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An Inconvenient Truth
from the conveniently-packaged dept.
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.
Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:4, Insightful)
Of all the nations who agreed to Kyoto, which have kept with their commitments?
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:4, Insightful)
Fewer than many people suspect - both the UK and Japan for example, haven't.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Insightful)
Until we find far greater stores of cheap clean energy and raw materials, consumption will always yield pollution and environmental damage. We must reduce consumption to reduce global warming. This is the expensive and unfortunate consequence of tackling global warming
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Insightful)
If the fuel prices are inflated artificially (ie taxed at a high rate) perhaps the only think it'll do is cause huge inflation and damage the economy but in the end nothing changes once things even out.
I don't know. Just some thoughts and ramblings.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:4, Informative)
Petrol is quite expensive here at the moment (the price per litre has gone up by more than 50% in the last couple of years) - it's been a big issue in the media/public consciousness. Petrol is also taxed fairly heavily here, but that was also true before the price sky rocketed.
Since petrol has become so expensive the price of food doesn't appear to have dramatically increased (in fact, the general inflation rate is more or less unchanged) - but people are tending to buy smaller cars. The most popular cars in Australia used to be 6 cylinder family sedans with 3.8 to 4 litre engines. There seems to be a trend at the moment towards smaller cars with lower fuel consumption.
Now, I don't have hard data on this - I'm talking on the basis of various conversations I've had and what I can observe of the public mindset - but I believe there is a trend in this direction. In short, it's too simplistic to say that a major increase in petrol prices wil lead to massive inflation - it's not actually that simple.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have any idea of how much fuel is used by family farms? I do. Tractors, combines, farm trucks , irrigation wells: all use a lot of fuel. A good percentage of farming expenses come from fuel costs so anything that inflates fuel costs would tend to drive more family farmers out of the business and leave it to the big conglomerates who get savings on the scale of their operations.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry. When your dream of $15/gallon gas makes it impossible to have affordable food everywhere during all times of the year due to shipping costs, mass starvation will take care of that population thing for you.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Insightful)
And those leaders will be removed from office at the peoples' first opportunity.
I'm continually amazed at the ubiquity of the notion that any problem can be solved by passing a law. 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.) Global warming? Just slap a 700% "carbon tax" on fuels and everyone will be driving Priuses (Priii?) and showering with solar-heated water before the decade is out. Enact a treaty, and the rest of the world will eagerly follow suit.
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.
Reality check (2): China, IIRC, has under construction over 50 new coal-fired power plants. Although a Kyoto signatory, their CO2 emissions are projected to surpass USA's by 2010 [energybulletin.net], with no end in sight. No law passed by USA or any other country can temper China's behavior if the Chinese decline to cooperate. And it appears they have no intention of doing so.
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.
The way to wean people off fossil fuel is to present them with a better and/or easier and/or cheaper alternative. The way to bring those about is with incentives, not with mandates or subsidies. Since 1980 the USA government has pumped something like $50 billion into energy R&D, with nothing significant to show for it. Suppose it were to establish an X prize [xprize.org] to pay, oh, $25 billion to the first organization demonstrating an alternative energy process that (1) is renewable, (2) has less end-to-end environmental impact than coal or petroleum, (3) is at least as end-to-end efficient as coal or petroleum, (4) yields end-user cost and performance comparable to gasoline in a typical mid-size automobile, and (5) is practical on a commercial scale. Would you bet that we wouldn't be retooling the nation for such a process by, say, 2020?
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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747 "efficient?" Ha! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Re:747 "efficient?" Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:747 "efficient?" Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Informative)
And the Clinton administration. Kyoto protocol was passed on December 12, 1997. Clinton never submitted it to the Senate for ratification.
Bush has problems with China and India (two of the top polluters) being exempt. This is not a Republican issue, although I encourage you to yell at Reid and Pelosi to pass it.
Relavant wikipedia section:
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because people like to get political instead of scientific when addressing the issue. In the film, it is stated that out of 928 scientific studies on global warming, zero had any doubt that A) it exists and B) we are causing it. So it depends on if you want to listen to science, or politics. Usually the people with the loudest mouths on both sides of the issue have the least to say. Whether or not you believe that it is even happening, it may be prudent to at the very least look into it a little.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is credibility
Climate change has no credibility problem whatosever. It is as much a fact as gravity.
