Global Warming = Climate Crisis IV (A Few Thoughts after Reading a New Book)
Submitted by Real Science on May 19, 2006 - 10:00am.
Real Science
A Few Thoughts after Reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s
Field Notes from a Catastrophe:
Man, Nature, and Climate Change
Elizabeth Kolbert’s beautifully written and, yes, harrowingly prophetic Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (an excellent example of “creative nonfiction”) may mark a turning point in the willingness of many of us (maybe not a great many, but maybe just enough of us) not only to hear, but perhaps to finally grasp what the present phenomenon of “global warming” is and what it means to our world. Such an understanding is what a vast majority of the world’s current climate scientists (and those in related fields) agree that we, as individuals and nations, must gain and act upon.
As someone with only the generally required amount of math and science in my background as I made my way through college (and a degree in English), I remember how much I appreciated being introduced – by more than one of my teachers – to books by the biologist Lewis Thomas (Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher; The Medusa and the Snail; and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony – intriguing titles, aren’t they?). Thomas was a multi-talented biologist (not only a deeply knowledgeable and thoughtful scientist but also a gifted writer), and, as such, he could tell various stories of biology as few others. At that time, Thomas bridged that gap for me between my then quite non-technical frame of mind and what otherwise threatened to be another set of foreign language classes named Biology 101 & 102.
Maybe that’s similar to where many of us in this country are these days in relation to science: we’re going about taking care of what we’ve chosen as our “major” (only now, it’s whatever our major concerns are in our daily lives), and many of us are not much interested in what the sciences have to tell us. Even so, our scientists have core and critical knowledge to teach us. And, not so unlike it was in school, whether we want to or not, at some point soon, we’re going to have to try to listen to and understand what our scientists are attempting to pass on to us (now in greatly determined and concerted efforts) …
And like my college science teachers, who used Lewis Thomas, a gifted storyteller, to bridge the distance between technical details that, alone, remained alien to me and a kind of storytelling that was familiar to me and brought the technical evidence to life, so too are scientists of our present time reaching out to talented storytellers like Elizabeth Kolbert (in this case, a celebrated journalist) to bridge that gap.
In fact, when I first learned of Kolbert’s three-part series on global warming in The New Yorker several months ago (the initial work that led to the current book), global warming was still a fairly vague concern to me and certainly not something I had deliberately turned my attention to on a regular basis. But there was something that emerged in the buzz around those articles that finally caught and focused my attention on the subject of global warming in a way that I haven’t been able to shake since I first learned of it:
It was what one of the people she visited, Robert Socolow, a professor of engineering at Princeton and codirector of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, said to her:
…I’ve been involved in a number of fields where there’s a lay opinion and a scientific opinion…And, in most of the cases, it’s the lay community that is more exercised, more anxious…But, in the climate case, the experts – the people who work with the climate models every day, the people who do ice cores – they are more concerned. They’re going out of their way to say, “Wake up! This is not a good thing to be doing.” (131-2)
Needless to say, I was quite excited to learn a month or so ago that her series of articles had been expanded into a book. And when considering doing a write up of a book about global warming for this new CCN “Real Science” blog of ours, I immediately thought of her work.
Even so, in deciding to choose among a few of the highly recommended books about climate change now coming to the fore, I actually hesitated to choose Kolbert’s book. That’s only because several of the reviews I had read focused almost exclusively upon the vivid descriptions she gives of a few specific people and places.
I imagined that those would, no doubt, be rich and rewarding to read. But I was also looking for a book that would give newcomers to the subject something of a foundational understanding of global warming and climate change (expanding upon what we’ve been attempting to do in this blog series so far), and I didn’t at first think Kolbert’s book would provide that. Nevertheless, ultimately, I couldn’t resist finding out how this superb writer would lead a relative newcomer like me into and through this vast and challenging subject.
Well, as alluded to in the initial paragraphs above, I found, in Kolbert’s book, what I, as a layperson, was searching for: Not only does she indeed ground the book – in a way that brings the scientific story to life, and often with light-hearted, comic touches – through several actual encounters with various people and various places, but also she interweaves those specific encounters within a broader and deeper framework.
For example, her description of the days she spent with the Russian scientist, Vladimir Romanovsky, taking samples of the permafrost in and around Fairbanks, Alaska – while watching out for mischievous wildlife and eating large amounts of Tostitos due to their crunch, which is known to stave off fatigue – leads to a much broader discussion about the nature of permafrost in general: what it is, the life history of it, what’s happening to it currently throughout so much of the Arctic region, and what that, in turn, means within the larger framework of climate change in general.
