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Unfriendly Climate Greets Gore At Apple Meeting
theodp writes "Apple's shareholder meeting this week took on a Jerry Springer vibe, with harsh comments about Al Gore, former VP and Apple board member, setting the tone. Several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising Gore's high-profile views on climate change. Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich urged against Gore's re-election to the board, claiming that Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. If [the] advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.' Hey, at least he moved a few copies of Keynote, Shelton. Shareholders introduced proposals regarding Apple's environmental impact — one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders. However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board."
In the US, people are nice to each other and the fact that people are entitled to their own opinion is taken very far. In my country, people are blunt and tell you if you're wrong (and why). If you live in a country where myths like creation are vigorously propagated, discussion about it is discouraged and ignoring facts is encouraged, isn't the US at a natural disadvantage when it comes to discussing factual issues? People can only too easily mistake their opinion for true/a fact, and not as something that may be in for a rewrite. This is exacerbated by the drive of the more outspoken (conservative, if I may say so) people to push their thoughts on others. We have (a minority of) creationists in our country too. We let them keep their thoughts and they don't bother us with theirs.
After years on slashdot, I still am often taken aback by lines of reasoning that boil down to: xyz is expensive, so phenomenon pqr does (not) exist). Uh, gulp. In this specific case of global warming: What can possibly be wrong with taking a couple of measures that make the initial cost go up and the cost of use go down. You pay the same (in the end), but do longer with a resource. Some allergy that the state could come up with a sensible idea is enough to throw some people into fits (look at the signature lines of several posters here on slashdot). There isn't a law of nature that says that *everything* a government proposes is wrong.
Saving energy can be so easy. For some homes: Take taking a shower. The water that drains is still warm. You can buy a counter-current heat exchanger that recuperates about 40% of the heat (you have to have a mixing shower faucet, or whatever it is called, to use this). You have the same comfortable showers, except that you use less energy. The important difference is that the initial outlay is higher (but your energy bill is lower). The unborn can't bid with you for that energy. Do you really have the liberty to waste it, our is it OK if a government looking further than the next election says: Hm, we're going to introduce some bills to encourage you to reconsider wasting that energy.
Bert
This got +5 Insightful?
And you, sir, are not helping by demonizing those who think differently than you.
There wasn't any demonization in the original post. There's a difference between dismissal and demonization.
On the other side you have... those who ignore scientific evidence for financial gain.
...but that, on the other hand, comes close, in addition to being laughably irrational. People who are seriously interested in financial gain, if they go into the sciences at all, certainly aren't going to pick climatology as their cash cow. And once ensconced in climatology, there's no particular financial incentive to espouse any particular theory. "Hey, I really made a bundle off of my latest paper on upper-atmosphere particulates in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes." Riiiiiiight.
As with religious fundamentalists who like to argue that science is a religion, absurd accusations of this sort usually say a great deal more about the accuser than the accused.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
>> You do realize, they've been in decline for about the last 18k years, right? Since the last glacial period.
Quite the pedant. The GP poster wasn't talking about a very tiny decline.
No-one is trying to claim that the climate doesn't change. The problem is how quickly it is currently changing.
If the temperature had been increasing for the last 18k years as fast as it has risen for the last few decades, we'd currently be experiencing temperatures nearing the 300 degrees Celcius mark, and the glaciers would have long since melted.