Al Gore's Radar
Though I am no fan of Al Gore, I very much appreciated seeing An Inconvenient Truth last night. Gore, and the movie, make a very convincing case that, whatever your political affiliations, the problem of global warming should be an immediate and urgent concern.
It was interesting to see how much the presentation felt like things we talk about on Radar: (1) faint signals can give clear indications of future trends; (2) data visualization is as or more important then data collection if the goal is persuasion; and (3) hackers of all kinds are all switching to Mac. (Okay, that last one was a joke, but cripes, the thing was like an hour and forty-five minute Apple ad! Gore is on the Apple board of directors, and it showed.) There were a few points where I felt like I was watching a presentation Tim and Roger might have put together, rather than one from a politician. (I noticed, too, that Larry Lessig was acknowledged in the credits.)
I have to hand it to Gore for doing an amazing job on the film and on the topic, and I'm amazed and happy to see how he gave it, too. It definitely felt like one of the few movies I've seen that had at least the potential to change history.
I'd highly recommend seeing it, and if you can see it today (Saturday), that will help drive up the opening weekend ticket sales, which would be a great signal for rising interest and concern about global warming. If for some reason you can't make it to the theater, here's a convenient way to "vote" your concern: go to MovieTickets.com or Fandango and buy a ticket or two anyways (particuarly, for shows earlier in the day on Saturday, when they will count in the first released figures). I'd be bummed if you bought a seat someone else would likely fill to see the movie, so I'd suggest staying away from sold-out shows like those at the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Instead, maybe the best thing you could do would be to choose some conservative area -- Utah, Orange County, whatever -- and buy a seat there. Or if that feels deceptive, buy a seat in Berkeley; the University Theater on Kittredge was (surprisingly, given that the town feels like a Prius dealer's lot) not sold out last night. Convenient support for an inconvenient truth -- let's hear it for the Internet.
I'm planning to buy a few more tickets now. Don't worry, I'll recycle them.
Update: After reading the comments and thinking about it more, I took out the suggestion that you buy tickets somewhere other than where you live. While I'm sure some people would like a bigger deletion, I'm sticking with the rest, but I agree that point was stupid; thanks for the comments.
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Comments: 38
Movies are made for profit . Why would I purchase a ticket without the intent of seeing the film? Thats like going to Sears and giving the manager $20, and then leaving?
If Gore wanted to really get this film out to the masses, he would of made it available for me to watch on a network, or even cable... now.
Marc, how much were you paid for this ad?
I'm disgusted.
Can we stop this duplicitous crap? If you want to go see the movie, go see the movie. If you want other people to see the movies, buy some tickets and take them.
How can you in all integrity urge someone to '"vote" their concern' for a movie that they haven't even seen?
Get this lying and manipulation out of public square.
Don't give me any BS about how "the other side" does it too, either. If "they" are doing this, call them on that. You have just justified their saying the same thing.
If there is an argument to be made for global warming, make the argument. Make it on rational grounds, not on the grounds of phantom ticket sales on opening week.
What you are suggesting is repellant. You should be ashamed.
I've yet to see it, however part of the reason why the movie felt so Apple oriented may also have been that much of it was created in Keynote. Apple has posted an article about this at: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/05/inconvenienttruth/
"A majority of the scientific community simply don't agree with Gore's assertions."
oh my god, Rick. You, sir, clearly are an asshat.
Marc I'm VERY confused by your comments, which seem to suggest that the presentation matters more than the science. I am a fan of Gore in other respects but not on his alarmist views about warming.
Thanks to the naivete of otherwise bright and caring people we appear to be focusing attention on something we probably cannot change while we ignore some *ten million* mostly preventable global deaths caused by six major diseases.
Sean - cite any scientific paper that claims this key Gore assertion (from the movie website):
[i]If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.[/i]
I'm so glad I found a way to bring the vitriol back to the Radar comment board! I'd missed it. Nice move, Marc. :)
A few of you seem to have missed the first sentence clause of the post -- it's worth re-reading. To be clear, I'm only suggesting that people can buy tickets as a way of expressing concern about the topic if they actually have that concern. If you feel as Rick feels, then by all means please ignore my suggestion. (And Rick, no, I haven't liked any of Michael Moore's films since Roger & Me. I completely agree that they are propoganda.)
bryanl asks, "Why would I purchase a ticket without the intent of seeing the film?" My point was that ticket sales for this movie will be evaluated as an expression of concern about the topic of global warming. Those people who share that concern, but aren't able to make it to the movie, can have their concern registered by buying tickets anyways. There is a significant -- and largely conservative -- body of thought in the US that espouses the belief that money is speech, and I partially agree with that view. That said, no, I wasn't paid to express my views. However, I completely agree with bryanl's suggestion that the movie should be made freely available to everyone who wants to see it, online or otherwise.
