canadian Ice Service, there has been no precipitous drop-off in the amount or thickness of the ice cap since 1970 when reliable overall coverage became available for the Canadian Arctic." -- Dr./Cdr. M.R. Morgan, FRMS, formerly advisor to the World Meteorological Organization/climatology research scientist at University of Exeter, U.K.
- - -
"The MPB (mountain pine beetle) is a species native to this part of North America and is always present. The MPB epidemic started as comparatively small outbreaks and through forest management inaction got completely out of hand." -- Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, B.C., comments on Gore's belief that the mountain pine beetle is an "invasive exotic species" that has become a plague due to fewer days of frost.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Last I heard, they were still arguing over the existence of the medieval warming period and a hundred other possible oddities in recent climatological history. There is quite a bit of debate over what our role in the warming is, and what the climate will do in the next hundred and the next thousand years.
The earth is warming. We may or may not have a role in the warming. We do know for certain that our presence has affected climates at the local level; there *is* some debate still over how much influence we exercise over the global climate. Science has been wrong several times about climate change in the past few decades (The big chill never happened, and warming hasn't progressed nearly as quickly as was once predicted). We've got a lot left to learn before we can accurately predict where this is going.
Don't do science a disservice and proclaim an end to debate. One of the key tenets of science is that very few things are absolute, and our knowledge of climate certainly isn't one of them. As often as science has proved itself wrong in the past, to proclaim an end to debate over a subject like global climate change and declare once side to be fact is to spit in the face of science.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
And yet, despite all this, what has really been accomplished? Sure, there's more "awareness" but have people started scrapping their SUVs for Priuses? Have there been any major governmental (in the U.S., at least) commitments to renewable/carbon neutral technologies? Have we come any closer to an idea of how to deal with the fact that two of the most populous nations on Earth, China and India, are increasing in their use of fossil fuels as we speak?
Kudos to Gore for doing his part; Lord knows it's been a thankless task so far. But so far it seems like his is a voice in the wilderness, and as long as big oil has more lobbying power than the environmental movement any sweeping changes will be a long time coming.
I'm sorry, but the Ozone layer isn't registered to vote. You getting skin cancer has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats. Good science is about facts. Politics is about bullshit.
The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
There are some conclusions that I think are inevitable... The final ultimate conclusions is essentially:
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:
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
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.
Space and Computers.
In science, the best you can do are experiments whose results seem to support or not support a theory. Even when the results seem to point one way or another, you can pick apart the methodology, the bias of the experimenters, and more. That's the best you can do with science. It's a human endevor, and has the same human flaws.
That's why we have peer reviewed journals, public debate, and more. No, consensus is not proof. Look at the long standing belief that ulcers were caused by "stress". It turns out it's a bacterial infection and it took a crazy guy drinking a batch of the bacteria to prove his point. But in so many other cases, the evidence changes the consensus. It takes awhile and can be hotly debated, but the process generally works.
Global climate change is in that category. Smaller experiments support it. The historical record supports it. Various measurements support it. Sure, it's not proof, but that's as good as it gets with science.
That episode was their worst in quite a long time.
Isn't reducing what we use and making things more efficient a worthy goal in and of itself?
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works James Inhofe.
No, it's a movie review. Or do you think this is an advertisement too?
If the producers of the film paid OSTG to place the article on Slashdot, then it would be an advertisement. If you have some information that this is what happened, please share it with us. Otherwise, the fact that the DVD was released today makes the review timely and fits my definition of "news for nerds."
I don't care why you're posting AC
Please use "!proved" to mean the opposite of "proved" -- we'll eventually implement synonyms for tags and those two forms of opposites will join together anyway.
And of course if you want to express the opposite of the suggested tags or any others, prepend a "!", e.g. "!notscience !notproved !fud". Of course, categorizational tags ("globalwarming algore") are just as welcome as opinion tags and ultimately help Slashdot even more...