By the end of the book, Elizabeth Kolbert has led us through a great deal indeed about the science itself of global warming and climate change (and through it all, somehow making several terms like “foraminifera” – tiny single-celled organisms that live in the oceans and construct shells out of calcite – just another part of the overall conversation, in the same engaging style in which she introduced the fact noted above about the fatigue-fighting property of an oversized bag of Tostitos). She has done the same with the history of climate science and the history of how governments (particularly our own here in the U.S.) have dealt with the science (or have not dealt with it, as the case so heartbreakingly may be) both internally – on local and national levels – and in relation to other nations.
And, just as significantly, by the end of the book, she has led us through much that we might be able to do when we finally “give a damn,” as one man put it, who, when questioned, as he often is, about the political practicality of some of the goals he has in mind, turns the questioner’s attention to challenging issues we've faced in the past:
…I really think that’s the wrong question. All these things can be done.
I think it’s the kind of issue where something looked extremely difficult, and not worth it, and then people changed their minds. Take child labor. We decided we would not have child labor and goods would become more expensive. It’s a changed preference system. ...We said, “That’s a trade-off; we don’t want to do this anymore.” So we may look at this and say, “We are tampering with the earth.” The earth is a twitchy system. It’s clear from the record that it does things that we don’t fully understand. And we’re not going to understand them in the time period we have to make these decisions. We just know they’re there. We may say, “We just don’t want to do this to ourselves.” If it’s a problem like that, then asking whether it’s practical or not is really not going to help very much. Whether it’s practical depends on how much we give a damn. (142-3)
It may well be, as we look back on the present time, that through her beautifully written and yes, harrowing, book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, Elizabeth Kolbert will have been a critical help to scientists in passing on to enough of us non-scientists what it is they want us to “wake up” to and “give a damn” about…
--------------------------
As a minor note, I also wanted to mention that while waiting for delivery of the book (I ordered it online), I purchased the audio downloadable version (which was relatively inexpensive too, about $10, I believe, and which I later burned to 4 CDs). The unabridged audio version is read by the actress Hope Davis, and, if at all possible, I would highly recommend getting your hands on that as a companion piece to the print version (or the audio version on its own). Ms. Davis, too, did an exceptional job (somehow managing “foraminifera” and like terms as if she’d grown up with them in daily conversation). I purchased both for under $27, but I imagine the book is now available in libraries too. The book, aside from its notes, etc., is 187 pp, and the unabridged audio version lasts just less than 5 hours total.
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Finally, I am also thrilled to note that very soon, CCN’s new “Book Club” will be making its debut with one of the other highly touted recent books about this challenging subject (several reviewers have noted it as a “tour de force”) – Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. This is the book that Gen. Clark himself so highly recommended to one of his supporters, who asked him recently “What book would you most recommend?”
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The Real Science Team: Knightrider, Judy from NJ, archimedes, LindaG
To see the rest of our Real Science blog entries, click here.
Now *that* would be nice...
Oh, and I ran across this yesterday: Kolbert spent 5 days, I think it was, as a guest blogger for this particular online bookseller (not meant to be a plug here, ;-))... I just liked it... It gives a nice sense of the author. And it's pretty quick and easy to read, so I thought folks might like to see it:
Sounds like a terrific book. Yet another one for my growing list. I may just have to borrow it from you. 
carol4clark
General Wes Clark * * * * 4 Stars Over Texas
I think I'll read this book next.
Judy's our team leader for the subject coming up after we complete our present work on global warming/climate change...
She's working hard on considering global warming's twin issue, energy...
I hope folks will join us in discussions about that as well.
Just so everyone here can see what we're up against, be sure to watch these 60-second spots from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They're Orwellian. Seriously.
"CO2 - We call it life."
It's no wonder when you find out someone from AEI sits on the Board of Directors.
Patriotic? Provocative? Pissed off? Get your protest on at http://www.cafepress.com/fightinwords.
I like how the blogosphere is coming forward on this.
