Posted on 05/28/2006 12:48:22 PM PDT by Chi-townChief
When there is a new outrage, I have to download some of my existing outrages, to make room. -- Al Gore
CANNES, France -- What he wants you to know is that he has not made a political film. Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" tries to move outside politics and focus on the facts of global warming. Gore says those facts are established, the returns are in, there is almost unanimous scientific agreement about them, and we may have about 10 years before the earth reaches a tipping point from which it cannot recover.
He has been traveling the world for six years making speeches in which this message has evolved. But all of those speeches put together have not had the impact of this new documentary, directed by Davis Guggenheim, which is horrifying, enthralling and has the potential, I believe, to actually change public policy and begin a process which could save the earth.
It is not only an important film, but a good one. Guggenheim has found a way to make facts and statistics into drama and passion. He organizes Gore's arguments into visuals that overwhelm us. Gore begins with the famous photograph "Earthrise," which was the first photo taken of Earth from outer space. Then he shows later satellite photos. It is absolutely clear that the white areas are disappearing, that snow and ice is melting, that the shape of continents is changing. The polar areas and Greenland are shrinking, lakes have disappeared, the snows of Kilimanjaro have vanished, and the mountain reveals its naked summit to the sky for the first time in human history.
You owe it to yourself to see this film. If that sounds overdramatic, I understand. I could not have imagined writing that before seeing the film myself. "An Inconvenient Truth" is not Al Gore's "opinion," or anyone's "political position," but a report on a process that the world's environmental scientists -- almost literally every single one of them -- are in agreement about.
Al Gore sits in a hotel room at the Cannes Film Festival and talks about these things. His film received a standing ovation here, but lots of films do. What's extraordinary is what an impact it has had. People are talking about it in that particular tone of voice that indicates they were moved beyond all their expectations. It opened Friday in New York and Los Angeles, and this Friday in Chicago and many other major cities. It will then roll out across the country, building (Gore hopes) on word of mouth, on people telling each other they must see it.
Gore makes no mention in the film of President George W. Bush or any of his policies. He deliberately avoids naming any names or pointing any fingers. "This is not a political movie," he said firmly. "Paramount did a lot of focus groups, and people came out said it was not like 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' It played fair and supported what it said. It appealed equally to Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. You have to remember that the environment used to be a bipartisan issue in the United States. Religious leaders saw it as a matter of respecting God's creation."
In the film, Gore is shown as a man with a mission. Other retired politicians go into business or the media or teaching. Gore has devoted his life to the issue of global warming.
"The other day," he said, "I saw a TV ad, which is being run to try to neutralize this film. It's sponsored by an industry front group underwritten largely by Exxon Mobil. They have a line in the ad: 'CO2. They call it pollution. We call it life.'
"Honest," he said. "This is a real ad. I know it sounds like a spoof from 'Saturday Night Live.' It's funny, and we laugh, but the energy industry has paralyzed America for 20 years with disinformation like that. They're using exactly the same strategy the tobacco industry used. They're saying there is a 'controversy,' and they refer to a 'debate' when in fact the scientific consensus on global warming is definitive.
"We found an internal memo from an energy industry group from 1998, written by their disinformation specialists, saying their objective was: 'Reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.' That's the same language that tobacco used. The easiest defense is to simply deny reality, and claim the truth is not the truth. Otherwise, they have to admit there is a moral imperative for change, and that would offend their big supporters in the oil and energy industries."
Gore says this, and behind him through the hotel window the sun shines down on Cannes and people make deals and go to movies and the world looks much as it always has. Then you go to his movie and discover that they drilled into the polar ice to extract an ice core that's a 650,000-year record of global climatic trends, and the current situation is going off the charts. There is no precedent. You learn that hurricanes in the Gulf and typhoons in the Pacific have suddenly escalated in frequency and strength. That rainfall patterns are being disrupted. That Arctic melting is having an effect on the Gulf Stream. That the 10 hottest years in history have been in the last 14 years. That the number of days annually the Arctic tundra has been frozen enough to support trucks has gone down from 225 to 75.
"There is as strong a consensus on this issue as science has ever had," Gore said. "A survey of more than 928 scientific papers in respected journals shows 100 percent agreement. But a database search of newspapers and magazines shows 57 percent of the articles question global warming, and 43 percent accept it. That's disinformation at work.
"Even in the short run," he said, "we aren't heeding the warnings. Two or three days before Hurricane Katrina, the National Weather Service predicted a hurricane so severe it would create 'medieval conditions' in New Orleans. It issued clear warnings that the levees might be breached and the city flooded. Yet look what happened, and how slow the response was. Hurricane season starts again in a week."
I asked him: "How do you feel about Bush's position on global warming?" -- since his film never mentions the president's name and refers to him only indirectly, when Gore introduces himself: "I used to be the next president of the United States."
Gore shrugged. "There was a big new official study last month that said global warming is real and human activity is largely responsible. The White House, quite, 'accepted the study without endorsing its conclusions.' A White House spokesman said, 'This is only the first of 21 studies.' That sounds good until you realize it is also the latest of hundreds of studies.