I was really pretty pissed off by that episode, actually. It's obviously satire mocking global warming -- but it's just crude name-calling. I know that's what South Park is supposed to be, but I have a problem when it starts distributing the mental tools for people to stick their fingers in their ears and say "na na na!" about something that matters.
Read this: http://www.cei.org/pdf/5478.pdf
This is a 120 page criticizm of "An Inconvienant Truth". I didn't write it do if you guys have issues then please take it up with Marlo Lewis.
M. Lewis is a Senior Fellow in Envirnomental Policy ast the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
http://www.cei.org/
You can contact CWI through their website. Lewis's research is pretty through and I'll advise anyone who really wants to know the truth to actually read what he has to say and think about it rather than just posting a knee jerk reaction. Lewis makes some pretty good points.
If course I expect my post will get modded down. If so - its just another knee jerk reaction by those who wish to suppress the truth rather than actually look at the data.
Please see this.
The debate among informed parties IS over. That's the whole freaking point here, sheesh. The problem is that politics and the general populace are still insisting on acting as if this is not the case, DESPITE the facts provided by the scientific community.
Or did you miss that in the synopsis above? Christ, even Al Gore knows this! This movie is about the problem that the people that Know this for fact are having a HELL of a time getting those that do NOT know to LISTEN.
It's not about whether it is true or not, it's whether people will ACCEPT it or not. Business and Politics do NOT want to accept this, because to accept it would REQUIRE major change...major change being an understatement. It would REQUIRE business and politics as we know it to COMPLETELY reevaluate how they work. Never mind our consumerist society.
People don't want to give up their SUV's or their PS2049's, or whatever other crap they don't need...Business doesn't want to stop selling you the crap you don't need...Politics doesn't want to rock this boat...
Accepting or Not Accepting the facts has NOTHING to do with the facts. Global Warming is REAL. Self Induced Climate Change is REAL. These are FACTS.
Whether you are too attached to your consumerist lifestyle to hear the facts or not is what the real issue is. Herein lies the real debate...unfortunately no one wants to have that debate because you might just end up having to take some level of responsibility for where we are at right now and actually DO something about it. It's easier to just keep driving that suv into the sunset until the day the sun doesn't rise again...then we can deal with it, cause at that point at least you'll have that 'proof' you needed won't you.
No Comment.
That's simply disingenous. With the Big Bang, there's no other reasonable theories that exist right now because no one can even conceive of alternate possibilities to match the data we have. With global-warming-caused-by-man, there are innumerable potential theories, and right at the top of the list is "it's merely coincidental." The data doesn't show anything significant beyond coincidence. And frankly, even that's mostly because the data has been fudged.
Also, your claim that things are going to get worse has *no* serious grounding in available data. Even the fudged data. It's make-believe. For all we know, even if "global warming" was caused by man, it could end up being a net benefit to mankind. Also, according to all this Goreish interpretation of the data, it's quite possible we'd be headed into a global *cooling* period right now without man, in which far *more* lives would be lost.
I just can't agree with the notion that the debate is over, or even that it is over with a very high degree of certainty. And I just can't agree that any data at all shows that "global warming" is a net loss for mankind. The science simply doesn't show either one.
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys
"Most of the warming-deniers left are the real extremists out in Rush Limbaugh territory."
I still have serious doubts about the science and I am far from Limbaugh territory. I lived through the dire Global Cooling warnings of the 1970s/1980s and I've seen my share of scientific scams. I've studied the research to the best of my ability and read the arguments on both sides. The evidence hasn't convinced me that humans are causing warming beyond natural processes. Global weather is complex.
Quite, so you have identified the main reason why if you don't believe in the science of Global Warming you should still embrace the Global Warming message. Whatever you think of Global Warming as a theory the actions that the green lobby want us to take to reduce the effects also reduce our dependence on Oil. Everyone agrees that Oil will run out, the economies most dependent on Oil when it starts becoming scarce will be the ones that suffer most. At the moment due to the shortsighted self interest of American politicians the country most likely to be seriously impacted is the US.
