A convenient lie

[Genghis]

After seeing the Al Gore movie, I remember thinking \"wow, he really overdid it.\" Unfortunately, it's a double-edged sword, or a Catch-22, or something.

Globabl warming is happening, and it's extremely likely that it's due to human activity. However, the public en masse doesn't do so well with science or terms like \"extremely likely,\" they only deal in certainties couched in rhetoric (\"Iraq has WMDs and we know where they are\"). So to get the message out, it's necessary to overhype it in the political arena and popular press, which in turn gives doubters something to attack. This is why you see the \"debate\" blazing in the political and popular press realms, and not so much in the scientific realm.

We see this asymmetric debate in this very thread: support for human-induced global warming coming from scientific sources and FUD against it coming in more anecdotal form (\"hey it's not hot here today!\"). Keen observers will note the parallel with the evolution/ID \"debate.\" In both cases, science and politics don't mix well, particularly under the current administration.

[Pandora]

Hehe. If i wanted to be an alarmist I would have posted this:

[Pandora]

Very well said, Ghengis!

[woodchip]

On looking at the alarmist map I'd say the enviro's ought to be going to Russia and demonstrating.

Curious tho, while all the concentrated red catches one's eye, you do see all the blue areas and areas of no apprecialble gain...enough to wonder what the combined average is.

[Lothar]

it's necessary to overhype it in the political arena and popular press

You echo Al Gore's words: \"I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is.\" Shadows of fake but accurate.

Of course, when Bush did the same thing with WMD's, a certain former vice president exclaimed \"He betrayed this country! He played on our fears!\"

Indeed. As James Taranto says, \"Gore lied! People cried!\"

[Duper]

Thank you Vulcan

this is a very interesting watch. Watch all 8 installments. It does the body good.

[TechPro]

Thank you Vulcan

this is a very interesting watch. Watch all 8 installments. It does the body good.

Very interesting indeed...

[dissent]

Pretty interesting, Duper.


I found Patrick Moore's comments in 5/8 to be stunning.


I wonder where I can get a dvd of the whole program. Would be interesting to compare to Gore's film.
(edit - oh... so what is Channel 4?

hmmm ... then, there's this ...
also see the other commentary in the Channel 4 forum)

[Duper]

That was a British show. So whatever channel 4 is on the BBC in whatever major city.

[dissent]

Unsurprisingly, RealClimate has some response to the Channel 4 program -
http://news.independent.co.uk/environme ... 355956.ece

In particular, Carl Wunsch is unhappy with the way the Swindle program portrayed his views; see his letter in comment 109 below the article. In fact, read as much of the commentary as you can, as it is quite interesting.

[woodchip]

I found this passage interesting:

\"The programme failed to point out that scientists had now explained the period of \"global cooling\" between 1940 and 1970. It was caused by industrial emissions of sulphate pollutants, which tend to reflect sunlight. Subsequent clean-air laws have cleared up some of this pollution, revealing the true scale of global warming - a point that the film failed to mention.\"

So it would seem the real culpret for global weather is the Clean Air Act. By what is stated above, all that is needed to slow the warming is to take out of mothballs all those old furnaces and start shoveling the cheap coal into them.

[Duper]

Then why hasn't there been a substantial decrease or slowing down of said warming from all the junk the increased active volcanoes have been pumping into the upper atmosphere over the last 20 years? (one just went off this last week in Ecuador.)