And Ray, no, I'm not at all ashamed of my suggestion. I know a lot of people who have very good reasons for not going to the movies this weekend, who nonetheless are concerned about the topic. I believe people have every right to find creative ways of expressing their beliefs and concerns. If you disagree, by all means get yourself a blog and tell the world. They're free.
If for some reason you can't make it to the theater, here's a convenient way to "vote" your concern: go to MovieTickets.com or Fandango and buy a ticket or two anyways (particuarly, for shows earlier in the day on Saturday, when they will count in the first released figures).
Wouldn't that be the equivalent of stuffing the ballot box or having dead people vote?
~ Keith... who grew up in the shadow of Chicago.
>>find creative ways of expressing their beliefs and concernshttp://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46123&SelectRegion=West_Africa
So what you are saying, Marc, is that you are willing to LIE to push your particular point of view, by gaming the polls. Interesting!
PJ, I agree that it would be wrong to claim that each ticket sold this weekend represented a person interested in the issue (and not just because of this post, at all); but I totally disagree that buying tickets to show support for this cause is a lie. Quite the opposite -- I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You know as well as I do that the box office take for this movie will be seen as an indicator for this issue, and paying money to drive that indicator up is at worst activism, not deception.
Joe, I said that visualization was more important for persuasion, not that it was more important than science. People have been collecting this data for years, but as the comments on this post show, plenty of people are not persuaded there is a problem. Gore displayed the data in a way I found especially compelling, and while I needed no convincing on the issue, I could easily see the movie persuading people (provided they are willing to see it). That said, I certainly agree that malaria (and the other causes for which you advocate on your blog) are worthy causes. How we each allocate our time -- and money -- for causes we believe in is our own choice, and you should make the choices you believe in. I've talked about influenza and patents on this blog before, since I agree that we have more problems than just global warming. This weekend, however, I think showing support for this cause is timely and worthwhile.
I believe people have every right to find creative ways of expressing their beliefs and concerns. If you disagree, by all means get yourself a blog and tell the world. They're free.
I have a blog, thanks.
I don't disagree with most of what I know of Gore's views on global warming. I know that Rick up there in the first comment is full of crap when he talks about the consensus of the scientific community. I even think Gore was the legitimately elected President in 2000.
All of that is irrelevant to what you are advocating. What you are advocating is lying, or if you prefer a Keith's nicer words, stuffing the ballot box.
You can call it creative. I call it deception.
It's a practice I find repellant in those with whom I disagree, why should it be any different in those with whom I agree.
But, on topic of the blog, it does seem like something that should be on the Radar. Needs a catchy moniker, Politics 2.0 or something.
Lying, deception, manipulation: Pioneered by Republican and neo-con thugs, endorsed by Berkeley environmentalists.
>>you should make the choices you believe in...
... hmmm .... but what if those choices are not consistent with making the world a better place, or not optimal? I think prioritization should transcend our flimsy human intellectual limitations.
Marc I really do need to see the film! It's not out in Southern Oregon yet. I think the key challenge of our challenging times is HOW we should make the choices. I want to see them made on hard analytics rather than emotion. I'm an environmentalist who feels the environmental movement is now primarily driven by the triple threat to reason: emotion, politics, and anti-globalization.
Ray, thanks for the response. Obviously I don't agree and am sorry that you feel as you do. I take your point, though, that apparently this post wasn't as appropriate for Radar as I'd thought. My apologies to anyone I offended or to anyone who feels it is off topic.
Marc,
Don't beat yourself up! Setting aside the moral implications, it was a cool hack! During the early 1990's CNN or someone did a poll on an unpopular figure expecting to use the statistics to vilify him. Much to their surprise, the poll results came back overwhelmingly positive. So they did some investigating and found that 90% of the votes came from a call center owned by a friend of the guy they were trying to vilify! Though I would never do it, I always thought that that was a cool hack and last time I checked, O'Reilly was a place where people could write about cool hacks!
