March 25, 2007
The Goreacle probably didn't expect this
Novelist, pundit and screenwriter Roger L. Simon had an interesting reaction when he watched the Goreacle's propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth: he cared less about global warming, and he's not alone.
I have long suspected that Al Gore hurt the very cause - anthropogenic global warming - he is famous for espousing. Now I have some evidence of that in a new Rasmussen Poll saying only 24% percent of Americans consider the former veep a global warming expert. Furthermore, "just 36% of Americans say that Gore knows what he is talking about when it comes to the environment and Global Warming. [caps theirs]"
Gore's problem may stem from the attitude inherent in his remark before a Congressional Committee quoted further down in the Rasmussen article: "Global Warming is 'not a partisan issue; it's a moral issue.'" Wrong, Al. It's neither. It's a scientific issue.
[...]
When I first viewed Gore's Oscar-winning movie, it was that very thing that immediately occurred to me: why am I listening to a politician talk about this? Why not a scientist or scientists? You could cut the inauthenticity of the whole enterprise with a knife, starting with pseudo-self-deprecating joke about his near presidential victory to the recitation of facts that seemed to support his cause (but perhaps didn't, we later learned). The documentary form, of course, allows for these kinds of distortions. How many serious scientific arguments can you fit in an eighty minute film? How deep can you go? Not very far. So someone must select. And with selection comes unscientific bias.
So coming back to the "deconstruction of it all," I will give my visceral reaction to the documentary. After viewing the movie I was less troubled with the global warming issue and more troubled by Gore's narcissism - not exactly the result intended. In fact, the reverse. And evidently, from the poll results, I am not alone. (Something for the Oscar documentary committee to ponder.)
I love the phrase, "There is a scientific consensus about global warming," that the True Believers throw at us Doubting Thomases, as if that should end all debate. As Brit Hume replied this morning to Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday, consensus is what scientists have when they don't have scientific proof.
The commenters to Roger's post make some terrific points: When Al Bore says that the Earth has a fever, what is the planet's normal temperature? What is the best temperature?
How does the Goreacle and his acolytes respond to past fluctuations in the Earth's temperature? When it was cooler, much of North America was under an ice sheet a mile thick. When the planet was warmer than it is today -- before the advent of evil Western, Gaia-raping technology spewing CO2 into the atmosphere -- Rome was at its peak glory, and more than a millennia later, Europe experienced a burst of cathedral building and a flowering of culture, emerging from the Dark Ages.
Does global warming exist? Maybe. Too soon to tell. But if it does, so what? There's no science laying the blame -- or the solution -- at our feet, and if it comes to pass that the Earth is indeed warming up, we'll adapt and persevere.
Hell, we may even prosper. Think of all the bums homeless people who won't freeze to death during the frigid winters in the North East.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 25, 2007 09:44 PM
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