Watching Al Gore with Climatologists
For most Americans, hearing about global warming involves a fair amount of taking things on faith. When Rush Limbaugh blatantly lied and claimed that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide was due to the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, how would most people know he was telling a lie based on a something like 10-fold overestimate in the amount of carbon Pinatubo was ejecting and on a conflation of two different kinds of carbon: carbon dioxide and particulates.
When Al Gore tells us what's up, most people would consider it just as reliable as Rush Limbaugh's lies. But I am lucky. First of all, I do keep up on the scientific literature, including climate research to some extent. But my ability to understand the details is limited because I am a biologist.
But my wife is a climatologist. So when I hear Al Gore, either live, as I was lucky to do some years back, or watching An Inconvenient Truth right now on Showtime, I am watching it with my wife and her friends, who all know the science behind it backwards and forwards. They know this material the same way you and I might know addition and subtraction. They know the facts Al Gore is talking about.
Both times I have heard Al Gore's presentation on Global Warming, I have one or more fact checkers right next to me. My fact checkers pretty much approve Al Gore's message in its entirety.
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is not controversial. That is what we have to realize. It is not based on controversial data. It is based on solid science.
I am used to thinking like a scientist and looking at scientific data. I look at Al Gore's graph showing the carbon dioxide record over the last 600,000+ years and the proxy temperature record (based on ratios of oxygen isotopes) over the same period, the absolute most striking thing about these two graphs to me is how tight the correlation is. It is a very reliable correlation. Carbon dioxide goes up, temperature goes up. This has been the case for more than 600,000 years on this planet.
Now, the other striking thing is how off the charts modern carbon dioxide levels are. In the last 600,000+ years, carbon dioxide has NEVER ONCE been anywhere close to as high as it is right now.
Temperature is going to follow off the charts. That is the prediction you can make based on more than 600,000 years of correlated data over many ice ages and warm periods.
These are solid scientific facts.
Anyone who is still "skeptical" about anthropogenic global warming is either a fool or is trying to con you. You can take that to the bank. It is happening and it is happening now.
The details of what will happen are still speculation. But even the most optimistic of predictions are not that great. We are facing big, BIG problems even in the optimistic predictions. If the more pessimistic prediction prove true, then we are suicidally stupid to ignore them.
Here we are. We are at the point where we KNOW what is happening. I have a fact checker right next to me. It is time to stop debating if it is happening.
It is time to do something.
The February 9th issue of Science, America's most respected scientific journal, dedicates itself to this very question. It begins describing the 4th IPCC conclusions and making it clear that science KNOWS that global warming is happening with as much certainty as science EVER has regarding anything. From there, this issue of Science discusses solutions. It is time to focus NOT on debate but on solutions and scientists are at that point.
I am starting my advance copy of John Kerry's book. It is billing itself as precisely this same thing. John Kerry begins from the understanding that YES, we KNOW that global warming is happening with as much certainty as we ever can know anything. We have 600,000+ years of data to draw on and it all tells us the same thing. And Kerry wants us to focus on solutions and that is what his book is purporting to do.
I will read and review John Kerry's book. So stay tuned. I would like to also read through that issue of Science if my own scientific experimental schedule and my family schedule allows me. And I would like to help shift the dialogue towards solutions.
An Inconvenient Truth is ending right now on my television. And John Kerry's book is in my backpack waiting for my subway ride tomorrow. And we just put my son to sleep, and he will be facing the consequences of what we choose to do or not do.
For me this is a key time for us and, far more so, for my son. He can't understand this. He knows his alphabet and can count to 20. That is about it so far. But I understand and so it is up to me. And you.
Stay tuned.
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Climate Change | Global Warming | Science | Al Gore
Good question
Submitted by mole333 on 12 March 2007 - 8:12am.
For all I know he does the research (book research, not data research) himself. From as far back as his Senate days he has been in contact with some of the top scientists and has gone all over the world to see what scientists are finding. He worked to declasify the evidence on the thinning of the polar ice sheet (US Navy kept decades long track of that for their submarines) once he learned about it...and my wife remembers when it was declassified and how shocked many in her field were at the rapid thinning (40% thinning in a rapid period). So he has all the resources to talk to the scientists directly. And some of the scientists he shows in the movie are well known to my wife (e.g. the world's expert on glaciers, etc.) In fact, much of the data he uses is available to almost anyone and often speaks for itself even to non-specialists.
However, I also assume he has advisors. I don't have the book handy, but the companion website to An Inconvenient Truth doesn't list advisors. I am sure the credits of the movie do.
Despite Death Threats Truth is getting OUT!
Submitted by Truth Wins (not verified) on 12 March 2007 - 3:45am.
Here is an url that you can send to friends and family that will direct them to the video "The Great Global Warming Swindle".
For more information on the documentary you can go here.
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindl...
In fact, much of the data he
Submitted by NanceConfer on 12 March 2007 - 10:24am.
In fact, much of the data he uses is available to almost anyone and often speaks for itself even to non-specialists.
***
This is the difference. He isn't asking anyone to take what he says on faith. When I watched the movie, I didn't come away from it feeling I had been preached at -- he hasn't got the chops for that! -- but that he had delivered the beginning of a message. And if I wanted to know more, that was up to me.
Nance
Good point
Submitted by mole333 on 12 March 2007 - 11:22am.
And herein lies an important distinction: who gives you the tools to find and interpret for yourself the actual data and who really does demand you take their word on faith? That is an important distinction I left out.
And for the record, I frequently refer people to sources of more detailed info and I forgot to do so in this diary. So let me take yet another opportunity to direct our readers to:
The Union of Concerned Scientists, for a good summary of the science, and, for those who want the real, raw debate among scientists, go to Real Climate.