Here's RealClimate.org's response to this silliness (but well-financed silliness, to be sure):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/thank-you-for-emitting/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/21/AR2006052101183.html
Talks about the CEI ads among other things.
https://cf.iats.missouri.edu/news/NewsBureauSingleNews.cfm?newsid=9842
MU Professor Refutes National Television Ads Downplaying Global Warming
Engineering Professor Curt Davis says TV Spots are Misrepresenting His Research
A significant portion of its investors are pressing Exxon on its position on climate change. (They don't like Exxon's contrarian, and, consequently, unprepared, position.) - Excellent!
Thanks again Science Team.
For some reason, I used to like science when I was in elementary school, but later I thought of it as an overwhelming subject… Nope I am not your science girl, but it’s always good to know how our existance with nature is integrated by using facts and formulas... especially now with global warming. And this book must be helpful for a person like myself…. Now is there such thing as bilocation but in mental or reading capacity?
I prefer to lose with honesty than win with shame…
That's the sound of a person weighted down by books to be read. Nevertheless, one more--always one more--makes the list. This book, as well as The Weather Makers, can't be ignored. This is a wonderful interview. Thanks team.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.--J. V. Marley
Thanks so much for this! I will get this book! Elizabeth Kolbert’s style of informing may help someone like me that doesn't like being bogged down with detail without some story telling! LOL!
Great Review!!!! :)
I tell ya, I can't describe how pleased I am that CCN folks are getting at least a bit of exposure to these two books, Kolbert's and Flannery's...
This is an *extraordinary* subject to get a feel for, and our scientists are reaching out to us now, doing their best to do so (mostly a lot of fairly shy folks, ;-)), and these two celebrated books are a very important help to them in doing so...
If one or two of Clark's supporters pick up a copy of one or both of these (books/cd's) from one's local library or bookstore, I will be delighted beyond measure...
And hey, if *I* can understand and even feel comfortable with the information (well, comfortable in some ways, though certainly not in others) that Kolbert is sharing with me, then *anybody* can...
Ah, and once again, in the event anybody prefers to "listen" to books - Hope Davis' audio narration was a big help to me too...
I wonder how many other "uppity" companies like this are working quietly on what they hope will be "breakthoughs" along such lines... exciting to think about...
Thanks LindaG and Science team for all your work.
CCN and its Donut Team Hearts You.
And the person was joking thinking that this may be more real than we think w/ another hurricane season about to start...
Well... The thing is... as I learned in the Kolbert book... This cartoon is indeed closer to reality (at least for some places in the world) than many realize - my goodness...
The Netherlands, which has the most sophisticated structures in the world for flood protection, etc., and which so many turned to in thinking how engineers in the US may be able to work out some new protections for New Orleans and like places, is now in the process of changing how they're going to work with such issues for themselves, which includes "floating/amphibious" houses, businesses, farms, etc.:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/12/05/holland_goes_beyond_holding_back_the_tide/?page=1
Holland goes beyond holding back the tide
Nation endeavors to be climate-proof
HOEK VAN HOLLAND, Netherlands --
The towheaded lad plugging the dike, symbol of Holland's ancient determination to defy tide and storm, is loosening his finger just a bit.
In what amounts to a sea change for a country that is essentially built on reclaimed land, the Netherlands is quietly surrendering some of its hard-won ''polders" -- former seabed, river bottoms, and swamp -- back to the waters.
The government has begun acquiring thousands of acres of agricultural land and industrial strips along major waterways, which would be used as flood plains in periods of high water.
Dikes along these stretches of river will be lowered, repositioned, or, in some cases, removed.
In dry times, the flats could be used for agriculture, or even for envisioned ''floatable" factories and housing.
But when the rivers swell from winter rains, the land would serve as a natural buffer zone, thus softening the fury of the water by allowing it to spread, and, thus, lowering the risk of a disastrous breaching of the dikes.
On other fronts, Dutch contractors are building and selling ''amphibious" homes that rest on land for most of the time, but that can rise and float on flood waters.
Dutch architects and engineers are working on even more ambitious plans to construct floating farms, industrial plants, greenhouses, and apartment buildings -- including a proposed 12,000-house community, which would be able to bob above floods, near Schiphol International Airport, outside Amsterdam.
After centuries of protecting itself from sea storms and river floods, solely with ''hard" barriers, such as dikes and dams, the Netherlands is now endeavoring to make itself ''climate-proof." The plan involves greener, more resilient techniques to cope with the accelerated rise of rivers and sea levels that many climatologists expect to come with global warming.
More than 60 percent of the lands of the Netherlands -- and all its major cities -- either lie below sea level or are so low that the country would suffer regular, and severe, flooding without the dikes, seawalls, and massive storm barriers that hold the North Sea and the rivers at bay.
