"President Bush has a plan. He says that if we need to, we can lower the temperature dramatically just by switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius" --Jimmy Kimmel, on fighting global warming
Before watching “An Inconvenient Truth” I was unsure of the topic of Global Warming. I was quite confident in my knowledge of the theory, just unsure of whether such an event would ever take place or whether it would be as catastrophic as claimed. Several days before I had came across an environmentalist called Bjorn Lomborg. He claimed that while Global warming would happen, prevention should not be our highest priority. I found this interesting because here was a highly respected environmentalist stating that global warming should not be our number one concern. This opened up a new way of thinking to me. Yes this event will take place but we can achieve more by tackling subjects that are affecting the world now. The line that really made me contemplate this school of thought can be found in the following link at 12.44:
“How odd, that they cared so much about helping me a little bit through climate change and cared so fairly little about helping my grandfather, and my great grandfather whom they could have helped so much more and who needed the help so much more”
I recall several minutes before watching an Inconvenient Truth, discussing this very quote with a colleague. He too had the exact same sentiments and felt a much greater interest in the issue of Global Warming than he had before. Armed with this new concept, I completed a survey based around the controversial topic. My recently acquired opinion’s influence can be seen on many of the answers. In terms of regarding global warming as the biggest threat to society, I had to disagree. A tone of approval came from my colleague as we quietly discussed further. Feeling confident, I continued to finish the rest of the survey. That is until I encountered the following question:
“The science of climate change is uncertain”
After some consideration on the subject I promptly ticked the “agree” box. Later I found that it is in fact a fairly accurate science. The results of such a catastrophe are very precise and the effects well known. This new information had tripped me up. A subject that I had never taken much interest in had just shown me that I didn’t know too much about it either. I felt I had been moved back to square one. After watching an extract from an Inconvenient Truth, I can say I am most definitely back to square one.
The question at the forefront of my dilemma is whether Al Gore’s documentary really does exaggerate the problem in order to scare us into going greener as the sceptics say or whether the sceptics are just playing down the problem because they really are on the payroll of the major oil companies. Two answers that toy with the concept of deception more than is comfortable.
I have read in several different articles that Mr. Gore included errors in his presentation and also bent statistics to his purpose. The following article tells of how 9 clear errors are found in An Inconvenient Truth:
Some of those errors are not just slightly wrong; they exaggerate to a point of causing unnecessary worry. For example, Mr. Gore claims that the melting of Greenland ice will occur “in the near future”. While on a geographical scale a few millennia can be seen as a relatively short period as the Earth itself is c4.5billion years old but to the everyday person, “near future” suggests the melting may take place in 50 years; a huge difference. This film gave me the impression it was aimed at a casual audience i.e. not one that has studied or knows a huge amount on the topic of climate change. As a result, this alarmist idea is being projected onto an audience that does not have any idea of the issue, so find it easier to accept Gore’s ideas as fact. I have no doubt that Al Gore is trying his hardest to pave way for a better Earth, it is just the method in which he is doing so can be seen as dubious to say the least.
Another theory that intrigued me was that although we are told to switch off our lights and not to leave our television sets on standby, the result would be insignificant in the overall picture of reducing climate change. This theory was first made known to me before the viewing of “An Inconvenient Truth” and was so interesting to me that I went away and researched it after. Indeed it does seem that our individual actions will have relatively little effect. The following article explains that we do in fact need to change all our transport to 100% electric and to completely restructure the economy. Two things that are highly unlikely to happen soon enough:
This article also reveals that it is not just Al Gore who can be accused of fear mongering. Our own Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling stated during the Budget that climate change would have “catastrophic economic and social consequences". Perhaps some of the statistics that I found most interesting in that article were the ones that actually put a positive light on Global Warming. Perhaps the reason they are interesting to me is that it is not often that you hear a positive comment about the issue. For example, “the UK would suffer an increase in heat-related deaths by 2,000 a year, and a decrease in cold-related mortality of 20,000 deaths a year”
So to conclude, I respect that Al Gore does indeed wish to save the environment and also to unite mankind in doing so. Whether he deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize, I am unsure. He has set out to increase the awareness of the issue to the people and he has in fact done that. Whether the end justifies the means is down to the committee that made the final decision but he has in my very honest opinion, done more for us than any of the sceptics.
No comments:
Post a Comment