Anyway, at least your post generated some comments. Tim's post on a related subject: Vinod Khosla's ethanol presentation, generated zero comments. So, at least you succeeded in promoting the meme. This is important because the higher the prominence of the meme, the easier it will be for start-ups working on alternative fuels to receive funding and this will benefit everyone--whether the world is experiencing global warming, headed for another ice age, or remaining the same! :)
rick, catch a clue. The consensus among the scientific community is that 1) CO2 causes climate warming 2) we are producing huge amounts of CO2 3) the climate is warming.
Most of the people who don't believe in climate change either have interests that don't align with fixing the problem (big oil, coal power) or beliefs that don't jive with the notion that the problem is happening (religious beliefs that man can't hurt the planet or that free markets always solve everything without goverment interference).
Which category do you fall in?
Ever since I know oreilly.com I always thought of it as a quality IT info source, one that publishes quality IT books as well. :]
It used to be an info source with as absolute authenticity and objectivity on topics published as possible.
That is, until late, when oreilly.com started 'bloggising' -- now it has BBS-like flaming and four and five letter nasty words, just like any site out there.
I can only hope the forthcoming books stay as objective and good as ORA publications ought to be.
I'm not sure I can recommend the site to just any business contact anymore.
Regarding the weird accusations that this is equivalent to ballot box stuffing, let's not forget that there's never really been a time where you couldn't, you know, go see a movie twice. I'm not sure how this is any different (except in intent) that watching the film multiple times.
That said, I think that Marc would be better served by suggesting that people evangelize the movie by telling all their friends/family/coworkers to go see it. Genuine word-of-mouth would easily trump this tactic.
Just as an update, here are the numbers from the weekend movie tickets sales (via AP):
In its second weekend, the Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" went into wider release and broke into the top 10 with $1.33 million, even though it was playing in just 77 theaters. Released by Paramount Classics, the film averaged an impressive $17,292 a theater, compared to $12,410 in 3,070 cinemas for "The Break-Up."
Chronicling the former vice president's campaign to educate people about the perils of global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth" expands to more theaters over the next two weekends.
"It's breakups and global warming that I think really are interesting people now," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
George Stephanopolous interviewed Al today on "This Week". I felt it confirmed the notion that Gore sees his role here as activist more than scientist, as when he said "the scientists I trust" see catastrophic warming consequences looming everywhere.
I remain frustrated because we have catastrophic stuff happening now and this will give those of us lucky enough to live fat and happy in America yet another reason to ignore the global health monsters that slaughter tens of thousands daily, mostly kids.
We're not all conservative in Orange County, and the assumption that we are is, well, tiring.
Joe -
here's that paper:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2005/HansenNazarenkoR.html
The tone of the quote from the movie's website is sensationalistic, yes, but the notion that we have a short period of time to bring the problem under control before the environment begins entering a period of violent change is agreed upon by all 15 authors in the above paper.
While I agree with you that there are other global health concerns that should be getting their share of the spotlight and aren't, I see no reason at all to allow that concern to get in the way of seeing the truth that lies right in front of your face - there is no longer any ambiguity on the issue of global warming. It's happening now and we're seeing the very real results of it in New Orleans, Shishmaref, Greenland and elsewhere.
Chill out, Ray. It doesn't remotely resemble ballot box stuffing (which is, in fact, illegal) or even lying (since when is buying a movie ticket lying?).
Tim,
You're loosing a lot of credibility hyping a stupid movie like this! Please get back to the techy stuff like how Al Gore invented the Internet!
The Wall Street Journal had an article a few weeks ago that was written by a scientist who must be not among the ones Al Gore "trusts." The story he told was one of being shunned if you suggested there remains doubt about what is happening and why it is happening, almost as though a form of "political correctness" has entered the scientific community with regard to the issue of global warming.
In order for scientists to "know" with complete certainty what is happening to our climate right now and what will happen 10, 50, and 100 years from now if we don't take immediate action, the techniques for climate forecasting would have to be enormously more accurate than weather forecasting techniques are today.
Why did the story that pollution may have been a cause of relatively quiet decades for hurricanes just come out a few weeks ago if we know everything there is to know about climate? Why did Katrina and friends surprise everyone last year if we have 99.999% certain understanding of how climate works? But doesn't the way people talk about global warming imply that level of certainty?
