So we have friends in town, and they wanted to see Al Gore's movie. I was kind of blah on the idea, but I went along.
That was a great movie. GO SEE IT!
It's only 90 minutes long, and goes by fast. But it clearly lays out the case for global warming in the best way I've seen yet. First it details a tremendous amount of direct evidence, then it takes each of the anti-global warming arguments and completely destroys them (i.e. CO2 levels are within a range, the earth goes through warming and cooling trends, there is no consensus on global warming etc.). So many amazing and stark statistics and graphics, pictures, it's truly mind blowing. The best ones were reports from branches of the government not looking to prove global warming, like military records showing that in Alaska, the amount of days you could safely drive their larger trucks over the permafrost has gone down from 250 days a year to less than 75!
I'll leave out a lot of what he said for now to focus on one part. He took one myth, that there isn't a consensus on global warming and put it to rest. They sampled over 900 scientific journal studies (not opinions by somebody with a PhD in a business paper, actual studies) and found the amount that raised any doubt on global warming, or stated a doubt on humans affecting it = 0. 0!!!!! Then he showed that out of the several thousand articles on global warming over the past few years in newspapers, 53% doubted global warming. More than half! If you repeat a lie often enough, people start believing it's the truth!
Pictures of receding glaciers from all over the world, core samples showing the temperature of the earth over the last 650 thousand years, the evidence was very well presented. The shame is, those who want to throw stones at it won't go to see the movie, they'll be happy to slam it in ignorance. It certainly had an affect on me, though. I don't know what chance we have to oppose an industry that has ~$100 trillion worth of revenue to make from the oil still in the ground, but whether or not to do something should not be the question.
I'm sure I'll hear all sorts of brilliant rebuttals like, "Al Gore is a quack! Hillary is a Lesbian!" from those of you who have closed your mind to the issue. But if you are at all thinking about it, if you give it even a 1% chance of being true, go see the movie and make up your own mind. See it, make a note of every key point, and work up a rebuttal to each one if you like. Believe me, I want it to not be true, because if we keep doing what we are doing, 50 years from now our children will suffer greatly for it. And this isn't about beach front homes getting washed away, this is about whole swaths of countries either getting under water, or suffering from drought and famine. You think 100k displaced people from Katrina is bad, can you imagine several hundred million?
That was a great movie. GO SEE IT!
It's only 90 minutes long, and goes by fast. But it clearly lays out the case for global warming in the best way I've seen yet. First it details a tremendous amount of direct evidence, then it takes each of the anti-global warming arguments and completely destroys them (i.e. CO2 levels are within a range, the earth goes through warming and cooling trends, there is no consensus on global warming etc.). So many amazing and stark statistics and graphics, pictures, it's truly mind blowing. The best ones were reports from branches of the government not looking to prove global warming, like military records showing that in Alaska, the amount of days you could safely drive their larger trucks over the permafrost has gone down from 250 days a year to less than 75!
I'll leave out a lot of what he said for now to focus on one part. He took one myth, that there isn't a consensus on global warming and put it to rest. They sampled over 900 scientific journal studies (not opinions by somebody with a PhD in a business paper, actual studies) and found the amount that raised any doubt on global warming, or stated a doubt on humans affecting it = 0. 0!!!!! Then he showed that out of the several thousand articles on global warming over the past few years in newspapers, 53% doubted global warming. More than half! If you repeat a lie often enough, people start believing it's the truth!
Pictures of receding glaciers from all over the world, core samples showing the temperature of the earth over the last 650 thousand years, the evidence was very well presented. The shame is, those who want to throw stones at it won't go to see the movie, they'll be happy to slam it in ignorance. It certainly had an affect on me, though. I don't know what chance we have to oppose an industry that has ~$100 trillion worth of revenue to make from the oil still in the ground, but whether or not to do something should not be the question.
I'm sure I'll hear all sorts of brilliant rebuttals like, "Al Gore is a quack! Hillary is a Lesbian!" from those of you who have closed your mind to the issue. But if you are at all thinking about it, if you give it even a 1% chance of being true, go see the movie and make up your own mind. See it, make a note of every key point, and work up a rebuttal to each one if you like. Believe me, I want it to not be true, because if we keep doing what we are doing, 50 years from now our children will suffer greatly for it. And this isn't about beach front homes getting washed away, this is about whole swaths of countries either getting under water, or suffering from drought and famine. You think 100k displaced people from Katrina is bad, can you imagine several hundred million?