For centuries, Holland has girded itself with dams and dikes while keeping canal waters, groundwater, and runoff gushing back to the sea with thousands of water pumps. If the pumps ever ceased, the Netherlands would suffer serious flooding in six hours, and much of the country would revert to swamp in six months.
The pumps will keep chugging, and the Netherlands will continue bolstering dikes and seawalls. But in a move that is disputed among engineers and the Dutch themselves, the country is also planning greater reliance on flood plains and other natural barriers, such as sand dunes, salt marshes, and mud flats.
For the rest of the article:
hmmmmm.... ;-)
http://www.cbc.ca/north/story/nor-warming-icemelt.html
Scientists note stunning loss of ice, snow
Last updated May 18 2006 04:23 PM CDT
CBC News
From elders watching the movement of sea ice in Nunavut to climatologists studying satellite weather maps, people are amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.
Record-warm temperatures have taken their toll on ice cover in Canada's Arctic waters and snow cover on land.
"I've never seen it so wide open this time of year," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, talking about the body of water between Baffin Island and mainland Quebec. "It's just blue, blue as the bluest sky."
It's not just sea ice. Phillips said snow cover is fast disappearing across Nunavut. In Cape Dorset, there is typically 50 centimetres of snow on the ground in May. Now there are just two centimetres. And in Iqaluit, bare ground is exposed everywhere, when typically there is still 20 centimetres of snow cover.
Phillips, a senior climatologist with the federal weather agency, says winter temperatures were four to five degrees warmer than usual. Combined with the dramatic losses recorded in sea ice last summer, Phillips says the natural cycle hasn't had a chance to recover.
"There has been no rebounding back," he said. "The ice just hasn't had a chance to bounce back, to grow during the winter, during the cold season of the year.
"Essentially what's happening is there's been so much warm weather, week after week, month after month, season after season, the environment is just not behaving the way it should."
Ice cover has now dropped to a record low for the winter period.
That worries Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Col.
Serreze said April is generally the month with the maximum ice cover over the Arctic Ocean, and the loss this year is shocking.
"If we compare this April with all previous Aprils, there's hundreds of thousands of square kilometres less ice," he said.
Climatologists, biologists and people living in the area fear the shifting ice patterns are a sign of even deeper changes that will disrupt age-old cycles of plant and animal life, and even global weather patterns.
Serreze says researchers will be watching ice cover data carefully this summer, and many are already predicting the shrinkage in September will largely surpass last year's all-time high.
Serreze says sea ice loss has been the greatest along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
He says this winter a ship could have travelled east from London along Russia's Arctic Ocean coast, through the Bering Strait down to Tokyo.
Meanwhile, Phillips says people in Nunavut and the N.W.T. can expect the balmy weather to continue through the summer.
This is an *excellent* resource that I just found through a comment at RealClimate.org
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/4418_MythsvFacts_05.pdf (a pdf file)
This was put together in 2005 and written by
Dr. James Wang
SCIENTIST, CLIMATE AND AIR PROGRAM, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE
Dr. Michael Oppenheimer
PROFESSOR OF GEOSCIENCES AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
The Latest Myths and Facts on Global Warming
From the Introduction:
A vast majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is happening and that
it poses a serious threat to society. They also agree that it is being caused largely by
human activities that release greenhouse gases, such as burning fossil fuels in power
plants and cars and deforesting the land. This scientific consensus emerged gradually
over decades of research and debate. The current state of knowledge on climate is
summed up in the periodic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which are compiled by thousands of scientists. Unfortunately, much
of the American public remains unaware of this overwhelming scientific agreement.
Part of the blame for this lies with coordinated efforts within certain industries
to spread misinformation about global warming.
This report is intended to provide a comprehensive discussion of common myths
and misunderstandings regarding climate change. Our goal is to provide members of
Congress and their staff, journalists and the public with detailed, well-researched and
user-friendly information on these issues. This will allow readers to see that global
warming science is not split between two opposing camps, as the public may often
believe. Our rebuttals of myths are based on peer-reviewed, widely accepted scientific
publications, which are cited and listed at the end of the report. For a less technical
summary of only the most common myths, see the executive summary.
