An Inconvenient Truth

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

Anyone seen this? We went tonight. It was much less politically oriented than I expected; I urge everyone to see it as it is an important film and Al Gore did a great job (I expected him to be stiff, he was far from it). The audience was so riveted that noone got up the whole time the credits were rolling (could have been that great Melissa Etheridge song...).

[falmouth3 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close falmouth3]

I haven't seen it yet. But I read an article that scientists who have seen it think it's very accurate.

[Faust Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Faust]

I haven't seen it yet, but I am planning to.
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

[vlariano Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close vlariano]

I saw it, was very good, scary to think what might happen. I became a believer when I went to Alaska and saw how the glaciers where melting faster each year.

[Carol C Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Carol C]

I saw it months ago on tv and yes it's very good. And yes global warming has been a reality for some time. Ah how I recall how I got trounced on TUG for posting in the Lounge about global warming, about 2-3 years ago. I wonder if skeptics are still singing their same tired tune?

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

Al Gore claims thre is a xcientific consensus about global warming, which is pure hogwash.

It leads to me one of two conclusions: either he's not nearly as qualified and informed as he claims to be, or he is engaging in deliberate misinformation (i.e., the typical lieing that propagandists of all stripes typically engage in when they believe their message is so important the truth and accuracy can be ignored).

Either way, it pretty much causes me to have little interest in getting miy information from Al Gore, as I'm more interested in being informed than propagandized.

[cluemeister Member Find all posts View Profile Close cluemeister]

I'm always amazed how people think the world is ending somewhere around their lifetimes. A billion years of life, yet this generation is going to doom the planet.

Please. If only we were this powerful.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

If Global warming is indeed a human created phenomenon, then trying to stop it would be about as difficult as stopping a hurricane from hitting a major metropolitan area. It ain't gonna happen.

I am not sure the evidence points to anything more than the normal patterns of fluxuation that the weather typically follows over the course of several millenia.

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

I am not sure the evidence points to anything more than the normal patterns of fluxuation that the weather typically follows over the course of several millenia.

Have you seen the film? Before I saw it I would have agreed with you.

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

It is a very well done movie with a message that people should listen to. I think that the scientific community is pretty solid on believing that global warming is real and is in fact a problem except for those that get paid to think otherwise. Anyone who thinks that we as a species have been good stewards of this planet should travel up to the Adirondacks in New York and see the number of beautiful mountain lakes and ponds that are now pretty much dead because of things like acid rain.
While several factors have contributed to global warming man's actions are very high on that list.

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Whatever the cause is, I don't know but the melting of the polar ice caps is making a difference to some coastal areas already. I read that some of the Maldive Islands are disappearing. I also read that the core of the earth is heating up our waters as there are volcanic eruptions under water that we didn't know about before. There are so many different theories out there that even the scientists don't know what is causing it.

This planet has been changing constantly over the billions of years but polluting less is still a good action to take by us humans but we all like to drive a car and many more people will be driving soon. It would help a lot if we get clean energy and the sooner the better.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Have you seen the film? Before I saw it I would have agreed with you.

No, I haven't seen the movie. In fact, I haven't even heard of it. I am concerned more about wasting a couple of hours watching a movie based on the propaganda of Al Gore.

Is there a book? If there is, I am willing to read it.

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

No, I haven't seen the movie. In fact, I haven't even heard of it. I am concerned more about wasting a couple of hours watching a movie based on the propaganda of Al Gore.

Is there a book? If there is, I am willing to read it.

Yes there is a book of the same title. Written by... Al Gore. There's also a good website that Faust sited above, www.climatecrisis.net. You can go right to the science there if you prefer.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Yes there is a book of the same title. Written by... Al Gore. There's also a good website that Faust sited above, www.climatecrisis.net. You can go right to the science there if you prefer.

I took a look at the science and there is nothing new there. I still don't know if excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is truly as bad as it's made out to be. I am not saying it isn't. I just don't know.

What are the new insights that Al Gore provides that supports his view that Global Warming is a "moral" issue?

Let's say that Global Warming is an issue we need to deal with in our lifetimes. What can we do about it? I don't see the World de-industrializing. Not too many world leaders would advocate a Mohandus Ghandi approach to life.

The most likely scenario is that nothing will be done until a crisis situation materializes and we have no choice but to do something.

It's just like the whole fossil fuel debate. We could have worked more on Synthetic fuels decades ago, but it's taking $3/gal gasoline before anything substantial is being done about it.

The same thing will be true for global warming. The good news is that we will probably run out of oil before it becomes that big of a problem. So, it will be self correcting like everything else.

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

I think that the scientific community is pretty solid on believing that global warming is real and is in fact a problem except for those that get paid to think otherwise. ..

That statement is a classic example of the propagandizing I referred to in my previous post.

It is simply not true that the scientific community is pretty solid on this, and it is emphatically not true that the ones who disagree about scientifc warming are paid to think otherwise.

In fact, the academic researchers who think otherwise are paying a severe financial price because their research is no longer favored for funding.

The agencies that do funding strongly favor projects that support their predisposed positions, and don't fund projects that might lead to contradictory results. They espeicially don't fund researchers who have been critical of previous research done by the agency.

If most of the research projects being funded all support a particular point of view, it's not surprising that the most of the results being published will also support that point of view.

********************

The scientific process has some pretty serioius biases. There are certain ideas that become favored, and others that become disfavored. Scientists who hold disfavored positions do so at considerable professional peril. Professional meetings are not places where scientific people sit in meeting rooms, calmly talking about and weighing points of view, with a warm sense of collegiality where everyone's viewpoint is treated with respect and consideration. Scientists can be as petty, jealous, envious, generous, considerate, and back-stabbing as any other group of people. And they are just as prone to group-think as almost any other class of people. (In fact, with scientists group think may be worse because they're so convinced that they are less susceptible to group think. So when it does happen, they're totally oblivious.)

Of course, I've also had the personal experience of seeing some highly capable, skilled and ethical professional acquaintances personally and professionally vilified and destroyed by other scientists because my acquaintances dared to express a technical conclusion that was not politically popular.

Don't think scientists are wonderful, dispassionate, objective people. Scientists are human beings and are just as capable of witch hunts, vilifications, and crucifixions as any other group of human beings. (And I write as a member of that community.)

And don't ever, ever, ever, for one minute believe that science, scientific researchers, and the scientific process is a dispassionate provider of objective information to public discourse.