This post replies to Brian Greenberg’s review of An Inconvenient Truth.
I think we can also agree that this is true: “It is difficult to make a man believe that a problem has been solved when his salary depends on him working to solve it.”
I’d be willing to bet a very large sum of money, at attractive odds, that there is not a single environmentalist working today who is afraid of being put out of work by an effective solution to global warming. The problem is simply too huge, and even given massive public investment in reversing the trends, there’s at least another decade or two of work to be done. (And of course, any activist who draws a salary from his cause will always be able to find new employment on a different problem later, should he be lucky enough to obsolesce himself.)
He needs to be dramatic as well, even to the point of twisting the facts to do it. This, I believe, is what ultimately sunk him in his 2000 election bid, and it’s presence here is palpable.
Ugh. No, I’m not going to debate 2000 with you (again). But there has been tons of media analysis that basically established that in 2000, nearly every instance of “Al Gore exaggerates” was actually attributable to what the media reported he said, and not what he said. Compared to the sweetheart coverage of GWB’s malapropisms, the effect was really quite stunning.
First, there are the truly inexplicable asides about the hardships he has endured in his life.
Agreed that I didn’t much care for this, but I suspect this was done for movie production values rather than to sell the argument.
I had to laugh at the various scenes of Al Gore “studying” global warming data on his laptop. A closer look at the machine clearly shows that he’s working in whatever the Mac’s equivalent of PowerPoint is, and he’s editing slides, not studying data. Setting aside the fact that he says he’s given this slide show over 1,000 times, so the slides are probably already set, I’d be willing to bet a large sum of money on the fact that Gore didn’t create any of these slides himself.
Ooooo, how much money? Because I’d win that bet. Gore uses Keynote (the Apple branded competitor to PowerPoint), and is fairly famous for authoring both his presentations and the words that appear in books under his name. It might not be 100%, but it’s not ghost-written either.
Furthermore, the slides are updated on a regular basis (there are reports of people seeing him working on it on the plane), and people who have seen him live in consecutive appearances report that whole sections can be dropped or amended, to suit the current state of research, the audience, and the length of the speech.
Everything else becomes a function of how many of us there are, and since no one is advocating for killing off 7 billion people, we almost have to look at ways to adapt to this new reality, rather than ways to stop/reverse it.
Not entirely true. For one thing, we’ve known about population growth for nearly 100 years, and there have been movements to slow it for that entire time (the most legitimate of which is Zero Population Growth). But it makes a huge difference now that large swaths of the developing world are industrializing. It’s not just a function of raw numbers. (And there are interesting philosophical debates going on about the implications of having a population of nine billion; twice as many mouths to feed, but also twice as many Einsteins, Borlaugs, and Gores to address it.)
Two examples caught my eye: Holland and the World Trade Center memorial site…. These are ironic because both sites are currently below sea level, and both have been protected by technology that was invented decades ago.
Yes, but both would be in pretty bad shape if changes in sea level started fluctuating rapidly, yes? One might also point out Venice, which despite centuries of engineering to fight back the sea, is still losing.
his criticism about our rejection of the Kyoto treaty, despite the fact that the economic impact on the US was so severe that the Senate rejected it by a vote of 99-0
You are seriously misrepresenting both the Treaty and the reasons for that Senate vote. Suffice to say that there are any number of people and websites who will explain to you their proposals for reaching Kyoto Protocol levels with a net economic gain for the United States.
Think of it this way: pollution is waste. Green re-engineering lowers waste. In what other area do otherwise intelligent analysts think that maintaining current levels of waste is cheaper and better?
The current strategy seems to be purely political – disparaging everyone who disagrees with anything Gore says, rather than discussing reasonable alternatives (or even, heaven forbid, market opportunities) for how to deal with the issue.
This is pretty much the diametric opposite of the message of the environmental groups that I’m familiar with. It is, however, repeated so frequently on Fox News and other media that I’m not surprised you believe this.
I’ve compared global warming to Y2K before, and I remain convinced they are similar.
That would be nice, but it’s not the case. A better example is nuclear waste products, and coming up with a storage system that will be safe for 100,000 years. Y2K required a large investment of time and money, but the “waste product” that it fixed was not cumulative. Global warming precursors, on the other hand, are very much cumulative and subject to tipping point behaviors.
According to Wikipedia, Y2K cost $300 billion. The numbers I’ve heard for reversing carbon load can go much higher; I recall one proposal for atmospheric scrubbers that would go for $1 trillion. (The design was such that individuals and businesses could buy their own; the system was many small-scale and cheap devices.) Likewise, just turning on the scrubber, or insert your solution here, requires a period of time (usually decades) before the reversal is evident.
My personal expectation is the opposite: the United States (and to a much lesser extent, the rest of the wealthy nations of the world) will continue to ignore this problem until it has reached crisis proportions at home, which will be after adverse effects hit billions of people in poorer nations. Americans have a tremendous capacity to not pay attention to such things, until it comes time to ship a billion dollars in tsunami relief. New Orleans was an opportunity for Americans to grasp that Mother Nature is still a very dangerous bitch—but thanks to the cheerleading for oil and coal from the Bush administration, and the near-complete abdication of responsibility by the Democrats, that window was shut.
