An Inconvenient Truth

Went to see the new Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth today. Here is the website for it. I was really impressed. It did a good job of debunking the myth that Scientist are debating the issue. It’s similar to the evolution issue. Science isn't questioning if global warming from human industrialization is occurring. There are debates within science, but it’s a question of how bad and what to do about it. The thing is people don't understand the process of science. It’s about using the scientific method and then having your findings challenged in journals where experts can look at the research and force the author of the study to defend her findings. You always have that one guy (maybe 5% of any population)--we'll call him Peter. And Peter will scream and yell telling you those elitist liberal academics are pulling the wool over your eyes. And then everyone says okay so the issue isn't solved-- there are still scientist saying it isn't happening.

Well take Peter and apply him to religions. What do Christians say when you see a Christian bombing a Doctors office. You usually hear, "well he isn't really a Christian, he's a very disturbed person." Well it works the same here. Scientist are telling people, "look, see Peter over there; he isn't really a scientist. He doesn't participate in our process of publishing research in journals. He gets all his research money from big oil and gas. He won't participate in civilized debate, he simply uses a bully pulpit for five minutes of Q and A on TV news channels where real Scientists don't have the opportunity to challenge every one of his statements with documentable evidence refuting his idiotic claims.

And its not like I claim any knowledge on the subject. I know next to nothing about it. But I do have faith in Science and the Scientific method. I do know that over and over again the process of testing ideas by doing the research and then having them challenged and verified by others causes our knowledge and understanding of the world to grow and improve. I have to let the experts do their job. And when 90% of the experts say x is happening. I believe in x.

The movie also does a good job of remaking Al Gore for a 2008 bid. It was a great piece of political propaganda. The unfortunate thing is you could use the model of analysis Gore used to take apart other issues like Militarism, Democracy, Voting, Economics, and Thought-control in Democratic societies; but that might be dangerous to go there.

Anyways lots o'thumbs up on this movie. Its well worth the money to see just a few of the slides he uses, some of the graphs and flow charts are very powerful. Just watch HOW the critics attack him. They'll pick out Scientist who disagree with certain examples--because its a fact that there is debate within science as to what exactly the warming looks like--and will use that to say there isn't global warming which is a jump in logic. Or they will find "experts" who happen to NOT be climate scientists. The sad thing is this will be another case of preaching to the converted; the intellectual isolation in this country (on all sides) is out of control. And the people who won't see it, won't be around when the shit hits the fan.

Here are some highlights I found online about it:

The Globe Is Warming To Al Gore

What does Gore do in An Inconvenient Truth? He delivers a lecture, about global warming. He waxes didactic. Pedant that he is, he teaches his audience something. He proves that he is smarter than the rest of us, in that he’s developed real, deep knowledge about something we all should care about. And in transmitting that knowledge to viewers, he leaves moviegoers feeling smarter than when they entered the theater.

Warming to A Candidacy?

So much for his silly dichotomy -- his assertion that global warming "is not a political issue. It is a moral issue." Any large policy issue is a political issue, and it is large because it is morally significant. So, having come within 537 Florida votes, or perhaps a 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision, of becoming president, why not try again, particularly with, he says, "Earth in the balance"?

Did Al get the science right? At Salon you have to look at a quick add to read the whole article...

The usual oil industry flacks and dogmatic skeptics have surfaced to denounce Al Gore's global warming movie. But climate scientists say that, basically, he got it right.

Al Gore's global warning

Critics who accuse Gore of opportunism will have to acknowledge that he has been at this for a long time, ever since he researched the subject in college and helped organize the first Congressional hearings on global warming in the late '70s. They will also have to deal with the fact that, as mentioned in the movie, a 2004 Science magazine survey of all peer-reviewed scientific studies of climate change showed 928 papers supporting man-made global warming. None denied it. Meanwhile, a similar sample of stories from the mass media showed that 53 percent claim global warming is unproven.