Well, given how much I write about the Global Climate Crises, it might seem odd that I’ve only just seen An Inconvenient Truth tonight – but, it’s true.
It left me feeling sad. If Gore can say these things with such clarity and from such a great pulpit and over and over and over again, and still not have shifted the balance – it is an amazing, disturbing and profoundly sad thing.
Today, I was glancing at the blog of a woman that works, I think, at the national weather service and she’d been so brash as to suggest that weather men and women who are promoting climate skepticism should be banned. There were dozens and dozens of comments, after she’d posted a clarification of what she’d meant. It’s hard to believe that any of those folks had seen Gore’s presentation. They trotted out every lame idea and rationalization and paraded them as if everyone just know that they were true and anyone with common sense could se it.
One fact Gore brought forward, that was really telling, was that they’d taken a sample of 938 peer reviewed scientific articles on the climate from the overall literature on the subject and, of the 938, not one had cast doubt on the basic POV that mankind is primarily responsible for Global Climate Change. But, when they took a large sample of articles from the popular press about the climate, 53% of them expressed doubt that we know what the real reason is.
He said one other thing that I found particularly telling. And that was that many people deny the truth of the Global Climate Crises because if they’d really look at it and fully admit to themselves the size of the threat, the moral imperative to jump the issue to the top of their priorities and act would be unavoidable – and thus they are just unwilling to face that truth head-on.