Would you make any of your assertions if the politics of the opposing sides were reversed. You seem very angry at the messenger, more so than the message. It diminishes your argument.Remember, most of the manmade chemical emmissions occurred while our government was controlled by the Democrats. But, of course, W is responsible for Katrina, the tornadoes, and all of the other environmental/climate problems occurring in the world today. I got that info from NPR.
An Inconvenient Truth
- Thread starter John R
- Start date
-
Trouble logging in? Send us a message with your username and/or email address for help.
I watched An Inconvenient Truth last night. Wow, what an epiphany! Al, my man, explained everything with such clarity. I am a true believer now.
NOT!
What a joke. The movie should have been called the Al Gore story. There was almost as much time spent in the movie talking about Al Gores life as there was time spent discussing global warming. I stopped counting the use of the word ?I? when he hit 100. His whining about the 2000 election was pitiful?poor, poor Al. It was a partisan hack film with not so thinly veiled references to W and his administration. Al and Bill C were in office for 8 years, why didn?t they do anything to stop the global warming. I also noticed Al driving a big old GM SUV a few minutes before he began talking about how we need to sacrifice in the US and start driving more fuel efficient vehicles and noticed him flying in private jets in several sequences. Hypocrit. I thought the movie was supposed to be a slam dunk analysis of the scientific facts behind mans 100% impact on global warming. Wrong. Old Al was more intent on talking about Al.
Enough of the Al show. Now lets look at his facts.
He stated that the most vulnerable part of our environment is the atmosphere. Wrong?it?s our fresh water supply.
He talked a lot about the naysayers and skeptics and how they are wrong. However, he never ever addresses what it is the skeptics say. Nor does he try to refute any of the evidence provided by the skeptics.
He focused only on CO2 emissions and their impact on global warming and cooling. He failed to even once discuss the even bigger impact that activity on the sun plays on global warming and cooling.
When discussing glaciers disappearing in the Alps, he fails to note that during other periods of warming, the glaciers pretty much also disappeared in the Alps. He makes it sound like there have always been glaciers.
His big old graph in the early stages of the movie that compared CO2 emissions and temperature changes was interesting but he failed to point out some key facts. In between the 3 most recent ice ages, temperatures were even warmer than they are today when we have a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere. Huh?he CONVENIENTLY left that fact out.
His graph also depicted that temps are actually flattening out in the most recent period of time even though CO2 is increasing. He CONVENIENTLY left that fact out.
He used the term EVER over and over again when saying things like ?these were the highest temps EVER recorded? and ?the most rain EVER recorded?. Well the EVER he is referring to is since the time records have been kept which in some of the countries he is referring to has only been 50 years or less and only about 100 years in the US. He CONVENIENTLY forgot to mention that this EVER represents only 50/4,000,000,000 of the history of the earth.
His focus on Katrina as being so devastating made it sound as if it was the most powerful hurricane ever. Wrong again. Not even close. This hurricane just happened to hit the most vulnerable city in the US. If the 1935 hurricane or Camille or Hugo or others (these hurricanes happened long ago) had hit NOL, the results would have been much worse than Katrina. Just more misinformation.
No, the documentary, I mean the Al Gore biography did not sway me in the least bit.
HE?S PLAYING ON OUR FEARS! Wait, I?ve heard that quote before. Where was that?oh yeah, that?s an Al Gore quote about W. Well, Al baby is doing the same thing.
What a bunch of trash.
All of that said. I do believe we are harming our environment in many, many ways. I do what I can and will continue to try to do more. My next car will be a hybrid and my next house will be green. I recycle. I have low flush toilets. I eat as much organic food as possible. We do need to work on cutting down on pollution and noxious emissions and chemicals and pesticides and lots of other things. BUT, that film was trash.
NOT!
What a joke. The movie should have been called the Al Gore story. There was almost as much time spent in the movie talking about Al Gores life as there was time spent discussing global warming. I stopped counting the use of the word ?I? when he hit 100. His whining about the 2000 election was pitiful?poor, poor Al. It was a partisan hack film with not so thinly veiled references to W and his administration. Al and Bill C were in office for 8 years, why didn?t they do anything to stop the global warming. I also noticed Al driving a big old GM SUV a few minutes before he began talking about how we need to sacrifice in the US and start driving more fuel efficient vehicles and noticed him flying in private jets in several sequences. Hypocrit. I thought the movie was supposed to be a slam dunk analysis of the scientific facts behind mans 100% impact on global warming. Wrong. Old Al was more intent on talking about Al.
