I watched “An Inconvenient Truth” this weekend, and afterwards, wanted to watch it again. I had seen an earlier version of Gore’s slideshow from a TED conference, so I was familiar with what he was going to say, but I was completely captivated by him as an individual, and how he’s been driven by a quest to prevent catastrophic climate change.
As many other have said, this is a completely different Al Gore than we saw on the campaign trail. He comes off as warm and human. And it’s clear that this is his passion. It was interesting to note that Tipper was only included as part of the narrative about his son.
Watching the extras with Al talking about new studies that came out during the editing of the movie, was also very revealing. Here again was the almost robotic Al Gore, who sounds like a cross between a school teacher and a politician. During the main narrative, Gore often falls back to his southern accent while speaking passionately about the data. His strange broken linguistic pacing we all saw during the campaign seems to be an artifact from trying to suppress his natural accent along with reading material from a prompter.
That being said, it’s clear that when given material that he really understands and feels comfortable with, he is an incredibly powerful speaker delivering a finely honed message.
Talking with a friend of mine today, she criticized that the movie ultimately was about Gore, and not the science he was presenting. She thought he would have better served his message by having the scientists themselves present it. I countered that scientists have been presenting this information in one way or another since the 70s, and we’ve seen the success that it’s brought. Gore is in a unique position to preset the information, and I’m glad he’s doing so. Of course this doesn’t preclude climate change scientists from doing the same.
The movie underscored a big current topic for me, which is the rampant abuse of science and research in public policy making. Having a politician who is willing to listen to our scientists and let that inform his decision making, rather than setting a policy and getting cranks to back it up, regardless of the facts, is a refreshing change.
On the data itself: If you’re a liberal, you’ve undoubtedly seen much of this data before. But Gore has an impressive way of putting it all together that is provocative and disturbing. Probably the best slide of the whole presentation is the graph showing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere along with temperatures for the last 650 thousand years. Much like this one. He showed that the earth’s normal CO2 varied between 150 – 300 ppm over that time period. It’s now over 380. His point was that differences between 150-300 represent a nice day vs. a mile of ice over your head.
The glacial information was probably the most disturbing. Break ups in Greenland and Antarctica would cause some pretty bad things to happen to the world, raising sea levels and disturbing the ocean and air currents.
Highly recommended. Check it out.
Inconvenient Science: http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm
CO2 levels were much higher during the ice age. Read the science not the hype.
I’m clearly not a climatologist, nor is Al Gore, but when I’m making decisions about how to live my life, based on the best available knowledge, I’m inclined to defer to the overwhelming scientific consensus that says CO2 is a contributing factor to warming, and that the recent warming is caused by humans, and that this warming is going to cause bad things to happen.
I’d rather not base my decisions on the opinions of exxon-mobile funded shills like Timothy Ball who lie about their credentials to drive a speaking career for which he seems thinly qualified.
As you’re probably aware, the IPCC, which has been accused of being too conservative, recently released a report indicating a 90% certainty that humans are causing global warming.
As depicted in the chart I posted, CO2 levels are much higher than they have been in the last 650 thousand years. That time period included many “glacial periods”. It’s been shown that ice ages actually increase the amount of atmospheric CO2 by slowing down the carbon cycle, and that ultimately, the CO2 causes warming, and a retreat of glacial ice, and ultimately an end to the ice age.
Obviously when you have huge amounts of ice reflecting much more sunlight back into space, instead of being absorbed into the oceans or land masses, it’s going to take longer for warming caused by CO2 to correlate into a warmer environment for the planet. And were we in the middle of an ice age now, I’d be a huge proponent of higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But the reality of our situation is that we are not in an ice age, and the multitude of factors that affect global temperatures are already stacked against us. CO2 is in a much better position today to immediately raise temperatures than it was 60 million years ago.
To say that the information presented in “An Inconvenient Truth” is hype is the worst kind hyperbole. While you may not agree with the consensus opinions of climate data, one can’t responsibly call them hype. There’s a mountain of peer reviewed data in support of those opinions, and vanishingly small amounts of peer reviewed opposition. Those opinions clearly meet the burden of being called scientific.
This fact is: Science has analyzed the 928 peer-reviewed climate studies published between 1993 and 2003 and found not a single one that disagreed with the general scientific consensus.
It’s abusive to the whole field of science to characterize what people like Tim Ball do as science, while the rest is hype. I’d be happy to consider his opinions if he publishes in a peer reviewed journal which is far more capable of evaluating his claims than I am. Until he’s willing to do so, I’m going to believe he is indeed motivated by the dollars he gets from conservative governments and oil companies to help ward off regulation that would be damaging to industry profits.
I’m sure he would complain that no-one would ever publish his work, and cry out persecution by a scientific community dominated by dogmatic beliefs, but I somehow doubt that Tim Ball and his ilk are modern day Galileos. It’s much more likely they are simply motivated more by their pocketbooks than by their sense of scientific ethics or understanding.
I have been reading the science, which personally I believe has not been promoted enough.
here’s some other linky action: Article on climate change skeptics including Ball which also talks about Frank Luntz and the political agenda to discredit the science through a PR campaign
Ice ages Global warming
LOL. eloquent response as always, Joseph. I also watched this documentary better than two months ago. obviously, I’d have strongly recommended it then, i simply assumed you’d already seen it. The ability for large corporations and political agenda’s to influence large bodies of research simply by buying a name and media time has long concerned me. what’s more concerning to me is the otherwise uncharacteristic gullibility of intelligent, experienced individuals when it comes to such doctored presentations. and this is not a situation in which we can afford to learn the hard way. my two cents.
For some reason, this comment by Doug isn’t being published in your comments feed, at least for me, in NNW. Just thought you should know.
Strangely enough, me posting that comment magically made your comments feed update… Very, very odd.
Doug, I hadn’t felt a strong urge to see the movie, because I had already seen the presentation itself, and wasn’t all that interested in Gore as a person. But the movie definitely changed my mind on that.