Sure, if your country's first instinct to fixing a problem is to go to war...
I would also like to remind you that a lack of evidence supporting A is not always evidence supporting the inverse of A.
...but I have a problem when it starts distributing the mental tools for people to stick their fingers in their ears and say "na na na!" about something that matters to me.
There, fixed it for you.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
> The US Senate signaled in 1997 that it would reject ratification of the treaty by a vote of 95-0 before it was even
/. catagory, Op-ed.
> signed (essentially symbolically) by Al Gore in 1998.
How dare you attempt to introduce historical fact into today's Hate. I mean, like we all know who is responsible for all the world's ills. He heats the Earth in league with Big Oil and Haliburton. He is waging war on poor innocent brown people with the Milirary Industrial Complex and Haliburton. We know who the problem is.
BUSH!
Seriously though; it is way past time for a new
Personally the Global Warming hoax is far from 'beyond debate'. If there is any science in the arguments it is buried so far in the noise of the politics that no instrument exists capable of seperating the two. And as a political debate all I need to see is the rogue's gallery on the Warming side and their proposed solutions and contrast with the skeptics to know I will fight Al Gore and Jamie with my last living breath.
We defeated Communisism once, we will defeat it again even if we don't have Ronald Reagan leading us this time. And we will do it while defeating Islamic Fascism. Because we must.
Democrat delenda est
No, there isn't a consensus among scientists. The above link is a petition signed by 17,000+ scientists who believe: There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
Check the demographics in the Middle East, SE Asia, the "stans, India and Africa.
Actually, in terms of fuel used, jumbo jets are the most efficient way to move large quantities of people.
You have it exactly backwards. Commercial aviation is the least fuel-efficient way to move people. Maybe you meant to say jumbo jets in particular are more fuel-efficient than other jet aircraft? You might be correct in that case, assuming that the jumbo jet is always completely filled with passengers, which of course is not true.
A 747 burns 3300 gallons of fuel per hour and cruises at 490 knots. Neglecting to consider takeoff and landing, that means that over a 5 hour flight, the plane will have burned 16,500 gallons of fuel and traveled 2450 nautical miles (2821 statute miles). Assuming the plane is completely booked and is carrying 524 passengers (actual seating capacity varies by model and airline), then each passenger is responsible for 31.5 gallons of fuel.
A Cadillac Escalade gets 20 miles per gallon in highway driving. Filled to capacity (as our 747 was. Fair is fair, after all), it seats 8 people. Traveling the same distance (2821 miles) at 20 miles per gallon, this "gas-guzzling SUV" will suck down 141 gallons of premium. Each passenger is responsible for 17.6 gallons of fuel.
The 747, operating under ideal conditions, is barely half as "efficient" as the much-maligned, gas-guzzling Cadillac Escalade. And you want to hold it up as the pinnacle of efficiency? Better check your numbers. Be glad I didn't bring up busses or trains.
And I didn't even go into the fact that the 747 is spewing its exhaust directly into the thin, upper atmosophere, where it can do the most damage.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Some have commented that "This is a theory, but we can't blow lots of money on a theory." Hmmmm. So, I guess we shouldn't blow any money on that whole "Theory of relativity" thing? We need to remember that a "theory" to the average user is a hypothesis. A "theory" to a scientist is the final step of the scientific method
1. Observe
2. Generate hypothesis
3. Make preditictions
4. Test preditctions and modify hypothesis
5. Repeat 3 and 4 until predictions match test results
6. Publish THEORY
Politics is different - this is politics: okay, so what's the worst case scenario if the environmentals are wrong? We spend a bunch of money and give our grandchildren a cleaner place to live than they otherwise would've had. If the environmentalists are right and we don't spend the money, that's a much worse case scenario. But that's me. YMMV.
