An Inconvenient Truth: A Movie Review

[rollerboy]

It's also possible that he couldn't garner support because no one wanted to take a stand on a controversial issue that would potentially lead to a loss in their base of power, political or otherwise. 'Cause that never happens in politics.

All the hand wringing and useless finger pointing in the world can't change the outcome. The use by the Left of this issue for self-gain has forestalled effective action by decades.

CO2 emissions from oil and gas will cease, because we're rapidly exhausting the supply. We'll be sucking every last drop of it through a straw in sixty years.

 

[chilli]

"The Senate was controlled by the Dems for most of the first term. If he could not convince his own party members, then just maybe he (Gore) is full of shit."

Obviously you don't understand politics and how things really are.

Stick to pooning.

 

[lovinithard]

Contradict yourself much?

English a new language for you? No unanimity = almost universal is not a contradiction.

 

[sdw]

All the hand wringing and useless finger pointing in the world can't change the outcome. The use by the Left of this issue for self-gain has forestalled effective action by decades.

CO2 emissions from oil and gas will cease, because we're rapidly exhausting the supply. We'll be sucking every last drop of it through a straw in sixty years.

It'll be a lot sooner than that.

Yes, there are known reserves that when added together at our current rate of use give us 60 years of oil.

No, these reserves will not all be available to us.

There are a number of places that these reserves are allocated or will probably go.

1. The Chinese. Look for the Chinese to continue to use as much OPEC oil as they can get while preserving their own for military use. The Chinese were not historically a large consumer of oil, they are now and they can add to. Look also for a Chinese military action to ensure supply from Siberia and the 'stans that were part of the old USSR.

2. The USA. The US has dedicated military reserves. The current President has stupidly made some of those reserves available to try to control prices. That will stop. Probably in 2007 as the Democrats control the Congress. If not then, certainly in 2009 as the Democrats control the Executive. The Democrats will not be overly concerned if a few people cease to be able to drive their Hummers.

3. Loss of reserves due to war. The Arabian oil is vulnerable to deliberate attack and the political situation both internally and externally is going to lead to the loss of much of the remaining oil.

4. Loss of reserves due to politics. Many of the countries that control untapped known reserves are not going to make it available for us to waste.

We are going to be forced to use our vast Coal reserves inside of the next 15 years. If you think that oil pollutes, check out the eastern seaboard now. That level of pollution is going to be common. Coal also releases more radioactive pollution than a neuclear power plant. Oil is clean compared to Coal.

It would be wonderful if it looked like we had the ability to develop space based power collection. Unfortunatly we pissed that away 30 years ago. In the 70s we had the ability and the technology to get enough up there to accomplish space based power collection. We now have political accords that prohibit the structures necessary and we don't have the technology to even make a return visit to the moon.

The reason that we are at this point is that our democratic free enterprise system is only concerned with the bottom line at reporting time. We can't look forward because the investors would remove their money from a company that isn't focused on immediate profit.

Our money pool is controlled by our Pension Plans. Be it RRSPs, Mutual Funds, Corporate or Union Pension Plans; the necessity is cash flow now to cover the current benefits and the anticipated benefits that will be paid. This does not allow for a defferal of profit for the good of the planet.

Even with this attitude, many Pension Plans are not going to be able to meet their commitments. This is going to stop any allocations of money that aren't being delivered to, now needy, pensioners who thought that their money was safe. These people are a huge block of votes and they are going to vote to eat and not for the good of the planet.

 

[therealrex]

English a new language for you? No unanimity = almost universal is not a contradiction.

Yeah I guess that's it
unanimous
One entry found for unanimous.

Main Entry: unan·i·mous
Pronunciation: yu-'na-n&-m&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin unanimus, from unus one + animus mind -- more at ONE, ANIMATE
1 : being of one mind : AGREEING
2 : formed with or indicating unanimity : having the agreement and consent of all

Main Entry: 1uni·ver·sal
Pronunciation: "yü-n&-'v&r-s&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin universalis, from universum universe
1 : including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception
2 a : present or occurring everywhere b : existent or operative everywhere or under all conditions <universal cultural patterns>
3 a : embracing a major part or the greatest portion (as of mankind) <a universal state> <universal practices> b : comprehensively broad and versatile <a universal genius>
4 a : affirming or denying something of all members of a class or of all values of a variable b : denoting every member of a class <a universal term>

 

[rollerboy]

It'll be a lot sooner than that.

I agree, 60 years is overly optimistic. The economic cataclysm caused by the end of oil will vastly outweigh the effects of Global Warming by that time.

We may wind up too impoverished to transition to sustainable technology.

We are going to be forced to use our vast Coal reserves inside of the next 15 years. If you think that oil pollutes, check out the eastern seaboard now. That level of pollution is going to be common. Coal also releases more radioactive pollution than a neuclear power plant. Oil is clean compared to Coal.