The people with the credibility problem are the folks who've spent the last three decades denying climate change who are now all flip-flopping and telling us "climate change is a completely natural process".
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Jon Stewart said it best... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, I'll probably rent it (along with "Who Killed the Electric Car") tonight for a uber-geek double feature.
Re:Jon Stewart said it best... (Score:5, Funny)
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Did Al Gore buy advertising on this site? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Did Al Gore buy advertising on this site? (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea whether Al Gore or anyone affiliated with the film bought advertising on this site. The content/editorial side and the advertising side are kept separate on Slashdot as well or better than any other news website out there.
And it already is filed under both politics and science (check the icons near the top of the story). Both are clearly applicable.
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Pretty much always the case... (Score:5, Insightful)
They laughed at Galileo Galilei, they laughed at Gandhi and they now laugh at everything inconvenient.
Since when does public opinion influence truth?
I'm so tired of this! (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Proof is for mathematicians (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Proof is for mathematicians (Score:5, Informative)
Nice, you just illustrated the GPs point.
You *can't* prove a scientific hypothesis! All you can do is provide more and more evidence to back it up. Even General Relativity isn't "proven" in the scientific sense, and as far as theories goes, it's as rigorously tested as they get.
So, the question is, at what point will there be enough evidence to convince you? Personally, I think the answer is "never", because you have your beliefs and you're unwilling to deviate from them.
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Re:I'm so tired of this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, few of us can afford to check their work the way we could check a result in chemistry, by building a planet and measuring what happens to it.
But it's not "argument by authority" when the people being cited love to argue. It's not like a church where anyone who speaks about doctrine has sworn obedience to the hierarchy.
Looking for consensus isn't proof, but it's a good heuristic. Another heuristic is to pay more attention to people who admit uncertainties. Climatologists admit they have huge variation in their forecasts, ranging from serious warming to catastrophic warming.
>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.
As we all should and not just on this issue.
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Re:I'm so tired of this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists can have whatever bias they want, but science will be the same.
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.
Yeah, the danger has always been there. Normal people see scientists almost as priests who have "The Truth". The reality is that we do not have "The Truth", we *try* to look for the truth, science is about *understanding* the phenomena of the universe. In fact, there is no truth after all, there are only *accepted models* (theory).
The issue here is that, scientists have discovered information that shows the impact that humans are making to the environment, the problem is that normal people (non scientists) always look for a black and white "simple" answer (thats why "God" was invented).
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.
Oh no it is not, the difference is that for any scientist to get reputation, it must have published some work which is *peer reviewed* by other scientists. And, as we saw with the chinesse scientist, it is very easy to lose the reputation if they make fraud.
And ultimately, no mattering the reputation of the scientists, science will continue to grow and our understanding will continue to grow.
The real problem is in pollitics, the governments do not care about global warming, as they do not care about lots of other things just because they do not understand it. To understand it, the problem must be stated in terms of profit or loss (of wealth or mind-share).
I watched this movie and I think it was great. I would really invite other people to watch it. But the sad thing is that, anyone who refuses to accept the issues of global warming will just waste 2 hours and then after watching the movie will just try to make excuses.
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Re:I'm so tired of this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Incorrect. Argument by authority [nizkor.org] "is fallacious only when the person [cited] is not a legitimate authority in a particular context." Climate scientists are, of course, exactly the authority one should cite about matters of climate science.
Comparing science to religion is very much the rage but the simple fact is that science produces testable theories which seek to correctly describe the world around us, while religion does not. Anyone with education and intelligence who studies scientific research or does their own scientific experiments can correct scientific errors, and this is not true for religion.
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. The vast majority of climate scientists acknowledge that the Earth is getting warmer and that one of the causes is human production of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. It is virtually impossible to find any respectable scientist who will disagree, anymore.
What this means is that we -- lay readers like you and I, and scientists alike -- can move on to other questions. Maverick scientists are of course welcome to try to disprove the existing consensus belief, and the wonderful thing about science is that they are always welcome to do so (and will receive great acclaim if they are right and everyone else is wrong). But it is correct, and significant, and important to say that there is consensus and the scientific debate on this particular question is over.
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Re:I'm so tired of this! (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that GP did not stipulate "experimentally testable". Only testable. While proof under laboratory conditions provies the most controlled environment for testing, requiring all scientific theories to have laboratory proof would invalidate not only climate science, but astronomy, much of geology, biology and even physics.