I myself don't see the evidence to support the certainty and the claims of "it's obvious" with regard to global warming. I also don't see the experimental evidence that has definitively proved humans know exactly what actions to take to manipulate the climate into doing what we want it to do. If we have that knowledge, why did Katrina occur last year?
The universe had been "solved" except for just a few little annoyances by physics at the end of the 19th century. Then Einstein showed that everything previously considered certain and obvious was actually false.
How can people talk and screech so passionately about global warming, as though our scientific knowledge of climate is "certain"? And attack anyone who raises questions as being dumb or conservative or religious?
Also, the price of a movie ticket could keep an AIDS victim in Africa alive for a week, since the cost of AIDS treatment is less than a dollar a day, but the poor in Africa don't have that kind of money. Please consider sending that money to www.one.org before you actually buy the ticket for a movie you won't attend...
I have heard Gore holds up China as having better emission standards than the United States. This is a joke.
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 car emission laws may be better than the United States’, but that is basically irrelevant because there are a huge number of cars there whose emissions would probably not meet anyone’s standards.
Sean! Thanks for citing an interesting NASA paper which suggests that some global warming is a result of human activity, and that energy imbalances could lead to sea level rises of uncertain amounts. That part of the story is not in dispute, yet alarmists continue to suggest "global warming = catastrophe" when the science suggests otherwise.
Do you seriously think a single one of those scientists would talk about a
"tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves"
So are all the global warming naysayers suggesting that there just is no affect of all the Co2 and other pollutants? That we pump them out and nothing happens? That the largest reduction in vegetation in the known history of life on the planet has no effect?
We clearly do not know and understand everything about weather patterns on our planet. But let's use a little Occam's razor here. Which is a simpler explanation? That there would be global warming because of CO2 and pollutants in the atmosphere, all happening by mechanisms that we know and that have been explained? Or that the effects of excess CO2 and pollutants are miraculously absorbed by our ecosystem in a magical self-balancing system that we don't understand and have no explanation for?
I've read a number of articles that claim that we should currently be in an ice age. That would be pretty cataclysmic too! Sounds like we better hope global warming is true and keep it going so we don't all freeze to death! :-)
The bottom line is that we've been looking at the temperature of the Earth for what, like 60 years?! That's a blip in geological time. It's like taking a bite of pizza and concluding that the entire world tastes like pizza.
Reason with evidence is what Al Gore and those fighting his cause are lacking. Still, they keep pressing their agenda with manipulative emotional pleas. Maybe to get that next research grant? Not much money in researching a problem that doesn't exist.
s that we've been looking at the temperature of the Earth for what, like 60 years
This and other comments show that most people are arguing passionately based on what they read in the paper. The goal of a scientist is to find natural explanations for observed phenomena. The phenomena being studied is not weather, but climate.
While it is true that we have trouble predicting weather, we have a much easier time predicting trends in overall climate. Part of that is the millions of years of data that we have, not 60. Various 'cool hacks' have been devised for very precisely measuring CO2 levels and temperature back through the millennia.
The other common theme seems to be that scientific consensus is a new and bad thing, that it is 'group think'. A physics professor of mine repeatedly gave our class a simple lesson: After having several people measure the length of a table and come within a few millimeters of one another, he measured it and claimed that it was different by 20 centimeters. He then asked the rest of us who was correct, reminding us that he was the professor and that he held our grades in his hands. The answer of course was the majority. Theories only become established once many experiments have repeatedly come to the same conclusions. A few lone authorities who disagree (especially with no hard data behind them) may bring up interesting avenues of thought, but it doesn't relate to the science being done.
Where did all the right-wing idiots come from to start commenting on the merits of global warming? This post must have been featured on a right wing blog in the Midwest, where watching Silicon Valley is their best way to pass the time.
hmm, typical leftist approach. Can't win an argument, resort to insults and namecalling...
marc, in almost the same sentence you say you think Gore makes it quite clear how bad things are and how humans are to blame for everything and then that he shows quite clearly that the (validity of the) data doesn't matter as long as it's presented well.
Gore is certainly a spinmaster, but that doesn't make what he's saying any closer to being true.
"So are all the global warming naysayers suggesting that there just is no affect of all the Co2 and other pollutants? That we pump them out and nothing happens? That the largest reduction in vegetation in the known history of life on the planet has no effect? "
Do the math yourself. The effect of CO2 (the only thing global warming alarmists ever seem to care about) on the climate is only a few tenth of a percent at most of that of the entire atmosphere.