I see it from another perspective. South Park's commentary introduces me to biases that I have never even considered before, biases that allow me to put my own in perspective. For example, they taught me that it's *okay* to hate the anti-drug people - that it's not hypocritical to be anti-tobacco yet still hate that jackass in the "zephyr" awareness commercials. Likewise, I never had any strong opinions about illegal immigration (and still don't), but all the same I did not identify at all with Americans who have lost their jobs until I saw the SP episode satirizing that issue.
If you disagree with the messages conveyed by South Park, fine. It's not like I choose to believe everything they say either. But how about instead of making a fuss because they happen to promote a view you don't like, you just accept South Park as a welcome source of underrepresented criticisms, and make up your mind for yourself.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Note that the Reason article basically agrees with Gore on every major point. Global warming is happening. It's caused to some extent by human activity. Glaciers are melting because of global warming. Predictions are that polar bears "will have a problem," he says euphemistically, and he cites a very conservative estimate whose severity has been upgraded within the past few months.
The Reason article even paraphrases Gore as saying "global warming is increasing the intensity of hurricanes," and retorts "that claim is hotly contested by climate scientists." The paper it links to says right in its abstract, "There has been a small increase in global Category 4-5 hurricanes" in the past 20 years -- a 10% increase actually -- and it says not all of that 10% can be explained away. And the only significant correlations that it finds between wind strength and sea surface temp are positive: a 0.39 correlation in the North Atlantic and 0.59 in the NE Pacific (table 3).
In other words, far from being an exaggerator, Gore's presentation of the science in the movie has been pretty much spot-on. Note in particular that when Gore talks about sea levels rising 20 feet, he clearly says, in the movie, that this will only happen if the Greenland or Antarctic ice melts completely, which he points out is speculation. Rent the movie :)
Nobody knows to precisely what extent humans have caused the global warming problem, but clearly we are some part of the problem. Does it matter if our fossil fuel usage has caused 20% of the problem, or 80%, or even 150%? (Maybe the Earth would be cooling if not for our carbon emissions.) Even if it were 0% -- if our net emissions cancelled each other out and the Earth were heating up exactly the same as if we were not here -- we would still have to reduce carbon emissions to buy our grandchildren time to solve the problem of living on a warming Earth.
howstuffworks.com link
:) )
Basically, 747 gets between 69.8 to 100mpg passenger miles per gallon.
Comparing both vehicles as being "full" is a faulty assumption. Airlines work their arses off to ensure that their airplanes take off as close to capacity as possible. Lots of people drive their SUVs to work alone.
(And the 747 is not exactly Boeings most fuel efficient airplane, the 787 is going to kick its arse! Not a huge jumbo jet, but amazingly cool.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
In a nutshell:
The natural cycle timeline here (per Gore's graph) is very long - these are the last few ice ages we're looking at, with data derived from artic ice cores etc.
The inevitable conclusion is that global temperature follows CO2 level and CO2 level is already way above normal due to industrialization. The vertical/horizontal axis here are about in correct ration (showing how far above the normal range the CO2 level is).
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8480/globalwarmin gua0.jpg
Well, if you want to go down that road, walking or riding a bike don't expend any fuel, but it would take quite a long time to go 2821 miles.
It's also quite difficult to cross the ocean that way.
I know this is an odd question, but has anyone considered the amount of heat our modern society produces? Lightbulbs, cell phones, cars, trains, airplanes, power plants--everything modern society relies on produces heat.
Might that heat--maybe combined with greenhouse gases--be contributing to recently noticed warming trends?
Personally I never watch South Park OR Al Gore. or other politicans... all are equally relavant and entertaining; not one whit
n g_021009.html
t a_trunc_sys.shtml
6 1109-022035-4126r
j r.html
As to global warming I am sure it is warming Al's pocketbook but I foind hun causes to be somewhat...doubtful as do many who really view this with an open mind. To quote another on this; It seejms mankind's intervention must be causing warming even beyond this globe:
On Pluto: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warmi
On Triton: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980526052143da
On Saturn: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=200
On Jupiter: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_
On Mars: http://www.mos.org/cst-archive/article/80/9.html
Remember; Piltdown Man was accepted as totally valid by the scientists of that day...
