Over the holidays, Franny and I finally got around to seeing An Inconvenient Truth. Among other awards, it's won two Oscars and (sort of) the Nobel Frickin' Peace Prize, so we thought we should see it, if just to see what the fuss was about.
For the record, I've been following the climate change debate for some time, and am in agreement that people probably have a lot to do with the latest spike. I'm not as clear as to what can or should be done about it, but I'm certain that the head-in-the-sand option is not going to help and will most likely make things worse faster.
The movie started off as a commercial for Al Gore. As he says at the beginning, "I'm Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States." However, he gets over the ego trip and gets down to facts that are hard to debate. He's done a significant amount of travelling (in a carbon offset jet, I'm sure) and meeting with scientists and policy-makers around the world, so whatever you think of the whole thing, you can't really accuse him of just spouting the party line. He has tons of well-documented research to back up his claims. Some of it gets a little heavy into the scare tactics of the worse case scenario, but it's good information nonetheless.
Global climate change sparks a lot of debate, and everyone seems to have an opinion. This being Portland, most of the city of course thinks it's all true and we're clearly to blame. It's not just noise though. Portland was recently on track to become the first US city to meet the Kyoto protocols. (I can't vouch that we're still in the running to be first, but we're still on the way.) However, you don't have to get far from Portland into the more conservative parts of the state where the very idea of human-caused global warming is laughable. Most of these people are not evil, just not very well informed. As best I can tell, most of the folks scoffing at the idea get their science news from Rush Limbaugh's ilk. They're very much spouting the idea that if you can throw any little bit doubt at something, then you don't have to take any part of it seriously, and you can go on just like you always have. It's the same attitude seen in the creationism/evolution debate. These people seem, either willfully or accidentally, to remain uninformed or uncaring about the scientific method and how these conclusions are deduced and defended. It's hard to listen to sometimes. I'm not even clear what the motivation for the denial attitude is. I know there are a lot of folks in industry who would like the debate to go away for financial reasons, but I'm not sure about the regular people. I guess people don't like the idea that they might be partly to blame and don't want to have to do anything different. Understandable, I suppose, but unrealistic. (If someone has a response to this, please leave a comment. I find that I'm far more informed about the "other side" than most people I know, even if I still disagree with them. However, healthy debate and new points of view are always encouraged.)
As I mentioned, I been following this debate for some time, so most of what Gore presented was old news to me. If nothing else, I'm very interested in science, so these things have caught my attention in the past. However, if you are not as well informed as you'd like to be, this movie is a good overview of where the climate change claims are coming from and why scientists and environmentalists are making such a big deal about it. Even if you don't believe anything about these claims, you still might find some of it enlightening.
I definitely recommend that people see this movie. You will not come out of it in a good mood (either because you are more worried about things or because you don't like Al Gore), but most likely, you will still find it valuable.
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Excellent movie, indeed. Janet and I saw it on one of our trips to Portland.
Another "inconvenient truth" is that the scientific method itself is not well taught in school. Many adults (and I include newspaper reporters, TV correspondents and documentary producers) do not have an appreciation of how to form theories and why it is important to test them.
Hence, we get a lot of "fair and balanced" opinions about global warming, the fighting in Iraq, the "success" of the "surge", etc.
People are largely unaware good theories are those that successfully predict future outcomes and advance further research and scientific inquiry.
Hence, Darwin's evolution theory is still a "good" one. Perhaps one could say it's an intelligently designed theory ... but that could be confusing (though maybe amusing).
I wish more opponents of global warming (however well-intentioned or informed) would do a little risk analysis.
Even if global warming is not happening, and we take steps like using CLF bulbs and reducing carbon admissions, what benefit or harm is done? Seemingly, we'd have a cleaner and healthier environment.
On the other hand, if global warming is the threat Al Gore and others claim, and we do nothing, we can expect increasing problems for our children and grandchildren to deal with.
Of course, as our scientfically-minded if linguistically-challenged president might say, perhaps our "childrens" will be up to the task.
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