Look into my eyes and say that.
Posted on 06/14/2006 7:32:51 AM PDT by SmithL
By far, the most terrifying film you'll ever see.
It will shake you to your core.
A film that has shocked audiences everywhere they've seen it.
There's nothing scarier. …
If these lines from a movie trailer make you think you're about to see the next big summer horror blockbuster, then you're in for a surprise. For it turns out that the most terrifying movie of the summer -- the film that has audiences on the edge of their seats, gripping their popcorn tubs in panic and grabbing on to their dates -- is a documentary on the perils of global warming.
Directed by David Guggenheim, "An Inconvenient Truth" is the brainchild of former Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore. Gore figures prominently in the film as narrator and lecturer, gallivanting all over the world to speak to adoring audiences about climate change. The film is largely in homage to Gore himself, with his many personal tragedies, including losing the 2000 presidential election, as backdrop to his newfound role as prophet of doom. Gore warns us that humankind has only 10 years on its current path before we're all toast.
But despite Gore's dire predictions and the over-the-top trailer, which promises scenes of death and destruction, the film itself is a dull affair. Most of it consists of Gore giving lectures with infantile visual aids, including cartoons that seem designed for 2-year-olds. Now and then he throws in an inspiring quote, providing some touchy-feely, Dr. Phil-like moments.
Then there are the scenes of Gore staring pensively out his limousine window as his gloomy narrative drones on in the background. Much like his nostalgic reveries for his idyllic childhood on an estate/farm, Gore seems to want to hearken back to a simpler time before modern technology came
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Look into my eyes and say that.
Another great article by Cinnamon Stillwell. It must be lonely for her as a conservative at the San Francisco Chronicle.
When I clicked through, the first ad attached to the article by Google was:
Reappearance of Christ
He is physically in the world now & will soon be heard & seen by all!
[URL omitted]
How much of Google does AlGore own?
A vacuous assertion of opinion.
Just a reminder to everyone... Ted Danson was saying the same thing about 12 years ago!!!
Sir:
Michael Shermer should rename his colum The Credulous Inquirer. To rely on Professor Al Gore, whose PhDs in chemistry and physics, along with his world-famous expertise in climatology, make him the preeminent authority on global warming, to flip ones opinion certainly ranks right up there in the world class of credulity.
Mr. Shermer forgets the fact that 30 years of satellite measurements--corroborated by weather-balloon data--fail to reveal any warming whatever. Worse, he ignores the brevity of human lifetimes. Climate moves on geological timescales. A true skeptic would reply to Mr. Gore's fatuous maunderings, "show me 10,000 years [or better yet 100,000 years] of anchored satellite data, and then we can begin to discuss the question of whether human-caused global warming is taking place."
As for Mr. Sachs' companion piece, "sustainable" is one of those words which should cause a sane man to reach for his six-gun. Both global-warming doomsayers and "sustainability" salesmen are pursuing hidden agendas. The "solutions" to the "problems" they advertise always include bigger government, less freedom, higher taxes, more regulation, and more and bigger bureaucracies. They are attempting to panic governments into taking actions which would never succeed if subjected to a popular vote.
--Boris
</b>oops</b>.
Astute, profound and extremely relevant!!! He's still "reinventing/re-engineering government!" He's the leading GovernMental EnvironMentalist of the era and a whacko of the new world order!!!
Gore apparently spent summers on the estate, er, farm. Tough childhood ;-)
There's nothing scarier. …manbearpig.
Counterpoint: Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No
You should have said something about the hockey stick from Mann et al. 1998. Most skeptics are using that now.
The ice-age scare was there. It wasn't as well-orchestrated as this global warming scare is, but only because the enviros had other fish to fry, so to speak, specifically, massive global famine. The Club of Rome had us all starving (according to their scientific models) by sometime in the late 80s. And then there was the Nuclear Freeze mania, with its doom and gloom of nuclear winter. So yes, the ice-age scare got pushed into the back pages, but it was trotted out for awhile before the other Big Scarey Reasons To Hate America And Capitalism trumped it.
Today, many "scientists" are much more blantantly political and have thrown in with the left and the left has put all its eggs into the global warming basket because (as many freepers have pointed out) it's a perfect doomsday scenario. There's no time-limit. The left can go on predicting it until the next ice age actually does begin.
It was largely unsupported by any scientific data or conclusions, which is the point of the Web site for which I provided the link.
The current global warming trend, both causes and implications, has a much better established scientific foundation.
I seem to remember an Ayn Rand essay from around 1969 that said they always chose 10 years. Close enough to be scary, long enough so that if doom fails to materialize, most people won't remember anyone said it would.
Yes, you're right. The attempted ice-age-scare was merely one of many attempts; the enviros getting warmed up, as it were. Their Big One in the 80s was Nuclear Freeze. They succeeding in convincing a large number of suckers around the world that the only way to stave off nuclear war was the Freeze, and here in the US, they shut down nuke-power. So they moved on from ice-age-scare to nuke-freeze and now to global warming, which is the ultimate scare-tactic because you can prove it with any set of data you want. Getting warm? That's global warming. Getting cool? That's an effect of global warming. Too much rain? Warming. Too little rain? Warming.
It's the perfect socialist ploy.
"Better established foundation"? Really?
Your characterization above is a generalization that overlooks specific effects which are predicted in a warming Earth. For example, one effect is that warming should lead to more coastal precipitation and less precipitation in the continental interiors. So yes, "too much rain" and "too little rain" are both predicted, but with a specific pattern. The opposite pattern is not predicted.
The other scenario, a cooling which could be fairly drastic and abrupt, is predicated on shifts in the oceanic thermohaline circulation which could happen but which are still deemed unlikely. If that shift doesn't happen, a regular warming trend is predicted (albeit with normal variability year-to-year).
"Better established foundation"? Really?
Yes, I think that's a reasonable statement.
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