An Inconvenient Pandering to Public Ignorance
-Editor's note: First of all, let me apologize for the title of this post. It's just to easy to make these sort of puns, and just too hard to resist, even though it is way overplayed.-While I was disgusted when I heard that Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his activist works to "combat" global warming, I will say that it has caused a reaction that is very encouraging.
Without arguing whether Gore's work should have merited the Peace Prize (assuming it was all correct and true), it is and has been very clear that his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" is littered with inaccuracies and errors throughout, as well as strong political messages. On Oct. 10, a judge in Britain refused to ban the movie from schools, but ruled that a sheet must be distributed before every screening explaining the inaccuracies and that it is a "political work and promotes only one side of the argument." Now, some scientists are being more vocal in their dissent and warning that Gore is just being alarmist.
There have been arguments against a man-caused global warming since the idea first began being put forth in a mainstream manner, but because of the amount of sensationalism many scientists will not speak out about the flaws in this theory for fears of not getting grants. Hopefully this will galvanize a greater response to the issue from other dissenting scientists.
On a side note, I find it laughable that Gore is the champion of the fight against global warming. I'm sure you all remember earlier this year when Gore's electricity bill leaked onto the net. Apparently he believes that it's OK to use as much greenhouse gases as you want, as long as you balance it out with money and activism. Now, in order to help Gore put his actions where his mouth is (quite literally), instead of just money, PETA has challenged him to go vegetarian. Raise your hand if you think this is just one more thing Gore will not do. I bet that instead (if he even pays any attention to this at all), he'll sponsor a lab trying to grow synthetic meat or something.
Labels: Current Events
posted by Jeremy @ 2:01 PM
3 Comments:
The whole global warming thing is very intriguing to me. Lay people like us probably can't make very educated judgments on whether it is occuring or not, so we have to pick our scientists to trust. Unfortunately for the people in the denial camp, there aren't very many scientists on your side. Most of the campers over there work directly or indirectly for big business.
But the intriguing thing is that this is a conflict of factual assertions, not of opinions (has this ever happened on this scale before?). So the minority who deny anthropogenic global warming can claim a vast liberal conspiracy of brainwashing or something. And the great thing about conspiracies is that you can never disprove them...
I like your blog, though.
Heh heh, yes, it does make for some fun discussions. While I may or may not be inclined to deny that global warming exists, I do take a strong stance that humans are not anywhere near as responsible for it as the proponents of anthropogenic global warming would have us believe. But you are right: there's not a great way to get solid information on the issue when you have respected scientists arguing both sides.
I am inclined to agree with you to a large extent. I have a hard time believing that the entire trend that we are seeing right now is a result of the industrial revolution and carbon emissions in the developed world. But I also know that those things contribute to the phenomenon. So the blame game becomes irrelevant. It doesn't matter if humans are 100% to blame for the trend of global warming or if they are just contributing to it. It is happening and it will certainly be a very bad thing if it continues, so we should do whatever we reasonably can to combat it.
That's my semi-educated view, anyway.
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