Two truths
Last night, I watched Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
I consider myself a fair minded person, so I cleared my head of all pre-conceived notions and sat down to watch.
At the end of the film, I was baffled.
Was this the film that had started a global movement to combat Global Warming?
Was this the film that has the world’s nations in a spin?
Was this the film that ultimately led to Al Gore getting a Nobel Prize?
What I saw was an ego trip for a failed president. We had long lingering shots of votes being recounted in Florida. We had bits about how he should have won the election.
Then we had loads of shots of Al Gore looking wise and pensive as he stared out an aircraft window, or contemplated a lake.
We had a lot of family history. We heard all about is father and the cattle they used to breed. We heard how his father stopped growing tobacco when his sister died of cancer.
In between, there was a lot of stuff about Global Warming, I’ll grant you, but it seemed incidental to the promotion of Gore as a wise and caring person with a terrible line in off the cuff jokes.
The science bit was so dumbed down that I cringed. Matt Groening cartoons showing greenhouse gasses fighting sunbeams, for God’s sake? The ‘science’ bits seemed to be selected so that Gore could demonstrate his incredible ‘wit’. There were so many holes in his arguments I could have driven the entire American Navy through them.
All his data seemed to come from ‘friends of his’. He was incredibly selective in his data too.
Most of the time, he showed us graphs showing climate trends since 1970 or 1960. What? An that basis I can argue that today is colder than yesterday, therefore by the end of next week, we’ll be into another ice age!
He was hot on the computer graphics too. He showed us Manhattan after the Greenland Icecap has melted, and of course focused on the site of the World Trade Centre. If you want to whip up American fervour, you must mention the World Trade Centre.
What I saw was a film glorifying Al Gore. What I didn’t see was anything to make me worry unduly about Global Warming.
I must have seen the wrong film.
If anyone has the right one, can they send it to me please?
Pirates. We need more pirates:
http://thriftcriminal.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/fsm_pirates.png
Classic! 🙂
That is about the level of some of his arguments.
If someone were to come up with a computer program to track global warming, would it be called an “AL-GORE-RYTHEM”?
I was in the American Navy.. we drove the entire fleet through lots of holes. None of Al’s since nobody knew who he was then, but the same kind of holes from the same kind of guys.
45 % of Democrats think climate change is a serious threat. 12 % of Republicans think climate change is a serious threat. Says it all for me.
oh well – will be leaving this on in the video shop then.
I love cinema and believe fully in moving away from a carbon-based economy. However, I have steadfastly refused to see that film. Along with michael moore, it sounds like polemic piffle that i would be embarrassed having to defend.
To sort of use a phrase from the film American President (see what i am doing here?!!), these are serious times for serious people and Al Gore’s 15 minutes are up.
Ha! I thought I would be blasted for this post. But there again, it’s Saturday, and who reads blogs on a Saturday?
How the hell did he whip up such a following???????
I do believe that we are mucking up this magnificent world of ours, but I really don’t think it is as bad as Gore-bal Warning says it is! 🙂
In America, it is all about self promotion! We have to be conceited in order to compete with the other 303,943,347 (not counting the 10,000 Mexicans that crossed the border while I was writing this.) lunatics! 🙂
Many people maintain they believe in global warming and yes of course they’re doing everything they can to stop it, but when you question them closely and ask them why they’re still flying to Greece or changing their car every three years they get all shifty and embarrassed. In reality they ‘re not really convinced but they think they ought to be because everyone else is.
I watched it a while ago and thought it very dumbed down but then there are some very dumb people who need to be made aware of their contribution to the planet’s decline whether it’s landfill, carbon emissions, poor farming practices, habitat reduction, water wastage, population growth . . . The planet is warming, there’s no doubt about that, whether it’s a natural phenomenan or due to carbon emissions, I don’t think we’ll ever find the truth as both sides (check out The Great Global Warming Swindle DVD) are completely polarised. My take on it is to reduce our impact on the planet in any way we can in the interest of self preservation whether it’s warming or not. Consume less, reduce the population and the excesses to which we have become accustomed. *hops off soapbox*
I’ve heard and read enough, by now, about Al Gore’s famous/infamous film “An Incovenient Truth” that I’ve no desire to rush out and see it. Gore is just another typical product of hyper-materialistic America and therefore not worth paying any serious attention to.
However, I do believe that Global Warming is a reality which should make us all sit up and pay serious attention to our future, and our childrens’ and grandchildrens’ future.
The earth’s climate naturally changes over time, slowly and gradually over millenia. But when those climate changes are speeded up – which is what’s happening now, as a direct result of the abnormal wasteful ‘American Dream’ life-styles which most of us live – then humanity as a whole is faced with some very serious problems.
I’m in the process of moving to Carrantuohill – the highest mountain in Ireland (for those of you who don’t know)!
Grandad asked: “How did he (Al Gore) whip up such a following????”
That’s a real easy thing to do with people = like the Catholic Irish and Christian Americans!
Here’s some more of Gore’s BS waffle that I just happened (small world, ain’t it!) to come across tonight :
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/243
Al Gore said “We have given (sic) to the developing countries, the technologies and the ways of thinking, that are creating the crisis.”
Like the way America IMPOSES its ‘Foreign Policy’ on just about every other country on the planet. Shades of the Catholic Missionaries and their mad notions of what’s good for the rest of humanity: WE know what’s best for YOU!
– but we don’t know what’s best for ourselves….(sssh, that’s a secret!)
maybe with this “climate change” we might even get abit of a summer for once.
I saw the movie that quite skillfully presented the evidence that the majority of the worlds scientific community believe about the human contribution to world co2 levels and its effect on climate, amongst other stuff about the presenter, Al Gore.
I dunno what ye lot saw…
OTM – Like most evangelists, he provided one very biased side of a story. There are a hell of a lot of scientists having grave doubts at the moment about Global Warming being man made.
Whether you believe in global warming or not, I believe only good can come when people everywhere begin to think about thoughtless consumerism and, especially here in the U.S., stop using up the majority of the world’s natural resources. When China and India catch up with us, with 2 or more automobiles per household, and a pound of meat at every meal… If Al Gore started the thought processes, then I’m all for it! I’m kind of glad I’m nearing “check out” age, thus not too affected by it in the short run, but I do worry about the grandchildren.
Alice – My thoughts exactly. I have no problem at all with conservation and reducing consumerism. I just wish they would stop throwing the world into a panic about it and introducing daft laws. Here, they have outlawed garden bonfires and the sale of incandescent bulbs, for God’s sake!!