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An Inconvenient Truth


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Posted

AnInconvenientTruth.jpg

 

LL showed me the trailer on this one, looks like another semi-politically charged documentary, focusing on the neglect of envrionmental preservation in recent times & possibly irreperable damage being done as a result - looked interesting, i imagine its in select theatres for the time. Anyone else know/seen anything on it?

Posted

My first 2 comments are from the hurricane detective, and johnny environmentfucker, fan of Mako energy. Stellar.

I know its possibly an exaggerated eco-scare tactic, but till i see it, i cant say for sure - not even curious about it? cmon, you conservatives saw the moore ones, im curious if anyone else is interested in catching this one.

Posted

Yeah I've gotta say this looks like another propaganda film to me, a Reefer Madness for a new generation, but I wont make judgement till I've seen it.

Posted

I saw it last night. Basically, Al Gore started giving presentations on Global Warming back in the early eighties all the way through his Vice Presidency. After his acceptance of his loss in 2000, he decided to go back to giving the presentaton and trying to raise awareness of the imperitive to take action on the issue. He was approached by film productors saying they wanted to make it into a documentary. He said he didn't believe it would work as a feature length documentary, but they insisted it could. So he agree so long as all profits go to some awareness fondation.

 

Al Gore makes his point again and gain, he doesn't see this as a political issue, but a moral and ethical issue.

 

Half the film is very fact based. For example, one segment shows a team in Antartica, using this huge drill to take out a long cyclinder of ice out of the ground about 3 inches in diameter. He explained that because of the percipitation and freezing of the ice, the ice is in layers downward, and like tree rings, you can go back in time. The falling snow and rain actually trap tiny air bubbles when they freeze, and if you slice the ice in certain places, you can get air samples from as far back as 65,000 years ago. This can give you not just CO2 leaves back in time, but oxygen isotope concentration levels, which can actually tell you the average temperature of that year. If you plot both those things (CO2 and temperature) back 65,000 years, the coorilation is irrefutable. That's one example of the fact based part that I found most interesting.

 

The other half is more on the emotional side. He talked about how his family owned a tobacco farm, and as a kid every summer he would work and play on the farm. When the Surgeon General released the first report on smoking, his family continued producing tobacco. He threw an Upton Sinclair quote on the screen. Something to the effect of "A man's ability to understand something is greatly impaired when his salary is dependent on his not understanding it." He then said his only sister, who started smoking when she was 16, died of lung cancer. He family shut down the production of tobacco at that point. He talked about how this is what it took for his father to understand what he was doing, and that that was human nature.

 

The film is mostly fact based (lots of graphs, as exciting as that sounds), but the non-fact based stuff is never offensive or attacking anyone. Very reasonable, very even-tempered, and makes an effort to take on every barrier people have to understanding the severity of the issue.

 

I enjoyed the film, and I think most of you would too.

 

PS Remember, by watching this film, your are helping the terrorists win, so make sure to give a shout out to Al Queda during the credits.

Posted

I haven't seen the movie and I doubt I will, but I'm surprised to see Baytor suspecting that this film is propaganda. Granted it seems fishy that it's being narrated by a politician, perhaps because so many politicians are afraid to attach them selves to a cause like this (as opposed to paying it lip service)

 

But this is one of the greatest threats to life on earth, second only to the light speed death wave that's going to appear out of fucking nowhere any day now.

 

So Jax, does Gore address the actions/ lack of action of the US government, including but not limited to the Democrat Administrations?

Posted
My first 2 comments are from the hurricane detective, and johnny environmentfucker, fan of Mako energy. Stellar.

I know its possibly an exaggerated eco-scare tactic, but till i see it, i cant say for sure - not even curious about it? cmon, you conservatives saw the moore ones, im curious if anyone else is interested in catching this one.

 

More a fan of Bjorn Lumborg and a skeptical environmentalist, but whatever. I think some of us were more willing to see Moore, mainly because a) politics was more on everyone's mind because of the elections and b) Moore may be an ass, but he's a somewhat entertaining ass. c)The trainwreck factor.

 

Gore is neither entertaining, nor interesting, and I don't think this is enough of a trainwreck to make me want to see it.