Right, that's my point. Focusing on oil is senseless because it's effectively gone on the time scale of dramatic climate change.

We will be forced by our own shortsightedness to greatly increase our burning of coal, which we possess in abundance. More importantly, coal is cheap and we already possess the large scale infrastructure to exploit it.

This will completely devastate our environment over time.

 

[Rod Steel]

Gore’s film has been billed by some as the world’s most expensive Powerpoint / Keynote presentation. While there is little doubt that global warming is happening, Gore’s circumstantial arguments are weak at best. There is simply no proof that human CO2 emissions are causing significant global climate change. The earth’s climate has always been changing, even long before man arrived on the scene.

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?" Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Gore’s “majority of scientists” are not climate experts. Most of them don’t even work in the climate field. There are biologists who study polar bears, squirrels, poison ivy, coyotes and insects, and while many of them are excellent at their field of research, they generally have no knowledge about the causes of global change. They can however tell you about the EFFECTS of global change.

It’s going to take someone other than Al Gore to start an intelligent conversation. Al Gore only listens to the side of the story that supports his assertions of global warming. The fact that the sun being warmer causing much of the warming, if any is pretty well ignored. Al Gore could have made more of a difference had he done something about his passion during the 8 years he was vice president of the USA.

I’m starting to wonder what Dick Cheney is going to be pushing once he retires.

People should be careful about believing everything they see on tv, movies, internet etc.

 

[sdw]

Gore’s film has been billed by some as the world’s most expensive Powerpoint / Keynote presentation. While there is little doubt that global warming is happening, Gore’s circumstantial arguments are weak at best. There is simply no proof that human CO2 emissions are causing significant global climate change. The earth’s climate has always been changing, even long before man arrived on the scene.

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?" Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Gore’s “majority of scientists” are not climate experts. Most of them don’t even work in the climate field. There are biologists who study polar bears, squirrels, poison ivy, coyotes and insects, and while many of them are excellent at their field of research, they generally have no knowledge about the causes of global change. They can however tell you about the EFFECTS of global change.

It’s going to take someone other than Al Gore to start an intelligent conversation. Al Gore only listens to the side of the story that supports his assertions of global warming. The fact that the sun being warmer causing much of the warming, if any is pretty well ignored. Al Gore could have made more of a difference had he done something about his passion during the 8 years he was vice president of the USA.

I’m starting to wonder what Dick Cheney is going to be pushing once he retires.

People should be careful about believing everything they see on tv, movies, internet etc.

There are so many varibles causing Global Warming that it is hard to put the picture together.

Al Gore and his posse want a simple answer that can be easily fixed. There isn't a simple answer.

Dick Cheney and his posse want to stick their heads in the sand. That also isn't an answer.

Some of the varibles are:

1: Solar flare activity. We are into a 90 year cycle of hightened solar activity. If we look at cold and warm cycles on our planet, we find that there is a correlation. This is not something we can fix.

2: Axial tilt. The Earth's axis changes. If one looks at the records of the Romans, the Vikings and the Portugalees explorers and tracks them against our current maps, we have had an axial tilt that is between 8 and 17 degrees based on who's interpertation you wish to use. Axial tilt is real and if we look at the Yucatan impact, we see that the impact that killed the Dinosaurs isn't possible unless we assume a different axial presentation. The spaul from the impact is going the wrong direction for an axis near the current axis. The Mayans adjusted their calendars after a relatively modest change and many of the events in the Bible are based on the previous calendar. This is also something we can't fix.

3: Ailenation of flooding/soil renewal. We seek to tame our rivers to preserve property rights. As we build dikes and dams, we force land that would have otherwise have been flooded on a regular basis to become non-areable. The Sahara was productive farmland when it was regularly flooded by the Nile. It is desert now. We not only lose the potential farmland, we loose the ability to convert CO2 and create Oxygen that the farmland represented. The other thing that flood control does is ensure that more of rainfall goes into the ocean. This is causing a change in sea level. We are uncovering Roman seaports that are up to 15 feet under current sea levels. As we continue to "tame" rivers, we are looking at another 5 - 10 feet raise in sea level from this source alone. Water that floods land evaporates back up into the atmosphere and a significant portion doesn't go back to the ocean. Also plants take up water which is locked into them. No plants means the water goes into the ocean. We could make significant progress to fixing this.

4: The injection of Carbon into the atmosphere. This is what Gore/etc hope is the "magic bullet" that will make enough difference if we completely change the way we live. Carbon really isn't enough of a factor to make the necessary changes.

5: Geologic events. One major volcano makes 8 or 9 million cars look like pikers. The participate matter workes the same as Carbon, encouraging water vapour to form rain and drop out of the atmosphere.

6: Planet Killers. One major astroid hitting Earth is like a dozen volcanos with the added change in axial tilt. This is what killed the Dinosaures and we know of at least a hundred major impacts.