"This is a revolution of the mind." - Rebecca Dearborn
http://colbertbush.cf.huffingtonpost.com/
http://www.ornl.gov/
info/ornlreview/v37_2_04/article11.shtml
Excerpts
ORNL researchers have been tasked by DOE to develop the next generation of scientific networks to address the challenges of large science applications, such as moving large volumes of data at high speeds between science facilities and supercomputers.
Several ORNL networking projects, funded by the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, are under way to address these important networking problems.
DOE UltraScience Net
DOE UltraScience Net
The Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL has been tasked by DOE to develop the next generation of scientific networks to address the challenges of large science applications. The techniques developed in Oak Ridge will eventually filter out into the high end of the business world. Just as yesterday's scientific supercomputers have become today's central business and engineering computers, the same transfer will result in this network, called the DOE UltraScience Net, becoming the core of tomorrow's commercial networks.
Today's commercial networks are optimized for carrying huge numbers of small data streams. What big science needs are networks optimized for small numbers of large data streams and high precision control. High-energy physics, climate modeling, nanotechnology, fusion energy, astrophysics, and genomics are among the research areas that will benefit from the UltraScience Net. Computational steering and instrument control required to run experiments remotely place different types of demands on a network, making this task far more challenging than designing a network system solely for transferring data.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19210859-30417,00.html
Attenborough warms to idea of crusading
Britain's most popular naturalist tells Stuart Wavell why he is certain the planet is heating up, and issues a call to arms
May 22, 2006
LIKE many of the animals he observes, David Attenborough is a creature of habit. For half a century he has marked out his territory in natural history films with a remit to explain what he calls "the glory of life". Heavy sermonising is not his way.
Admiration for the veteran broadcaster, who turned 80 this month, has been tempered by chiding voices of late. An estimated billion people have seen his program, so why, ask critics, can't this most mesmerising of presenters use his platform to more outspoken effect? They thought he could have made the green message more explicit in his last series Planet Earth.
But a different Attenborough has now emerged. He's turned critic, assuming the mantle of wrathful prophet as he enters the battle for the planet against climate change.
Attenborough had kept silent on the subject of global warming during the debate on its validity. "I was very sceptical," he admits. His outlook changed when climatologists showed him graphs linking the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with rising temperatures.
"I was absolutely convinced this was no part of a normal climatic oscillation which the Earth has been going through, and that it was something else."
The result is a two-part BBC documentary that is is part of the broadcaster's Climate Chaos season, in which Attenborough looks at the impact of global warming and discovers what steps could save the planet from dramatic change.
It is another of his luminous productions -- but this time infused with a stark warning.
Attenborough found a compelling reason for sounding the alarm. "How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew about this and I did nothing?"
According to colleagues, he feels a strong public obligation. "He's very aware of the trust people hold in him," says one.
Attenborough was recently described as the most trusted man in Britain after Rolf Harris. This information sends him into a paroxysm of laughter that leaves him gasping: "Quite so ... thank you ... I don't think I need to say any more."
But he does, veering off to blame himself for his part in the desperate state of the planet. "We are now realising the consequences of the things we did: things I did as a boy, things my parents did," he says. "The carbon from the open fire that my parents burnt is still up in the atmosphere and will remain there for 100 years ... Unwittingly over my lifetime and my parents' lifetimes, we have been stacking up and thickening the carbon dioxide layer.
"We didn't know then, but now we do. No one could blame my parents for having a coal fire, but they could blame me."
Attenborough agrees there is little, if anything, we can do to reverse the backlog of carbon dioxide for the next 100 years. So what does he think of the assertions of Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish academic who says we should resign ourselves to a temperature increase of 2C over the next century, by which time a replacement will have been found for fossil fuel?
While acknowledging that a new energy source is "a real possibility", Attenborough takes issue with Lomborg. "If we don't take stock now, and even if we get to this paradisiacal situation of having consequence-free energy, the carbon dioxide tanker will still go sailing on for another 100 years."
The BBC's Climate Chaos season shows a range of climate indicators, from the examination of anaesthetised polar bears, which are declining in numbers, to climate modelling, explained by top scientists in their field.
The carbon footprint of an average US family is illustrated by showing black blocks floating over their heads and expanding with the decisions they take. Attenborough explains how seemingly trivial measures such as only filling the kettle with the amount needed, wearing a jumper when it's cold and turning down the thermostat by one degree can produce large savings.
