An Inconvenient Truth
I just saw Gore's new movie/campaign ad. The arguments and presentation favored rhetorical force over strict truth or defensibility, so if I were already inclined to trust Gore's judgment, I'd likely find the film powerful. As it was, I kept noticing selective presentation of data designed to imply a stronger case than was actually present. Plus the occasional big whopper.
Take the story that a frog in slowly-heated water won't jump out until it dies or is rescued. This is a great metaphor for Gore and he uses it well with cute computer graphics and a twist ending, but it's an urban legend. Gore doesn't say "there is a story that..." but presents it as a solid fact that frogs act this way, leaving the audience a little dumber than before - a little more certain of a false fact.
Take the claim that US gas mileage standards are pathetic by comparison to China's. Al Gore makes fun of our automakers for claiming they can't meet tougher standards if even China can do better. Left out is the fact that China's cars don't yet meet their own announced standards and that their cars really aren't of comparable quality to ours.
Take the claim - both direct and implied - that Katrina in particular is evidence of global warming and a portent of things to come.
At one point the film shows a chunk of ice falling off the outside edge of a glacier into the water while the voice-over says that people who come to see glaciers witness this. Strongly implied: crumbling isn't normal behavior for a glacier's edge that meets the water (and there aren't any places one might witness glaciers growing).
Gore is wearing a filter that only admits bad news. Warming is undoubtedly good for many species, including a few endangered animals, but he manages to dwell on the negative - "invasive species", mosquitoes, and diseases will do better too! When he brought up the example of baby birds that eat caterpillars but now the caterpillars are born earlier due to warming so the birds have less food, my thought was: "Hey, this must be GOOD for the caterpillars, right? And for some other predator that is getting the caterpillars that before would have been eaten by birds?" Why, exactly, am I supposed to sympathize with this bird more than the caterpillar or whatever else eats it?
The end of the movie directs viewers to the site "climatecrisis.net". There's a page on "The Science" here but it's pretty sketchy. Looks like we'll need to look at the book to see where Gore's numbers and charts come from.
Gore is a religious fanatic, and his religion is environmentalism. The scientific consensus is that man is having some influence on climate, but there's little consensus on how much, either now or in the future. The IPCC tends to produce patently ridiculous predictions (based on bad economics) and Gore is even more alarmist than they. So if you enjoy being alarmed, go see this movie. Taste, but don't necessarily swallow.
posted by Glen @ 5:10 AM
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Being an Australian I haven't yet seen this movie and know little about Gore.
If I may comment on your birds and worms item though. I suspect you miss the point here. It should not be a matter of soppy sentimentality. Ecosystems have developed over a long time and consequently the pieces fit. Climate change may disrupt an ecosystem so that the pieces no longer fit and this is not good for life in general, especially when the changes, although slow to us, are still too fast for mother nature.
As for your comment at RealClimate about green turtles: if anything this may suggest that this turtle had trouble fitting into its old ecological niche. Such events are therefore not cause for complacency.
You are absolutely right about China. China is an environmental disaster and it is not because of its laws. It is because of the lack of enforcement of the laws. China’s care emission laws may be better than the United States’, but that is basically irrelevant because there are a huge number of cars their whose emissions would probably not meet anyone’s standards.
I worked in southern China for a while in the late '90s so I had to stifle a laugh at the notion that Chinese emission standards - whether for cars or for factories - are something for the US to emulate.
The entire town of Guangdong smelled of diesel fumes from all the factory generators and half the vehicles on the road were modified tractors.
I agree with you China guys that it should be used as a cautionary tale as to what not to do with the environment rather than the other way around. But aren't you nitpicking here in the context of the whole movie.
BTW the boiling frog fable may seem apt to Gore in the global warming context. But are you seriously suggesting it is meant to be taken seriously? Surely it is Gore being "old school" and using this like Aesop did with his fables, ie animals used to reflect human behavior.
In reality, frogs jump out when they notice the warmth is starting to be a problem. If we're the frogs, the metaphor suggests we should do the same - wait until it's clearly a problem and then act. Gore is asking us to act sooner than that.
The real problem is that Gore's "side" in this fight reminds us too much of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Or perhaps Chicken Little. After so many past prophesies of doom, it's hard to wrap one's brain around the possibility that this one might actually be true. Takes some getting used to.
As for the turtles: if mom turtle wants to try laying eggs in Virginia, I'd be inclined to let them hatch there and count it as good news that it has a wider breeding range than before. Why is this a negative indicator? Who are we to say it's "inappropriate" for the baby turtles to be in Virginia? What makes the status quo sacrosanct? Why must all change be perceived as negative?
If it's possible for some "bad" animals to spread and "good" ones be harmed by warming trends, it must also be possible for "good" ones to spread and "bad" ones be harmed. We're just less likely to notice because good news doesn't sell newspapers.
Well Glen, the frog metaphor is really meant to convey that our minds are ill-equiped to assess certain forms of danger. When a problem is increasing in scope exponentially our intuitive assessment of the urgency tends to be in error (after all these problems are really a bit harder to get a handle on than deciding when to get out of the bath).
As for scares about the atmosphere: what about the nuclear fallout scare and the ozone scare? Didn't they prove to be true?
Perhaps you are suffering from scare fatigue. To me the most effective scare tactic is the one that says: "The economy will collapse now, right away, if we even listen to this global warming stuff." If you are fatigued why don't you shut that one out and take the easy path of following expert scientific advice. Have the politicians and economists really got such a good track record? I'll agree these people are often in a position of power and we should be cautious in ignoring what they say but isn't our duty as citizens to try to make up our own minds on issues without fear no matter who peddles it.
As for the turtles: maybe in 100 years or so they will be food for the polar bears who are missing their seals. We will then marvel at how adaptable nature is;)
Please show me a global warming advocate who says all glaciers are retreating. You need to move beyond a strawman argument.
Brian, how about this guy?
"It's almost universal that all glaciers are retreating," said Peter Clark, an Oregon State University professor who's an authority on glaciers. "The signs of retreat are dramatic and accelerating."
Anyway, the gist of my comment was that showing only glaciers in retreat creates an impression that that's the only direction of the trend. If all you knew about the movement of glaciers was what you saw in this movie, you'd have the sense that they were all retreating. Dramatically.
This post was about my initial reaction to the movie, not about the larger debate. So I'm comfortable with that.
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