Enough of the Al show. Now lets look at his facts.
He stated that the most vulnerable part of our environment is the atmosphere. Wrong?it?s our fresh water supply.
He talked a lot about the naysayers and skeptics and how they are wrong. However, he never ever addresses what it is the skeptics say. Nor does he try to refute any of the evidence provided by the skeptics.
He focused only on CO2 emissions and their impact on global warming and cooling. He failed to even once discuss the even bigger impact that activity on the sun plays on global warming and cooling.
When discussing glaciers disappearing in the Alps, he fails to note that during other periods of warming, the glaciers pretty much also disappeared in the Alps. He makes it sound like there have always been glaciers.
His big old graph in the early stages of the movie that compared CO2 emissions and temperature changes was interesting but he failed to point out some key facts. In between the 3 most recent ice ages, temperatures were even warmer than they are today when we have a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere. Huh?he CONVENIENTLY left that fact out.
His graph also depicted that temps are actually flattening out in the most recent period of time even though CO2 is increasing. He CONVENIENTLY left that fact out.
He used the term EVER over and over again when saying things like ?these were the highest temps EVER recorded? and ?the most rain EVER recorded?. Well the EVER he is referring to is since the time records have been kept which in some of the countries he is referring to has only been 50 years or less and only about 100 years in the US. He CONVENIENTLY forgot to mention that this EVER represents only 50/4,000,000,000 of the history of the earth.
His focus on Katrina as being so devastating made it sound as if it was the most powerful hurricane ever. Wrong again. Not even close. This hurricane just happened to hit the most vulnerable city in the US. If the 1935 hurricane or Camille or Hugo or others (these hurricanes happened long ago) had hit NOL, the results would have been much worse than Katrina. Just more misinformation.
No, the documentary, I mean the Al Gore biography did not sway me in the least bit.
HE?S PLAYING ON OUR FEARS! Wait, I?ve heard that quote before. Where was that?oh yeah, that?s an Al Gore quote about W. Well, Al baby is doing the same thing.
What a bunch of trash.
All of that said. I do believe we are harming our environment in many, many ways. I do what I can and will continue to try to do more. My next car will be a hybrid and my next house will be green. I recycle. I have low flush toilets. I eat as much organic food as possible. We do need to work on cutting down on pollution and noxious emissions and chemicals and pesticides and lots of other things. BUT, that film was trash.
go to this site for a short list of the many prominent scientists that deny man has a significant impact on global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus
Excerpt from a good article on the global warming debate with facts to back it up. The full article can be found at
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34939.html
To show how hard answering that question can be, let's take a little closer look at the two reports mentioned above. The Arctic Council report is based on the observations and deliberations of 300 scientists from eight countries and six groups of indigenous people over the past four years. They find that the Arctic region is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. They further find that the sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is thinning, and could almost disappear in the summer months by 2100.
But University of Alabama at Huntsville climatologist John Christy, a climate expert on whom I have relied for years, makes some interesting observations about the Arctic Council's report. "If you look at the long term records, the Arctic has been as warm or warmer than it is today," says Christy. He cites temperature data from the Hadley Centre in the UK showing that from 70 degrees north latitude to the pole, the warmest years on record in the Arctic were 1937 and 1938. This area is just slightly above the Arctic Circle.
Furthermore, those same records show that the Arctic warmed twice as fast between 1917 and 1937 as it has in the past 20 years. After 1940, the Arctic saw a big cool-down and climatologists noted sea ice expanding in the northern Atlantic. Christy argues that what he calls the Great Climate Shift occurred in the late 1970s and caused another sudden warming in the Arctic. Since the late 1970s there has not been much additional warming in the region at all. In fact, on page 23, the Arctic Council Assessment offers very similar data for Arctic temperature trends from 60 degrees north latitude?the area that includes most of Alaska and essentially all of Greenland, most of Norway and Sweden, and the bulk of Russia.