For the presenter, such prudence has acquired a moral dimension. "The moral attitude of the Old Testament, which was that the world was there for us to plunder and we could take what we liked from it, has governed our thinking until now. What we need to recognise is that the world is not there for plundering. It is a moral issue for us not to waste energy. I'm old enough to remember the war, when it wasn't that we thought it would make a difference if we left food on the plate, it was wrong to waste food. And it's wrong to waste energy."
He envisages a new reconciliation with nature and even new ways of living that are not based on relentless growth. "I get very worried when economists tell me that national economies are in terrible trouble unless they grow. It sounds dreadful to me."
Attenborough may be labelled alarmist for embracing the climatologists' creed. He is certainly sensitive to criticism that his programs have depicted nature as red in tooth and claw.
"It's an accusation I am well accustomed to fielding," he says grimly. "The allegation would be much more serious if it were suggested that we were portraying the world as a garden of eden in which the lion lay down with the lamb."
He maintains the time devoted to footage of animals hunting and killing represents only a small proportion of that given to filming "more innocuous occupations". The problem is that as urban dwellers become removed from the real world, "we don't see our own deaths, let alone animals' deaths".
Doesn't he find the relentless imperatives of the wild depressing? "Well, I don't think it is," he says. "I eat steak and I have accommodated the thought that I am part of a system that includes omnivores. I am to some degree a carnivore."
He reflects that a wild animal's death is preferable to the human variety. "Inasmuch as everything dies, to die violently and swiftly could be seen as a better prospect to look forward to than a long drawn-out and painful death. We lose sight of that."
The Sunday Times
ABC TV is negotiating to buy the Climate Chaos series
that is awesome! so many great quotes! And he is so loved by millions. Great catch -thanks for posting.
Yes, I do love hearing that Attenborough is stepping up and has completed a project on the subject (one which I see ABC is seeking to run), ;-).
An op-ed in NYT says we need to get far more serious and revolutionary in our tackling of climate change... far beyond what even Gore or others suggest in order to cut emissions to the degree leading scientists (like Mahlman and Hansen) are urging to be necessary (Mahlman says a cut of 75% is needed) - a call for far more courageous leadership to take us through something like one of the plans suggested.
The report of 850 new coal-fired power plants being built by China, India, and the U.S. was an eye-opener.
Time for me to go delete some outdated email and reduce the amount of electricity used by email servers.
...investors (or at least a significant portion of them) are thinking at this time:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/6122#comment-104011
How encouraging is that that Exxon-Mobile is hearing an ear-full not just from the groups it's long been lobbying against, but internally?
And I've long imagined that it would be the oil companies that could really lead us in this if they ever really got behind the energy crisis - they could become the *energy* leaders, considering all the infrastructure they already have in place and the scale of business they deal in...
Maybe we're witnessing the beginning of a paradigm shift that, however reluctanctly, even these big oil Goliath's will have to get behind. Well, they will if shareholders such as these have anything to say about it...
Good, good, good...
Oh! What am I thinking! I almost forgot about the welfare of all those employed at CEI, that glorious company that was behind those recent contrarian ads... Oh no! What will *they* do if their biggest funder turns away from them??? Oh! The humanity!
"This is a revolution of the mind." - Rebecca Dearborn
http://colbertbush.cf.huffingtonpost.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/movies/22gore.html
'An Inconvenient Truth': Al Gore's Fight Against Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: May 22, 2006
The frustrations of a man whose long-sought goal remains out of reach are vividly on display in the first few minutes of "An Inconvenient Truth," a new documentary about former Vice President Al Gore's quest to spur action against global warming.
Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim, director of "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary that focuses on Mr. Gore's efforts to fight global warming.
He is tapping on his laptop, adding yet another tweak to the illustrated climate lecture he has given more than 1,000 times since 1989 in ever more sophisticated ways: first with flip charts, then slides, then a mix of digital imagery, animation and high-tech stagecraft, and now through this film itself, which was screened at Cannes and opens on Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles.
He laments being unable so far to awaken the public to what he calls a "planetary emergency" despite evidence that heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases are warming the earth, and even after Hurricane Katrina and Europe's deadly 2003 heat wave, which he calls a foretaste of much worse to come.
"I've been trying to tell this story for a long time, and I feel as if I've failed to get the message across," Mr. Gore muses.
The question now is whether the documentary, with the potential to reach millions of people instead of a roomful of listeners at a time, can do the job.
For the moment, opinions on its prospects range from hopeful to scornful, not so much a reflection on the film's quality as the vast distance between combatants in the fight over what to do, or not do, about human-caused warming.