Any time lends itself to "present knowledge chauvanism"
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Basically.. the ocean currents which keep europe and much of the northern hemisphere warm are sensitive to salinity and temperature..
of specific concern here is salinity. Recent observations have shown huge tracts of ice hundreds of miles across suddenly melting over a period of about a week.
If this happens to the greenland ice sheet, it could stop the north atlantic currents and cause severe glaciation of the northern hemisphere with europe particularly hard hit.
It would be devastating to world economics and food supplies.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Even if you were to say that your Escalade itself is technically more efficient than the Jet for that 3000 miles, the fact that the Escalade will take a week vs. 5 hours for the jet should account for something. Some questions:
1) Should you have to account for the fuel used to transport the extra week of food that the Escalade riders are consuming for their journey?
2) Should you have to account for the fact that if everybody switched to SUVs for cross-country journeys, congestion would increase and therefore mileage would decrease?
3) Should you have to account for the fact that on a 3000 mile journey, the A/C, stereo and entertainment devices being charged that are freely available on a plane will also be in use in the Escalade, and will likely decrease it's mpg by 10% or more?
I say probably. However, I'd also wager that the ICE trains in Germany which are purely electric and can carry 1000 people at 300kph are most efficient.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
It's a documentary about Global Warming, not 'Our Earth: Greenhouse or God's Judgment?'.
This is science, it's not been proven or dis proven yet. But there is a scientific explanation for it, much like most of the other theories out there. (Evoloution, black holes...)
:3 rawr.
William Connolley on realclimate parsed the question fairly, here:
I understand that I can either argue from authority (ask you to take my word for it as an expert) or provide some evidence.
You will see in these Slashdot discussions plenty of weaseling on the first three points, despite readers of this list presumably being better informed on science than the general public. The first three points are not open questions in science. Like anything in science they are open for revisiting, but they are not where the action or controversy lies within the research community.
While I agree with the fourth point very strongly, and while a majority of participants in the relevant sciences probably do, it's not universally agreed. It's not really a scientific question, though; it's a question in economics, policies, values, and risk.
The broad scientific questions, the ones typically up for debate, are essentially settled.
What interests me here is why people continue to rant about questions that are part of the consensus, when the case is pretty much closed. They take offense when one has the temerity to suggest they are not only barking up the wrong tree, but that the tree they are barking up was chopped down for pulp years ago, but they don't seriously consider the possibility that while the policy is uncertain, the broad outlines of the facts are known well enough.
For those of you who think people like me are wrong, disingenuous, or even dishonest, consider how the situation looks to you vs how it would look if we were basically right. There would be organizations with substantial investments in resources (especially fossil fuels) whose long term value would be at risk. (There's ample precedent. Consider the history of the tobacco industry.) Their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders would be to minimize that risk. They would therefore inject the greatest possible doubt into the public's understanding of the science.
Consequently, there would be many arguments in the press, mostly appealing to the elements in the society who are generally most suspicious of regulation and taxation, that would cherry-pick evidence and spin tales that were scientifically incoherent and yet superficially convincing.
They would appeal to the fairness of the lay audience. They would claim that there are two sides to every issue. They would object to any presentation that was scientifically balanced on the grounds that their manufactured opinion was not represented. The echoes of this argument ring through every public discussion of the topic, on Slashdot and elsewhere.
Science and commerce do not deserve equal time on scientific questions. Cherry picked evidence does not deserve equal time with the totality of the evidence. The best policy is not a compromise between truth and fiction.