"The danger," he said, "is that people will go from denial to despair without stopping in between to ask themselves what action they can take."
In the movie, Gore suggests some actions, like switching to higher-mileage and hybrid cars, developing and supporting clean energy sources, and even something as simple as turning off the lights.
"The leading scientists say we have about 10 years. After that, we reach the tipping point, the point of no return. That doesn't mean the world ends, but it means that civilization as we know it gradually becomes impossible, more quickly than we can imagine.
"Is it too late? Look at the hole in the ozone layer. Everybody got together on that after the Montreal Accord, and the hole has grown a lot smaller, and will have disappeared by the year 2050. So that worked. No, it's not too late. But it's too late to be sitting around."
This interview was last Sunday.
On Monday, an Associated Press story began:
Is President Bush likely to see Al Gore's documentary about global warming?
"Doubt it," Bush said coolly.
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CHICAGOLAND PING
He's a mental bulimic.
Gag me.
As he gets fatter and older he is looking more and more like his uncle, Gore Vidal. And he's just as vapid.
Gore Vidal and Al Gore are first cousins, I believe. Gore Vidal's grandfather was Thomas P. (TP) Gore, the blind senator from Oklhoma.
This is an extremely political family. And not to be under-estimated.
· US Senate Radicals attempt to continue Global Warming PROPAGANDA (Global Warming is a Scientific FRAUD, Fed Data Quality Act attacked)
· Nobody Told the Birds About Global Warming
· Arctic Sea Ice Not Melting (How fraud is routinely used in green)
· Environmentalism's Dangerous Campaign for "Safety" (Always citing "POTENTIAL" problems to destroy and control business)
· Putin adviser says Kyoto 'smoke screen' (Treaty will create Soviet-style 'monster' threatening freedom)
· Michael Crichton Takes on Global Warming in Latest Work (Author Says Environmentalists Are 'Fomenting False Fears')
· The Kyoto Protocol is Dead
· A Haunting We Will Go (The Silliness of Regulating Greenhouse Gases)
· GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD (Designed To Undermine US Economy)
· Conservative GOP Senator Again Blasts Enviromentalist Fearmongers (Exposes the Corruption and FRAUD of Green)
· The Rainforest Action Network's real target is the Third World's poor (Destroying the Poor to Advance a Political Agenda)
· Mercury in Fish Overblown (Eco Propaganda about Mercury levels in Fish)
· Nation Descends into Mercury Madness (More Eco Propaganda about Mercury's harmful effects)
· Earth Day - Eco-Communist Propaganda (Greens and their subversion of America)
· Global Warming faces State of Fear (Debate over Global Warming propaganda has Eco-Communists FURIOUS)
· Climatologists Are Split on Global Warming (About 50 - 50) (Eco-Communist PROPAGANDA claims 100% agreement)
· The Global Warming Hoax (The Anti-Capitalist CON of Global Warming)
· Terminating the Economy - How Greens try to Destroy Capitalism
· Whacko Environmentalism and the Link to Columbia Shuttle Disaster
· The Theology of Global Warming (How the Global Warming Con is designed to attack capitalism)
· Who is afraid of scientific methods? (Why Eco-Communists do not want to apply science to "Global Warming")
· Katrina Kicks Up Storm of Global Warming Debate (Global Warming being shown as a UNITED NATIONS FRAUD)
· Goodbye to Anthropogenic Global Warming (PROOF that Global Warming is an Anti-Capitalist Con...)
· HILARIOUS Environmental Humor (Actual Correspondence about a Michigan Resident's Dam Building Project in the Creek)
· INHOFE DELIVERS FIRST OF FOUR SPEECHES ON CLIMATE CHANGE (1 of 4 Speeches showing the FRAUD of Global Warming "Science")
· INHOFE DELIVERS SECOND OF FOUR SPEECHES ON CLIMATE CHANGE (2 of 4 on dismantling the four pillars of climate change alarmism)
· INHOFE DELIVERS THIRD OF FOUR SPEECHES ON CLIMATE CHANGE (3 of 4 speeches on dismantling the four pillars of climate change alarmism)
· INHOFE DELIVERS FINAL “FOUR PILLARS” SPEECH (4 of 4 speech on dismantling Climate Change Alarmism)
Al is a bitter little rat that can't accept the fact he lost. Like Bill Clinton he just can't fade into the background and shut up like he should.
Aside from the fact that this is a lie, there was a time the world's scientists -- almost literally every single one of them -- were in agreement the earth was flat and the center of the universe.
Can they please just mail him an Oscar right now? That way he won't have to burn up a lot of fossil fuel flying to the awards ceremony to pick it up.
Nice shot! Right on target.
He's a cousin but queerly distant, I believe.
Didn't he say the same thing about Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle?
Aside from the fact that this is a lie...
Actually, a surprising number of academics involved in the Earth sciences do claim to believe that global warming is a problem. Not because the evidence is compelling, but because nothing gets your research grants cut faster than being a heretic on this issue.
You're right, not first cousins, but still linked.
Unstable and mentally-ill are the two adjectives which immediately come to mind.
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