In a recent interview in Manhattan, Mr. Gore said he was convinced that Americans would move on the issue, not just because of his documentary (and companion book), but also because of the vivid nature of recent climate-related disasters.
"The political system, like the environment, is nonlinear," he said. "In 1941 it was impossible for us to build 1,000 airplanes. In 1942 it was easy. As this pattern becomes ever more clear, there will be a rising public demand for action."
"An Inconvenient Truth" came about after Laurie David, a prominent Hollywood environmentalist, saw Mr. Gore give a short version of his presentation two years ago at an event held just before the premiere of the climate disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow."
Ms. David said she was stunned by the power of Mr. Gore's talk and helped organize presentations in New York and Los Angeles for people involved in the news media, environmental groups, business and entertainment. By the time she had done the Los Angeles event, "I realized we had to make a movie out of it," she said. "What's the guy going to do? There are not physically enough hours in the day to travel to every town and city to show this thing."
She helped recruit a team of filmmakers and investors and, after pressing Mr. Gore, persuaded him to be followed by a film crew.
In the film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, Mr. Gore comes across as a professorial guide who uses science, humor, his own life lessons, depictions of perilous climate-driven events and even cartoons to make his case.
Mr. Gore — who said he had veto power over all elements of the film but did not exercise it — tries just about every possible tactic to make his points.
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In interviews and e-mail exchanges, many climate specialists who have seen the film quibbled about details but tended to agree with Eric Steig, a University of Washington geochemist who posted his reactions at the Web log realclimate.org after a recent Seattle screening: "The small errors don't detract from Gore's main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change."
Initial media coverage, rather than focusing on the film's message, has examined it mainly through the lens of presidential politics.
Mr. Gore and his staff have repeatedly swept aside questions about 2008, insisting that Mr. Gore is not running for office, but is racing to save the planet.
But many Democrats are watching Mr. Gore closely in the belief that he could emerge as a strong opponent from the left to the woman viewed as the front-runner for her party's nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. The film does not do much to dispel this thesis. While it is being billed as an environmental call to arms, it begins, ends, and is peppered throughout with politics.
The film opens with Mr. Gore greeting an audience with his most famous, and anguished, punch line: "I'm Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States."
It includes a few shots at Republicans including a piece of news film from the 1992 presidential campaign showing the first President Bush saying that Mr. Gore was so environmentally extreme that "we'll be up to our necks in owls and out of work for every American."
The film concludes with Mr. Gore stating that the one element missing in the fight against global warming was political will.
In a line that some have interpreted as a hint of electoral ambitions, Mr. Gore adds, "In America, political will is a renewable resource."
Some scientists said they were worried that Mr. Gore's inherently political nature would further polarize the issue and distract from the underlying science. But some environmental specialists played down the political angle, saying that if someone were seeking a political boost, climate change was hardly the issue to address.
"There are lots of things he could do with his life, and this is what he's chosen," said Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute, a private research group in Washington. "I admire him as a political leader who's chosen to use his platform to speak about this issue, and to do so in both scientific and moral terms."
One moment he is delivering his climate talk before an invited audience on a Los Angeles sound stage, rising in an electric lift to point to a soaring graph illustrating the buildup of heat-trapping gases. And in the next there are golden-hued restagings of wrenching moments in Mr. Gore's life. These include the loss of his sister Nancy to lung cancer, a subject explored as he discusses how industries, from tobacco to oil and coal, have run expensive media and lobbying campaigns to emphasize uncertainties in the science that points to risks of their products.
Mr. Gore tries to connect the dots between human-driven warming and recent shifts in mosquito-borne diseases, drought patterns, rates of extinction, storm strength and the pace of melting of polar ice sheets and sea ice on the Arctic Ocean.
In a lawyerly way, he often chooses his words to avoid making direct causal links that most scientists say are impossible to substantiate, but uses imagery and implication to convey that humans are fiddling with planet-scale forces.
Longtime critics of Mr. Gore and opponents of cuts in greenhouse gases who attended a Washington screening last Wednesday quickly assembled lists of complaints about his portrayal of the science, saying the dangers of warming are grossly overstated.
The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a clear jab at both the film and recent news media coverage focused on worst-case climate risks, unveiled two television commercials last week that amounted to a defense of the main gas linked to warming, each with the tag line: "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."
