The Great Global Warming Swindle: Hot or Not?
Back in December, I posted a brief review of Al Gore’s documentary feature ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘, a movie that has since won several awards including an Oscar or 2 (or 3 – I wasn’t paying close attention). This evening I watched a video on YouTube called ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle‘ thanks to the recommendation on Ted Patrick’s blog. I have to admit I was a little reluctant at first, and suspected it was probably nothing more than right-wing propaganda and pseudo-science attempting to muddy a seemingly clear issue. As it turns out, this 75 minute documentary (for the BBC?) makes some valid and intelligent arguments against a significant human contribution to global warming and points out that solar activity (such as sun spots) and cosmic rays are much more likely causes of climate change. The film also discusses the politics behind climate science and the negative impacts our ‘precautionary policies’ are having on developing regions of the world. Very clearly, there is more to this issue than many of us have been willing to admit – myself included. While we might like to point the fingers of blame at our governments, our corporations and ourselves for irresponsible environmental policies, we may have to accept that heating the surface of the planet isn’t entirely our fault.
Hmm. The first 10 minutes are pretty frivolous as they try to convince you “these people have something to gain by convincing you there is global warming.” That was probably at least 25% of Gore’s video as well. At this point, I think it is clear that many people have much to gain by convincing us of their point of view, so whatever.
This issue reminds me of going to the doctor when you an ambiguous health problem. Every doctor has an opinion, and it is really up to the buyer to decide which doctor has the most relevant data. You’d *think* that having gone to school for 8 years would help them make better decisions on health than you, but with the advent of the Internet, I’ve found that I can often be more knowledgeable about my own health than my doctor.
It seems the same is true here. But the audience has everything working against them as they try to come to their own conclusion. Both this video and Gore’s seem to be showing actual data/graphs for about 1% of their presentation. The graphs for both presentations are often presented in fancy, hard-to-read 3d. And most importantly, almost no time is devoted to discussing the potential biases of the sources that provided that data.
I guess that “data,” “facts,” and “source bias” are not sexy enough for the movies.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:54 pm