![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
An Inconvenient Truth - DVD Special Features
I received a copy of An Inconvenient Truth on DVD for Christmas from Vinny's Mom, and I'm just getting around to looking at the special features today. There's some really interesting stuff.
The DVD was assembled a full year after the movie was completed, and there's a mini-movie with Al Gore going through the dozens of studies and new pieces evidence that have appeared in late 2005 and early 2006. He references things shown in the movie, and gives more details or provides specific examples of even higher temperatures in the past year.
There are eight sections or so, on things like hurricanes, ocean acidification, soil moisture, the permafrost, and others. It includes extended scenes from his slide show too, which just makes me want to see his full slide show more.
It also makes me want to study climate science. I get very frustrated to see thousands upon thousands of highly-knowledgeable, skilled, experts talking about things they understand, and to then see climate professional change deniers, funded by companies that think they can't adapt, get all the press. What's especially frustrating to me is not knowing all the details about every single topic, so I can't respond effectively to those sorts of debates.
Just need to get Vinny done with school, then it's my turn again.
The DVD was assembled a full year after the movie was completed, and there's a mini-movie with Al Gore going through the dozens of studies and new pieces evidence that have appeared in late 2005 and early 2006. He references things shown in the movie, and gives more details or provides specific examples of even higher temperatures in the past year.
There are eight sections or so, on things like hurricanes, ocean acidification, soil moisture, the permafrost, and others. It includes extended scenes from his slide show too, which just makes me want to see his full slide show more.
It also makes me want to study climate science. I get very frustrated to see thousands upon thousands of highly-knowledgeable, skilled, experts talking about things they understand, and to then see climate professional change deniers, funded by companies that think they can't adapt, get all the press. What's especially frustrating to me is not knowing all the details about every single topic, so I can't respond effectively to those sorts of debates.
Just need to get Vinny done with school, then it's my turn again.
no subject
Money rules, unfortunately. Once the public realizes the problems of the environment, they'll push money towards environmentally friendly products. Then Big Business will fall in line.
no subject
BTW, I like the idea of two spouses working back and forth giving the other a chance to educate him/herself better.
no subject
But you're right, all we can do is learn, rather than assuming we already know everything.
no subject
Examples:
1. Gore talks about the mountain pine beetle infestation attacking Spruce trees in Alaska. The pine beetle infestation is attacking BC as well, and it's well known that pine beetles ONLY attack pine trees. It's important to note that I watched this DVD while in Quesnel, surrounded by three of my uncles, all of whom have degrees in agriculture, botany, entomology and forestry - one of whom has his PhD.
2. Gore discusses the use of glaciers for drinking water in Asia. While glacial "retreation" is a problem - isn't it to be expected that if you're drinking the water from a glacier that eventually it will disappear. It's not as if there are little engines inside of a glacier producing more ice, as an ice machine would.
3. The weather data from anything past 50 years ago is speculative - weather records weren't considered accurate until about 1950, so there's no way a correlation can be made that's 100% conclusive to one such event occuring.
I also didn't like how he'd go into personal asides, such as his son getting hit by a car. It seemed irrelevant to the movie and the message - and seemed more like a sob story meant to make us sympathize with him. I'm a big Gore fan - but this movie actually disappointed me more than anything - the lack of factual evidence that was presented.
no subject
So he didn't actually say that pine beetles were attacking spruce trees, but easy to accidentally mix those two up when watching the movie.
2. Nature has been drinking water from glaciers since they first formed. Glaciers create rivers, and provide a huge percentage of all drinking water on the planet. There is a little engine creating more ice: the water cycle. Glaciers are always changing in size, shrinking and growing (and even moving). Learn more here.