Until food, water, and climate security hit us where we live, we’re not going to care, and billions will pay the price for that. Many already are. It will be interesting to see if the first, inevitable examples of political terrorism by ethnic groups threatened by genocide through lack of access to potable water will be seen as a military or political problem. I’m not hopeful on that score.
I’d be willing to bet a very large sum of money, at attractive odds, that there is not a single environmentalist working today who is afraid of being put out of work by an effective solution to global warming.
For those reading this that don’t know Jeff and I, suffice it to say that this argument will never be settled and it will never end. All I can do is point to this guy again, who had the nerve to say, “What can be done and what will it cost?” and to suggest that there may be better solutions than capping greenhouse gas emmissions. He was instantly lambasted by activists blathering about the Bush administration and the evil Republicans. Even Jeff, who’s salary is not dependent on global warming, suggested that his opinion is tantamount to “do[ing] nothing until the crisis is obvious.” You don’t have to be worried about losing your job to want to defend it, and global warming (like several other “big ticket” causes) have become some people’s full time job.
There has been tons of media analysis that basically established that in 2000, nearly every instance of “Al Gore exaggerates†was actually attributable to what the media reported he said, and not what he said
Uh, no. There’s plenty of analysis that his “inventing the internet” comments were spun up by the media.
But when he claimed he’d never forget the faces of a Texas brushfire when he never met the victims, he was exaggerating.
When he claimed that a 79-year old woman had to collect cans to pay for her prescription drugs when her husband is a wealthy owner of an 80-acre ranch, he was exaggerating.
When he claimed that she drove from Iowa to Boston in a Winnebago to be at the debate, when in fact his campaign paid for the Winnebago and all the gas, and five of his staffers accompanied her on the trip, he was exaggerating.
And when he claimed to have precious memories of his mother singing him to sleep with a song that was written when he was in his twenties, he was exaggerating.
The media screwed him over pretty badly, but they were “news cataloging” – seeking out more examples to a story that already had legs. And it had legs because Gore has a horrible habit of stretching the truth when he thinks the truth isn’t a strong enough message…
Think of it this way: pollution is waste. Green re-engineering lowers waste. In what other area do otherwise intelligent analysts think that maintaining current levels of waste is cheaper and better?
This is nonsense. Every systme produces waste. If the system that produces less waste costs more to run, then it’s less profitable. That’s not to say there aren’t examples of “green” programs that increase profitability, there certainly are. To lower worldwide polution, Kyoto would have severely penalized us for having such a huge lead in the auto industry, and would have damaged several large corporations, put thousands of Americans out of work, and caused a huge dip in the economy. So everyone voted against it. But you’re right, despite the unanimous opinion at the time, there are many who claim it would have been a wonderful thing. There are websites that “prove” that 9/11 was an inside job too…
It is, however, repeated so frequently on Fox News and other media that I’m not surprised you believe this.
Cheap shot, and unwarranted. I don’t watch Fox News (or any other cable news network, for that matter). As for your claim that people can speak out against Gore and not be disparaged, I refer you to the gentleman at the top of my comment again…
According to Wikipedia, Y2K cost $300 billion. The numbers I’ve heard for reversing carbon load can go much higher
I wasn’t comparing the costs of the two problems. I was comparing the will of the people to solve them. And what you call the “opposite” opinion, is actually exactly the same as mine. People will ignore the problem until it’s staring them in the face (remember, we knew Y2K was coming in the mid-1980’s), and then they’ll solve it. Only difference is, I’m pointing out that when they do, many will look back on Gore’s doomsday predictions and call him a fool (just as many now believe Y2K wasn’t that big a deal).
New Orleans was an opportunity for Americans to grasp that Mother Nature is still a very dangerous bitch—but thanks to the cheerleading for oil and coal from the Bush administration, and the near-complete abdication of responsibility by the Democrats, that window was shut.
Man, I don’t think I’ll ever understand this need to randomly throw Bush’s name into a conversation, even if it doesn’t make any sense.
New Orleans is one of the largest ports in the country. If Bush was “cheerleading for oil,” New Orleans would have been completely rebuilt inside a month. His “oil buddies” lost, and are continuing to lose millions every day because repairs in New Orleans are going so slowly.
The reason both parties are ignoring New Orleans has little to do with oil. First, it has to do with the fact that a large percentage of New Orleans residents left and aren’t coming back, so there’s no one around to fix a lot of what’s broken. Second, government programs that cost millions and take years aren’t sexy during a campaign season. And so we’re marching in the streets about illegal immigrants, but no one’s questioning why the levees aren’t finished yet, even as we approach the SECOND hurricane season since Katrina…
Oops…forgot this:
Gore uses Keynote (the Apple branded competitor to PowerPoint), and is fairly famous for authoring both his presentations and the words that appear in books under his name. It might not be 100%, but it’s not ghost-written either.
To be fair, I’m happy to concede this point. I had not heard that about Gore.
But I will point out that the movie’s shots of him editing the slides were very likely intended to give the impression that he was “perusing the data on his computer,” when in fact, he was never in any application other than Keynote.