Posted
So Jax, does Gore address the actions/ lack of action of the US government, including but not limited to the Democrat Administrations?

Yes, he does. He said in the movie "There are many good people on both sides of the spectrum, that hold this issue at an arms length, because to allow it in creates a moral imperitive to act." The movie is very level headed, fact-based, and s not villifying of anyone. Not George Bush, not the Republican party, not 'America', not big industry, not even big oil.

 

There are many that don't know about Al Gore's environmental record because, well, he spoke about it all his life except during one point, his 2000 campaign. He was the first one to organize and hold hearings in congress on the increasing C02 levels.

 

Bishop, your reasoning, unshakable as it made be, is based on not having seen the movie. I think the movie is interesting to anyone who finds things like the news interesting. If you find CNN (or Fox if your a conservative) boring, if you hate going to all your college classes casue you'd rather just be partying every night, if you think politics and science and history and philosophy and academics of all sorts are lame and dull, you won't find this film interesting at all. If that doesn't really describe you, I think the film managers to stay interesting during its full run. Al Gore gets it easy to understand, doesn't get long winded, isn't boring, and has interesting and funny, if not amusing acedotes.

 

At the end of the movie, he reminds us that not long ago, CFCs were creating a threat to the stratsphere, creating a hole in the o-zone, and because of global efforts, sphereheaded by the US, CFC emissions are practically nonexistant. The US played a leading role in fixing that problem. They can play a leading role here too.

Posted

i'm going to see this soon. i'm of the school of thought where it's better to be safe than sorry. who cares who or what's fucking right or wrong. i really really don't understand people who think that doing nothing is better than doing something.

 

p.s.

 

....is that hurricane spinning the wrong way, or is it just me?

 

it's just you. low pressure systems rotate clockwise in the southern hemisphere and high pressure systems rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere. it could be either.

Posted

Gore always talked about how, though the American media didn't talk about it, the Pacific was hit with a record 10 typhoons last year, so both hurricanes and typhoons get their mention in the movie. Are you going to be checking this movie out, arch? I know your one for checking things out, watching Moore films and listening to Air America now and again.

Posted

Well, whether or not you walk away from the film convinced of the message Al Gore is trying to convince you of, I think you'll find it very classy and non-partisan. There is no anger or aggressive towards anybody or organization really. During a time when people on the senate floor are accusing others off being hypothetical Nazi-defeatists, this movie is a breath of fresh civility.

Posted

That will be refreshing.

 

My only problem with what Gore says (from what I read, so It could be misquoting him) is that 'the debate is over' and 'science is conclusive on Global Warming'. That's not true.

 

While Scientists do agree Global Warming is a problem, they disagree on the CAUSES of Global Warming. I'd like to see for myself what he attributes to the causes of Global Warming.

Posted

Well, he cites a study ( believe by Scientific American, or Popular Science or one of those magazines or something) that showed of 986 peer-reviewed journal studies on the subject of global warming, not 1 disagreed with the proposition that it was being cause by man, and that same study showed that articles in the MSM (mainstream media for those that are not Joel or myself) over the same period (it was like 15 years I think), 53% said that there was uncertainity in the scientific community.

 

He also takes on the common belief that it's all part of natural fluxuations in the Earth's cycles. It's pretty compelling evidence, again, just using numbers and showing precisely where those numbers are obtained, but I really rather let you see the film yourself and then discuss it.

Posted

I also remember reading a few months ago about how a lot of inconsistancies in temperature readings over the years were suddenly solved overnight... when they realized that the weather satalites needed calabrating, then everything fell right into plcace with the rest of the map. When I read that I thought it was so funny it was priceless. I'll google that to see if I can find the article.

 

Here we go, the article litters the internet like cigarette butts on a city street, but most were dead links.

Global Temperature Differences Resolved

Posted

Well, the data Al Gore was discussing in the movie didn't come from satelites, it came from oxygen isotope levels in air pockets trapped in tiny bubbles in ice sheets in Antarticia. It's kind of like combinding teh concept of determining a tree's age by it's rings and carbon dating, but for the temperature of the Earth each year going back centuries.

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