I watched Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth last night and, I must say, it was very good. Hopefully it will serve as a wake up call to those who dismiss climate change as a myth. Unfortunately though, I think those who watch it will do so because they have an interest in this area and those who don’t believe in climate change will never watch it.
Some interesting facts which came out of the movie – for instance Al debunks the notion that scientists disagree about climate change. He pointed out that in a study of over 900 scientific papers on global warming (a randomised selection of 10% of all scientific papers published in the area in the last 10 years) not one scientific paper came out against global warming.
Whereas the same study looked at over 600 newspaper reports on global warming and 53% of them came out against climate change.
In the same way that the tobacco industry tried to tell us that smoking is not bad for our health, it looks like the petroleum industry is now trying to debunk global warming and right now, it is winning the PR war.
You may be interested in reading Professor Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on the economics of climate change. I saw him give a presentation on it yesterday.
Hi Tom, like the site, inspiring and good for all the techie stuff that I am crap at. On climate change and the petroleum industry in which I am a cog, I would say to those who think/claim that climate change is the fault of the petroleum industry, stop driving cars, don’t use any plastic. Then tell us how you are doing.
As for Al Gore, he seems like a convincing enough guy but don’t you feel that there is an ulterior motive?
Cheers Tim
Hey Tim – thanks for the kind words and for stopping by and commenting.
your point on the petroleum industry is the same point the tobacco industries used to make about cigarettes – the tobacco industry isn’t responsible as long as people voluntarily smoke. It is a bit of a cop out of an argument to be honest.
As for Al Gore’s motives, personally I don’t care if he has ulterior motives as long as what he is saying is accurate. In any case, Al Gore has been singing this song since the 70’s (long before it was fashionable) so if he has ulterior motives, he hasn’t achieved them yet!
Hi Tom,
I can see how it may seem like a poor argument and maybe I was too simplistic in my formulation, but there are some benefits to be had from oil, and all the byproducts associated are not all bad, plastics being the biggest.
Tobacco has little or no benefit to anyone.
Personally I believe that the usage of oil will change with the further developement of bio-diesels and hydrogen technology, the trick will be to convince countries like China and India to develop these also. As I said in my previous comment I am a cog in the industry where there are many cogs, and often it is easy to slag off and blame something that many are responsible for, even those blaming are responsible.
In Ireland, the sugar beet production could make alcohol for example, not necessarily in the old sugar plants but build new ones, the money is there and it’s not rocket science, all it needs is political will. Importing alcohol from Brazil where rainforest is destroyed to grow sugar cane is crazy.
Anyway, like a lot of my blogs the stuff pours out before I think too much about it, reading a comment again after a reply puts it in perspective. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t want a cleaner environment except this biker we had as a cook on the ship once, he had a tatoo “FTW” (fuck the world), nice.
Cheers Tim
Tim,
there’s a lot of truth in what you say and the petroleum industry isn’t entirely to blame.
Lack of political leadership and will is probably the main culprit.
If George Bush had diverted all the money he squandered on trying to secure the Iraqi oil, in research into renewable energy instead we’d be in a very different world today!