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Friday, June 30, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

Caught Al Gore's brilliant and passionate film about the thin ice upon which are we skating in regard to the future of our children and grandchildren. It was supremely difficult to resist pondering what America's recent history might have been if the winner of the popular vote (and with little doubt the electoral college) in 2000 was currently nearing the middle of his second term.

The reality of global warming is set forth in such a sublimely visual way that the dumbest cluck on the planet would get the message by optic osmosis. Gore also deftly punctures the smug sanctimony of nay-sayers who call nearly a thousand peer-reviewed scientific journal articles "pseudoscience" while citing supercilious pap promulgated by deceptively named organizations that are really
fronts for the corporate interests with the most to lose by taking the steps necessary to scale back our carbon-loading of the atmosphere.

Which got me nostalgic for my brief interaction with a right-wing blogger by the name of Jason Coleman. Jason is a personable guy, clearly bright, somewhere in his mid-thirties or so I would hazard to guess. For a while we went at it regarding the subject of climate change (among other things), both on
my blog and his, but I soon realized that the debate was pointless.

Mr. Coleman has continued to rail against what he calls the "junk science" of global change, citing dubious sources such as the industry affiliated think tank the Hoover Institution. Mr. Coleman purports to be a scientist, but as far as I can see his brand of "science" appears to be writing code for computer games, not exactly what I would call science scholarship. You can go the top of his blog and search "global warming" to see more of his perspective.

The reason I bring this up is not to single out Mr. Coleman, with whom I would probably be able to to sling back a few cold ones without us shooting each other. It's to show you just what we are up against.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Grif,

I'm not Jason Coleman from Big Huge games.

You and I just come from two different worldviews. Yours follows Al Gore, and mine doesn't.

He lost me 20 years ago when he first started saying the world would end in 10 if we didn't do something.

Perhaps if he practiced what he preaches and didn't get so unnecessarily alarmist and armageddonist he'd win more converts to the Luddite religion.

--Jason