A Title to Trust
Submitted by JJ Ross on 12 March 2007 - 12:37pm.
One of my own preferred science voices is Richard Dawkins, who has a "title" I support and trust, too:
"Professor Richard Dawkins is the first holder of the newly endowed Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford."
"Data" should be reliable, replicable, reviewable by non-specialists of course, but then a non-specialist --one like me at least-- needs power of story about all the data, story that can be trusted as "truth" to give meaning and purpose to the facts after they've been found and accepted as factual.
I think that's what Dawkins does brilliantly to advance "the public understanding of science," so I was wondering if that's what Gore is doing too and if he's got good help?
I still need to see the movie, but I guess I've been putting it off not knowing what to expect, a Michael Moore-type propaganda-style passionate POV piece, or a factual but stuffy, pedantic lecture, OR a true story with real power, maybe animated enough to move the whole earth. 
At the Academy Awards the fawning celebrities seemed so much in his thrall that I thought it might be the first, but then hearing the song (with written conservation tips projected above) made it seem more like school. But I hold out hope for the third! Having seen it, what do y'all think?
**********
Not to get off-topic but here's just a quick example of how I see Dawkins go far beyond data, making us come alive as characters in our own true story:
Dawkins has opened a global conference of big thinkers warning that our Universe may be just "too queer" to understand.
Professor Dawkins, the renowned Selfish Gene author from Oxford University, said we were living in a "middle world" reality that we have created.
Experts in design, technology, and entertainment have gathered in Oxford to share their ideas about our futures.
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is already a top US event. It is the first time the event, TED Global, has been held in Europe.
Professor Dawkins' opening talk, in a session called Meme Power, explored the ways in which humans invent their own realities to make sense of the infinitely complex worlds they are in; worlds made more complex by ideas such as quantum physics which is beyond most human understanding.
"Are there things about the Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle, ungraspable in any mind, however superior?" he asked.
"Successive generations have come to terms with the increasing queerness of the Universe."
Each species, in fact, has a different "reality". They work with different "software" to make them feel comfortable, he suggested.
Because different species live in different models of the world, there was a discomfiting variety of real worlds, he suggested.
"Middle world is like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see," he said.
"Middle world is the narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal as opposed to the queerness that we judge to be very small or very large."
He mused that perhaps children should be given computer games to play with that familiarise them with quantum physics concepts.
"It would make an interesting experiment," he told the BBC News website.
Well...
Submitted by mole333 on 12 March 2007 - 1:01pm.
I first saw it as a slide show, about 90 min. He was riviting. But again, I am lucky in that I can see this with climatologists. All I can say is that the two climatologists I saw the slide show with were nodding their agreement throughout. One or two points are controversial, but by and large not. There is a little bit of theatrics, but we are talking lots of graphs and clear illustrations of what he is talking about. I recommend it. When he shows a graph, the science is sound. When he doesn't, mostly it is sound, but sometimes includes some controversial points.
I predict
Submitted by NanceConfer on 12 March 2007 - 1:29pm.
what to expect, a Michael Moore-type propaganda-style passionate POV piece, or a factual but stuffy, pedantic lecture, OR a true story with real power, maybe animated enough to move the whole earth.
***
I predict you will be disappointed.
The movie is not done in the over-the-top style of Moore but definitely has a POV.
It is somewhat stuffy but not nearly as bad as you might expect based on Gore's general lack of entertainment value.
I came away feeling more confident about ideas that I had been willing to hear. IOW, I was already convinced that global warming is real and humans play a large part in it. So, of course, I saw what Gore had to say as a true story. But, as I posted earlier, my trust was based on being shown lots and lots of evidence and being directed to other places to get more evidence. Not on anything faith-based.
I saw a woman being interviewed on Book TV yesterday (yep, it's one big party here! ) -- the author of "Being Nickeled and Dimed" and "Not Making It" (I think those are the titles -- stories about the working poor). Anyway, I didn't like everything she had to say but I was sympathetic to her subject matter and she struck as being very real -- they showed her at work in her apartment and she was a no-frills kind of person. I liked that.
Anyway, at one point she said she was ticked off by the pink ribbon people. When she was being treated for breast cancer, she found it annoying that they gave her a teddy bear to hug and told her to keep battling the cancer. She said the teddy bear was infantilizing and it made her feel bad for the people who died of breast cancer -- were they and their families made to feel they just weren't trying? I liked that attitude too. No fluff, no pink-ness, no feel-good crap. Just get the right meds and let's see if we can cure this disease.
So, maybe I am the kind of audience who would rather see a less story-filled movie with more facts. Fewer pictures of cute polar bears and more actual science.
And I think this movie delivered that. So, you will probably not like it!
But it did inspire me to finally start recycling more than just our newspapers.
Which DS promptly reminded me was a stupid waste of time and energy based on our viewing (and mutual enjoyment of) the Penn & Teller show you have started watching recently -- Bullshit.
So, I guess I am, at the moment, possibly engaging in faith-based recycling. Trust-based? Hope-based? Nothing-else-I-feel-like-I-can-do based?
Sigh. . . the burden of smart kids who remind you when you are inconsistent. . .
Nance
Faith Based Recycling!
Submitted by JJ Ross on 12 March 2007 - 2:11pm.
ROTFL! Love talking with you guys . . .
Scientists
Submitted by Rhea (not verified) on 13 March 2007 - 1:45pm.
I believe the science that supports the facts of global warming and have seen Al Gore's film several times, but so many people doubt it. Why? What is to gain by doubting climate change? I don't get it.
Taking Al Gore on Faith
I'd really like to know more about his background or who is advising him on climatology, if you know?