Capitalism is necessary for prosperity, and vigorous defense of private interests is part of the game. Cherry-picking evidence isn't illeg
mt
New Orleans happened because the funds weren't used to shore up the levies like they were supposed to. I know it is popular to blame Huricane Katrina on global warming but we've had a lower than average year on hurricanes this year. I don't think it's conclusive.
www.joshferguson.org
The only fault that comes to mind immediately with this argument is that the Escalade may be carrying eight passengers, but...where is their luggage? Can an Escalade carry eight passengers PLUS two suitcases per passenger (16 suitcases) PLUS a carry-on (eight more bags) PLUS that well-defined personal item (such as a laptop or briefcase, eight more small bags)?
I ask simply because I don't know the cargo capacity of an Escalade. A 747 will carry all that, plus that occasional extra/overweight baggage, without the need for a trailer or rooftop cargo box (both of which will cut your fuel economy considerably).
I think a more equivalent argument would be the fuel required to move a certain amount of mass from point a to point b; after all, that's what's being moved, whether it's people or cargo.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
That 747 burns Jet-A, which is basically kerosene. It is not leaded.
Yes... but the question is how you enforce the goal. Do you have the government put a gun to people's heads and threaten to kill them if they don't reduce consumption or make things more efficent, or is it a decentralized popular social movement? No one has a problem with protecting the enviornment... it is just the question of how much police powers to regulate private non-violent behavior that we disagree about.
Al Gore is of the school that thinks totalitarian government is the solution to enviornmental problems, which is why so many people hate him even if they agree with the science of global warming.
Anything more I can help out with?
Stephan
And how many miles must a car travel to cover the same distance? Roads are not all straight.
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.
What about the need to balance that harm against the potential harm warming could cause? I think we should be able to reasonably agree, as a society, to take out an "insurance policy" in the form of reduced emissions in order to gain more security in the future from radical climate change.
Crop failures, water shortages, regional refugee crises, loss of biodiversity... all those things would also harm our economy.
Ironically, Bush has implemented almost all of the protocols via the EPA (or at least as much as is reasonable) without having actually signed the document.
He has also drastically pushed alternative fuel and fuel saving tax credits to the point that hybrids are becoming a common sight on the roads and folks get tax credit for replacing inefficient heaters/windows/doors and adding insulation.
I would not, however, expect anyone to notice. The news is too busy pushing that Ken Lay met with Cheney during this planning than actually reading the report or reporting on how it is changing society.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
Ten reasons there's no such thing as global warming:
There is a bit of a difference between name-calling and reporting scientific fact.
After a while, the fallacy of South Park becomes apparent: they make fun of anyone that believes in anything or takes a stand for anything
So eventually, you have to conclude that the political tenor or the show is to believe in nothing. Except watching TV. And doing nothing.
In an ideal world sarcasm is humor to paint ones path through the world. In high school mentality, it is an illusion of airs of superiority maintained by denigrating everything that is not you.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
One sided? It's supposed to be. It's a documentary
I'm calling bullshit. Documentary is meant to present an unimpassioned recording of events as they happen, without being tied to or filtered through pet theories.
This I hold as true, in spite of the fact that the Michael Moore school of "propoganda as documentary" continues to be so lucrative.
Not saying that we shouldn't be looking for ways to be kinder to the environment, or that Gore doesn't make some good points, but Documentary? Meh.
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Sorry. I don't know how to start a new thread.
b out/position/globalwarming.jsp
What pompous ass posts that a scientific debate "has ended" concerning something where you can't even have a control in the experiment?! This CO2 scientists isn't that sure:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/a
We don't have an extra earth to know what would have happened without certain stimuli, so it is a matter of empirical educated guesses. There is no hard science here.
I'm all for taking the most conservative actions concerning something as important as the planet, but it is pure drivel to say you "know for sure" something you have arrived at through correlation of data. Correlation does not prove causation. You need to have a control.
Here's a graph including the "significantly warmer" middle ages.
e rature_Comparison.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temp
Insightful my ass. How about incorrect.
I would have thought so myself, but since I don't know everything I checked. He appears to be right, according to this Jet-A does contain lead to raise its flash point:
http://encyclopedia.quickseek.com/index.php/Jet_f
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)