It would be if the consensus was unsassaible. But its not. Scientific consensus does get overturned from time to time, and with it must fall arguments that rely upon it. But at some point you reach the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" stage.
Anybody is free to dispute anything. However that doesn't give everybody equal a priori claim to credibilty. Where a challenge is made to consensus derived from the best avaialble process for evaluating such claims, then a reasonable person should impose a higher standard of proof or a narrower scope of claim upon the challenger.
For example, if I claim that O2 is denser than CO2, I am not entitled to demand that everybody consider all prior and contrary observations false. Instead, I may claim at most that measured by a certain technqiue O2 appears denser than CO2, and that there are reasons to consider the new test as more reliable than the old one. We then proceed to test the narrower claims before debating the broader ones. If it turns out I have made some mistakes in my technique, or my math, or my interpretation, I must correct it before even my narrow claims can proceed. Until the faults in my proof are cured, I have no further claim to scholarly rebuttal, even if the resulting doubt is relatively small.
On the other side of the debate, the arguments need not be as robust. They only need to establish that a reasonable person may doubt my challenge; I must demonsrate that only an unreasonable person could doubt my challenge.
Clearly this places an assymetrical burden of proof on challengers to scientific consensus. But it is not an unassaiable barrier to valid challenges. It is quite possible to overturn incorrect scientific consensus under these conditions, but it is impossible to maintain a correct consensus under any other.
If we imposed a symetrical burden of proof on the scientific consensus, scientists would spend their time going over the same ground over and over. Most scientists I know relish a valid claim that throws prior assumptions into doubt. But nobody wants to spend their time taking apart yet another design for a perpetual motion machine.
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Re:I'm so tired of this! (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, consensus is all we have. We can't absolutely prove anything with 100% certainty. All we can do is work with the best data and models we have available.
We have used the theory of evolution in medical research which has resulted in countless lives being saved. Should we have waited until we convince all the ID people before we start using the theory of evolution to develop new medicine.
Yes, it is good to have suspicion of consensus, but you can't let that suspicion paralyse you. If these theories of global warming are correct then we need to act now. By the time we have absolute conclusive 100% certain "proof" it will be too late.
I'm reminded of of someone discussing the reaction time of governments. Imagine there were a virus that doubled the amount of people infected everyday. First one person, then 2 on the next day, then 4 on the day after that, then 8, 16, 32, etc. The government only reacts when a quarter of the population is infected. How much time do they have to contain the virus or find a cure? Two days.
Sometimes if you wait for a problem to have real demonstrable effects you leave yourself too little time to find a solution.
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Re:Too Add to that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:I'm so tired of this! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly enough, neither have the economists who say that we're going to screw up the economy by doing something about this. Both academic groups have a couple of things in common: they're both studying complex systems where very little experimental evidence is available and they've both had a mixed track record. In most cases when a hard science (like climatology) comes up against a soft science (like economics), the scientific peanut gallery tends to believe the hard science. The fact that this is not the case here is a clear indication that something is seriously being spun on the other side. All I can say is that I go with the hard science. Past experience shows that you ignore hard science at your own peril, but that ignoring economists is not nearly as hazardous to your health.
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the final conclusion is essentially... (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
NASA Climate Model on your Laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Scientific consensus not quite there yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The scientific debate has ended? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a bibliography of 1970s era scientific papers about climate change [wmconnolley.org.uk].
>We may or may not have a role in the warming.
If it's possible to put as much CO2 in the atmosphere as we have and *not* get a climate effect, that would be one of the most astonishing scientific results in history.
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Re:I'm REALLY Serial! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm REALLY Serial! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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SP doesn't believe in anything (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:I'm REALLY Serial! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm REALLY Serial! (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [mos.org]
Remember; Piltdown Man was accepted as totally valid by the scientists of that day...
Any time lends itself to "present knowledge chauvanism"
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Re:I'm REALLY Serial! (Score:5, Informative)
Anything more I can help out with?
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Re:I'm REALLY Serial! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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MOD PARENT UP!!!!!!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Ten reasons there's no such thing as global warming:
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Re:Gore is out to lunch (Score:5, Informative)
Pity that 'think tank' is funded mostly by oil companies isn't it?
"Competitive Enterprise Institute has received $2,005,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998."
source:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php
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