The scientists at realclimate.org are happy to note that some prominent holdouts are coming around about what's happening. Here's some of the comments over there as a few of these things are coming online. (I've mentioned above about Attenborough.)
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Today's NYT (23 May, 2006) had a commentary on Al Gore's movie by conservative columnist John Tierney ("Gore pulls his punches", http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/johntierney/index.html -- subscription required). Aside from some gratuitous comments on how likeable or unlikeable Gore is in the film, the comments show an interesting shift in the pushback from the conservative wing. Tierney says "Scientists recognized the greenhouse effect long ago, but the question was how much difference it would make. And until fairly recently, when evidence of global warming accumulated, many non-evil economists doubted that the risks justified the costs of the proposed remedies." As if we didn't have basic physics to tell us what was likely to happen? As if the Global Climate Coalition didn't spend a decade trying to convince people that all the scientists were wrong, using bogus claims about water vapor, solar forcing, what have you? It's clear the shift in the playbook is happening: now the denialists are going to move away from a denial of the warming, and towards a denial of harms. Apropos of this, Tierney offers the immensely reassuring words "... civilization may just survive after all."
What's actually more interesting in Tierney's commentary is that what he really calls Gore on the carpet for is avoiding mention of concrete actions that might be effective but be (or appear) painful: notably, carbon taxes. It's unclear whether Tierney is actually supporting carbon taxes, but it appears he is at least toying with the idea. If the debate starts to shift into the question of the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions, that would be progress indeed. Tierney suggests that this (plus the possible benefits of more nuclear power) are "inconvenient truths" that belonged in the movie along with Gore's main point.
Comment by raypierre — 23 May 2006 @ 11:21 pm
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In Britain, there is another convert.
David Attenborough, the doyen of Natural history programmes (to the British,
he *is* the voice of natural history), has finally accepted the reality
of AGW.
Consistently voted the most trusted celebrity in the country, he is presenting
two programmes on the subject this wednesday and next week.
Things may just have got harder for the sceptics over here.
Comment by john mann — 24 May 2006 @ 4:54 am
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On today's (May 24) New York Times op-ed page, Gregg Easterbrook's "Finally Feeling the Heat" elaborates on this statement: "As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert." In line with comments like Raypierre's 112, I'd be interested to read comments about this piece too. Thanks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/opinion/24easterbrook.html
Comment by Steven T. Corneliussen — 24 May 2006 @ 5:52 am
There's another relevant article by Michael Shermer in the latest issue of Scientific American.
"Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming...Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism."
Comment by Brian Jackson — 24 May 2006 @ 9:34 am
(via energybulletin.net)
an excerpt:
Al Gore Revisits Global Warming, With Passionate Warnings and Pictures
Michiko Kakutani, NY Times
...with the emerging consensus on global warming today, Mr. Gore's passionate warnings about climate change seem increasingly prescient. He has revived the slide presentation about global warming that he first began giving in 1990 and taken that slide show on the road, and he has now turned that presentation into a book and a documentary film, both called "An Inconvenient Truth." The movie (which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday) shows a focused and accessible Gore — "a funnier, more relaxed and sympathetic character" than he was as a candidate, said The Observer, the British newspaper — and has revived talk in some circles of another possible Gore run for the White House.
As for the book, its roots as a slide show are very much in evidence. It does not pretend to grapple with climate change with the sort of minute detail and analysis displayed by three books on the subject that came out earlier this spring ("The Winds of Change" by Eugene Linden, "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery and "Field Notes From a Catastrophe" by Elizabeth Kolbert), and yet as a user-friendly introduction to global warming and a succinct summary of many of the central arguments laid out in those other volumes, "An Inconvenient Truth" is lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective.
...in this multimedia day of shorter attention spans and high-profile authors, "An Inconvenient Truth" (the book and the movie) could play a similar role [like Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring] in galvanizing public opinion about a real and present danger. It could goad the public into reading more scholarly books on the subject, and it might even push awareness of global warming to a real tipping point — and beyond.
(24 May 2006)
David Roberts of Gristmill summarizes:
The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani -- the most feared, worshiped, loathed, influential book reviewer on the literary scene -- gives Al Gore's new book a strong thumbs up.
For full article, click here.
What is it about these "Kolbert’s" & "Colberts" anyway?! A lovingly written review- can't wait to check it out. The other title you mentioned sounds good also. Any chance of getting either author to Yearly Kos?