Interestingly, the recent increase in temperatures in Alaska and Siberia seem to have coincided almost simultaneously with a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in the late 1970s. Could this be part of Christy's Great Climate Shift? Swings in the PDO occur on 30 to 40 year time frames, and the most recent one brought warmer currents flowing north to the coast of Alaska. The Assessment does note that "several important natural modes of variability that especially affect the Arctic have been identified, including the Arctic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Each of these can affect the regional patterns of such features as the intensity and tracks of storm systems, the direction of prevailing winds, the amount of snow, and the extent of sea ice."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34939.html
To show how hard answering that question can be, let's take a little closer look at the two reports mentioned above. The Arctic Council report is based on the observations and deliberations of 300 scientists from eight countries and six groups of indigenous people over the past four years. They find that the Arctic region is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. They further find that the sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is thinning, and could almost disappear in the summer months by 2100.
But University of Alabama at Huntsville climatologist John Christy, a climate expert on whom I have relied for years, makes some interesting observations about the Arctic Council's report. "If you look at the long term records, the Arctic has been as warm or warmer than it is today," says Christy. He cites temperature data from the Hadley Centre in the UK showing that from 70 degrees north latitude to the pole, the warmest years on record in the Arctic were 1937 and 1938. This area is just slightly above the Arctic Circle.
Furthermore, those same records show that the Arctic warmed twice as fast between 1917 and 1937 as it has in the past 20 years. After 1940, the Arctic saw a big cool-down and climatologists noted sea ice expanding in the northern Atlantic. Christy argues that what he calls the Great Climate Shift occurred in the late 1970s and caused another sudden warming in the Arctic. Since the late 1970s there has not been much additional warming in the region at all. In fact, on page 23, the Arctic Council Assessment offers very similar data for Arctic temperature trends from 60 degrees north latitude?the area that includes most of Alaska and essentially all of Greenland, most of Norway and Sweden, and the bulk of Russia.
Interestingly, the recent increase in temperatures in Alaska and Siberia seem to have coincided almost simultaneously with a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in the late 1970s. Could this be part of Christy's Great Climate Shift? Swings in the PDO occur on 30 to 40 year time frames, and the most recent one brought warmer currents flowing north to the coast of Alaska. The Assessment does note that "several important natural modes of variability that especially affect the Arctic have been identified, including the Arctic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Each of these can affect the regional patterns of such features as the intensity and tracks of storm systems, the direction of prevailing winds, the amount of snow, and the extent of sea ice."
:roll: 
excellent point and very well said.
We should always check with Al before going to the movies or trading our investments. Lately he looks like a heavy hitter, almost bloated really.Yep, the Valero stock is sitting pretty right between Occidental Chemical and ExxonMobil in Al Gore's portfolio.
I just saw the film for the first time last evening, and have spent a few hours today doing a bit of research online to try and get a more balanced take. This is one of those areas that is easy to ignore until you start to understand something about it ... then its just irresponsible to ignore.
I guess the way I feel about it is that humans are probably contributing to global warming, but it is also highly probable that its just that warming time in the global cycle again. It doesn't really matter at this point what caused it, as it does indeed appear to be our destiny to deal with it.
The near-term thing that freaked me out the most is the possibility of 20 to 40 foot rise in sea level. Can anyone point me in a good direction where I can get balanced data and numerical facts on this? Gore's chart showed a run-up in temperatures over the past couple of decades (along with photos of all those melting glaciers)... is there any evidence that the sea level has appreciably raised during that period?
Our human ancestors were very adaptable. Modern man isn't so much, but I suspect that we haven't lost those genes entirely and if we (or our decendants) are put in the position of dealing with a world post-warming, the fittest among us will become adaptable again.
I guess the way I feel about it is that humans are probably contributing to global warming, but it is also highly probable that its just that warming time in the global cycle again. It doesn't really matter at this point what caused it, as it does indeed appear to be our destiny to deal with it.
The near-term thing that freaked me out the most is the possibility of 20 to 40 foot rise in sea level. Can anyone point me in a good direction where I can get balanced data and numerical facts on this? Gore's chart showed a run-up in temperatures over the past couple of decades (along with photos of all those melting glaciers)... is there any evidence that the sea level has appreciably raised during that period?
Our human ancestors were very adaptable. Modern man isn't so much, but I suspect that we haven't lost those genes entirely and if we (or our decendants) are put in the position of dealing with a world post-warming, the fittest among us will become adaptable again.