3. Weather and Climate are two different fields. Climate is the study of weather patterns averaged out over 30+ years. It involves measuring amounts of oxygen in ice for example, and checking plant records to show different plants in different parts of the world. You're right that talking about the weather in the year 600,000 BCE is almost impossible, but talking about the climate is not. We have significant pieces of evidence of what the global average climate looked like at that time.
no subject
no subject
no subject
I don't really endorse the site in any way, because it looks pretty conservative to me, but it's at least good to consider all points of view - and my uncle sent that out for consideration. It came in a PDF format originally, but I guess it was posted there first. So yeah....
no subject
Good to consider all points of view? Sure. Especially when they have scientific basis. When they're spreading junk science and lies? Maybe less so. :)
no subject
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
It points out some interesting facts.
no subject
First off, CanadaFreePress is an incredibly biased and right-wing publication. They think Stephen Harper is not conservative enough. But that's not reason enough to discount it entirely.
Secondly, CanadaFreePress is an opinion site, not a science site. It is also not a peer-reviewed journal, so the people deciding what gets published and what doesn't are not scientists. But that's not reason enough to discount it entirely either.
Let's look at the article itself. There's plenty there.
1. Professor Bob Carter is a member of a professional global-warming-denying organization founded by an Australian Mining company, and he has personally received funding from ExxonMobil (source: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/corporate/giving_report.pdf). Obviously everybody has to pay for their food and shelter, but it's interesting that so many who fight climate change science just happen to be funded by oil and mining companies? (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy)
2. Next, the article claims that there are "hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change." Wikipedia lists precisely ten climate scientists, by name, who oppose the consensus on global warming. By contrast, Wikipedia lists seventeen major scientific organizations, representing probably thousands of scientists, who support the consensus on global warming.
3. His point about scientists who study one specific area not necessarily having the expertise to speak on global climate change matters is valid. Amusingly, the very first scientist he quoted does not study global climate change, and is trained in marine geology. He talks about climate change, but his expertise is not there. This is a common theme.
4. Dr Tim Ball, who is quoted next, does actually study climate. Interestingly, his original degrees were in Arts, and only his PhD was in science, but I don't know his background enough to really judge that. I found an interview with him (http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=864) where he uses several known-to-be-false arguments against the global warming consensus.
5. Ball claims that "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," but in fact the models have been proven quite accurate (http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/19/51921/827). James Hansen for example, who presented a famous set of three predictions to the US Senate in 1988, has been proven very accurate: http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/04/hansen-has-been-wrong-before.html.
6. Next, the article claims "Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear." In fact, we hear the debate more often than not. Over half of media reports on climate include some quotes from global warming deniers. At the same time, 0% of peer-reviewed published scientific journal articles show the debate. The exact problem is that we do hear the debate even though among scientific organizations the debate is mostly over.
no subject
8. It's the sunspots, he says. Nope. http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/04/its-sun-stupid.html
9. The next section features Dr Boris Winterhalter. I don't know his background, but I note that the article doesn't actually address what Gore talked about in his presentation and in the movie: melting pools and water drilling down underneath glaciers. Instead it complains about the video of ice crashing into the water.
10. Next, they talk about Antarctic ice breaking off and floating away. "...just like it has done back in time." The changes are not "just like they have done" unless the individuals are talking about hundreds of thousands of years, which is not stated. Additionally, they bring up the false argument of "Antarctica is growing, so it's all ok". First, the data shows tiny growth, and there's very little data. There's more data showing shrinkage. Second, it's OK for Antarctica to grow and for the planet as a whole to warm -- just like it can be cold in Burnaby and warm in Miami on the same day. (http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/4/211834/644) In fact, Greenland is growing internally but shedding ice externally, losing about 200 cubic km each year.
11. Next, another region-based statement. Part of the Arctic has shown "fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise". Again, taking the climate record of one small area and saying it obviously contradicts decades of science and hundreds of thousands of years of evidence around the globe is not valid science.
12. A cute argument about the map projection Gore uses. Mercator is very inaccurate in the way it shows the continents, this is true and undisputed. But Dr Morgan claims that if only they had used a more fair map, the warming and cooling areas displayed on the map would have been closer together in size.
This article also made it onto Slashdot back in June. It got lots of debate, and you'll find a bunch more interesting responses there (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/14/209235&threshold=3) from both sides of the debate.