An Inconvenient Truth

I really liked this movie even though it is rather depressing. Al Gore (introduced as the man who used to be the next president of the United States) is touring around the planet to present his slide show about global warming. This slide show has been put together as a film and is smart, engaging and obvious. If people liked the Da Vinci Code because it made them feel smart learning about all the history, then An Inconvenient Truth should really appeal. It also makes you feel smart, but kinda sad and it's at least true.

I particularly liked the part about the misinformation that's being spread about climate change. It is often stated that science is uncertain about climate change but a survey of the scientific literature (~900 articles) found not one article questioning that human impact has created global climate change. The misinformation comes from the lobbyists. Kind of like the 'smoking doesn't cause cancer' misinformation that was out there (and still is but the lawsuits are coming). Of course, works like State of Fear by Michael Crichton support this disinformation. It reminds me of a New of the Weird article:

"...according to an October Los Angeles Times report, the trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America contracted to pay two writers a "six-figure" fee to write a novel about a national panic resulting from a fear that drug lobbyists had actually been trying to spread in Congress, specifically, that terrorists might poison lower-priced drug imports from Canada. (The Times reported that the association recently killed the project and blamed the whole idea on an unsupervised lower-level executive.) [Los Angeles Times, 10-27-05]"

That's interesting, people with an agenda funding popular books that support their cause. Just wondering out loud.

So, as the CO2 spike goes through the roof it's obvious change needs to be done and Al Gore is critical of the lack of political will. Approximately 3 000 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. But in the summer of 2003, a heat wave killed ~30 000 people in Europe. One might almost say Al Gore is positioning himself, but will people vote on the mountain or the molehill?