The percentage of CO2 output into the atmosphere caused by human activity is only a few percent of the total CO2 output.
In fact a large volcanic eruption (like St Helens in 1980) will spew more "greenhouse" gasses into the air in a few days or hours than all human activity of the last 2 centuries combined.
The output of methane (a far larger contributor to the heat retention capacity of the atmosphere than is CO2) by termites is several times larger than that by cattle (which produce the vast majority of methan output that could be attributed directly or indirectly to human activity).
Am I saying the climate doesn't change? Quite the contrary, I say it changes whether we like it or not and we have no control (either through what we do or what we don't) on that change that can be measured.
What has been shown conclusively is that the solar output has been unusually high for the last 20 years or so, which just happens to coincide with warmer weather on earth.
Surprising? Hardly I'd say. If more solar energy hits the planet (and the atmosphere) more of that energy will be retained causing a rise in temperatures even the the heat retention capacity of the earth/air system remains unchanged.
Does this mean we should not care about what we put in the air and water? Of course not, but it does mean we shouldn't stare blindly at doing whatever it takes to meet some theoretical "targets" to "control the climate", targets that will destroy our economies so we will be unable to invest in energy sources that are less polluting, cheaper in the long run, etc.
But we should invest in those for real benefit, not for some pipedream of controlling the climate.
Whenever I hear that the truth is being suppressed by scientists with an agenda, I always think of creationists.
In both cases, the majority of scientists agree (about evolution or global warming) but a small faction tries to politicize the issue instead of providing evidence.
See a film and have your opinioned changed? I can't imagine a more apt way to say, "Oh, I'm guilible, sell me that bridge of yours in Brooklyn." The film "JFK" had much that same impact. I've heard people say that the CIA did such and such because they saw it in the film. I felt like screaming, "It was a movie for Pete's sake!"
The reality is that Gore is long been reality-impaired and willing to do anything to promote himself politically. He claims that his father lost his Senate seat for support the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. The reality is that his father voted against the acts and was defeated by a Republican who (in the House) had voted for them.
Ditto Gore's claim to have turned against "Big Tobacco" after his sister's death from lung cancer. In reality he continued to take money and lobby for them for several years after her death. (He was carrying on a family tradition. His father was so much in the pocket of big oil, he was know as "the senator from Occidental Petroleum.)
For Gore, reality is what advances his self-interest. In this case, he wants to be the "man on a horse" saving us from global warming. Yawn. Believing Gore isn't something I'd recommend, particularly in the highly manipulative context of a film with an agenda.
Incidentally, techo-nerds seem to be particularly prone to this sort of thing. I worked for a bio-tech firm in 1982, when Perot was running for President. I had trouble believing the number of science PhD's who fell for Perot's silly rhetoric. I suspect it has something to do with being educated into professions that impart "truth" (the sciences) rather than those where virtually every important issue is a subject of fierce debate (history or philosophy).
And perhaps that's why so many of those who believe global warming to be a reality seem so hostile to contrary points of view coming from the scientific community. For them, science is a source of dogma rather than a somewhat error-prone method of reaching some truths in some areas. Modern science, begun as a rebellion against dogma, is now one of the most dogmatic fields of thought. Every few decades, it jumps the rails and begins a wave of persecution against those who deny the lastest fashionable, hysteria-inducing dogma.
Michael Crighton is right. This is simply a repeat of the same bad science that once promote eugenics or, more recently, that manufactured a hysteria about a "population explosion" amidst plummeting birth rates, an agenda whose chief spokesman was Alan Guttmacher, the head of Planned Parenthood and (revealingly) the former VP of the American Eugenics Association.
--Mike Perry, editor of Eugenics and Other Evils by G. K. Chesterton
Hey Rick,
How much crack are you smoking to make such an ignorant, stupid comment such as, "A majority of the scientific community simply don't agree with Gore's assertions"? The facts are the exact opposite!
MA
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RADAR TOPICS
Rick [06.03.06 10:20 AM]
Marc,
I am going to guess that you like Michael Moore movies too and don't believe them to also be leftist propoganda.
When I was in college in the seventies all the scare talk was about global cooling. People made dire predictions then about where we would be in thirty years and they were all proven false.
A majority of the scientific community simply don't agree with Gore's assertions. Gore's movie is just a skillfully constructed ploy to convince people on an emotional level what they can't prove scientifically. Remember Chicken Little was believed by some too.