Notes on "An Inconvenient Sequel"

[MisterSwig]

I recently watched Al Gore's environmentalist documentary called An Inconvenient Sequel. At no point did he address any serious objections to his position on global warming. The film is mostly about his travels around the world and focuses on advancing the latest narrative: that extreme weather events are evidence that we need climate balance in order to end the climate crisis.

 

Since Gore primarily focused on easily dismissed emotion-based rhetoric, I just have some random notes taken while watching the film:

 

1. Gore churns out disciples through his Climate Leadership Training program. He begins each session by showing a picture of the Earth from outer space. This helps establish an emotional bond with our "shared home," since we can see the whole Earth in one image and thus conceptualize it as an object which needs our protection, like a little baby. Protect it from what? From whatever Gore declares as its enemy.

 

2. "Denial organizations" - Gore's term for his opposition. These are groups that argue that "even if everything Gore says is true, it's going to cost so much money it's going to cripple the economy." So, basically, Gore's harshest "deniers" just have a problem with the economics. Solve the money problem, and his critics will come around to his environmental position. How is he going to solve the money problem? Altruism, of course...

 

3. Gore attends the Paris Climate Change Conference. India is the thorn in his side. They argue that, as a poor, developing industrial nation, they still require cheap fossil fuels to flourish. They can't afford to develop more technologically advanced forms of energy. Gore's solution: convince SolarCity to give India its revolutionary solar cell technology for free. The haves must sacrifice for the have-nots in the name of climate balance.

 

4. Emotional Rhetoric: we use the atmosphere "as an open sewer"; warmer weather causes more mosquitoes that spread Zika; "rain bombs" in Tuscon and more intense storms in general; "every storm is different now because of the climate crisis"; "dirty" coal plants; climate change is a civil rights movement akin to "abolition, women's suffrage, anti-apartheid, gay rights"; "fight like your world depends on it."

 

5. Extreme Weather - Gore points to flooding in Miami Beach (Sept. 2015) and implies it's due to mere "high tide." I researched the incident. Gore failed to mention that it was a seasonal king tide during a super moon, and the flooding is a historical, expected issue.

 

6. Solar Power - Gore points to Chile as a great example of the potential of solar power as a means of "decarbonizing economies." But he fails to mention that solar power is more economical in Chile because the country has no (or few) fossil fuel resources, Argentina stopped supplying it with natural gas, it's going through a terrible drought (less hydro), and it has a giant desert (the Atacama) perfectly suited for massive solar farms.

 

7. Heat-trapping CO2 - Gore's belief in man-made global warming seems to hinge on the assertion that more CO2 traps more heat in the atmosphere, thus increasing global temperatures. He evades ice core data that suggests otherwise. So is there a way to prove via scientific experimentation that CO2 does not trap heat in the atmosphere? Or that there is a limit to how much heat it can trap? 

Edited November 6, 2017 by MisterSwig

[William Hobba]

Gore is an idiot.  Forget him until he debates his views with actual climate scientists that have done a process called attribution - look it up if you don't know what that is.   Until he does that, which he will not because they will show him for what he is - ignore him - or just read it for a laugh.

For example it is known that recently for the first time in quite a while the north pole went above zero.  Is that climate change - or just a slightly abnormal weather pattern - only investigation with scientists writing peer reviewed literature will determine that.  As far as I know it has not been done.  Gore acts as if things like that show we are doomed unless we change our ways.  Its purely emotive - not scientific.  I think he knows it so will never subject his alarmist view to proper scrutiny.

Thanks

Bill