I assume you have seen the stupid anti-Gore, YouTube cartoon that has been popping up on various blogs and news sites last week. If not, don’t bother watching it. It is bad and annoying.
Furthermore, if you are a linux user, you will be even more annoyed at the completely inappropriate use of Tux the Penguin image. Including the beloved Open Source mascot in a anti-intellectual propaganda movie is in a very bad taste.
But it gets better. Apparently, this movie was not made by some half-retarded, inbred, Bush loving, brainwashed republican amateur. It was made by a professional PR firm called DCI. These guys have a really bad rep according to Sourcewatch. In the past they have worked for all kinds of evil corporations such as for cigarette companies and Microsoft. One of their current clients is (surprise, surprise…) Exxon!
Here is a CNN News coverage of this story.
Let’s summarize. Exxon uses a shady PR firm, to create an amateurish movie that is distributed on Youtube to subversively spread FUD about All Gore’s movie. 
Here is an interesting tidbit. Youtube is full of politically charged videos attacking politicians on both sides of the isle. Some of these may also be made by PR firms – but then again, it doesn’t really matter. Amateurs churn these things out daily, so it’s not like one more clip could make a difference. So how come news agencies decided to investigate this one?
I think it is because YouTube generation is to smart and educated to believe in anti-Gore propaganda. They can easily push this sort of crap on backwards, ultra-conservative, elderly republicans who do not understand technology. But if you have the know-how to create a video and post it on YouTube you must have been exposed to reliable evidence which shows that global warming is real. Someone who creates a video like this one, is interesting because he really stands out among his peers.
via thoughtcrimes
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You give people too much credit.
This is america. keep a little less faith our generation. not all of them are as knowledgeable as us. if you want proof, i recommend a cross country roadtrip.
Note that I specifically said “YouTube generation”. By that I mean the people who are smart enough to figure out how to connect their camera to their computer and are able to perform some rudimentary video editing, and/or animation.
The vast majority of people in this country are indeed stupid. But they usually do not post amateur movies on the internet because:
1. computers frighten them
2. they think intenret is made of tubes, and they do not want to clog it
3. they think the internets is evil
4. they think they are too cool to use technology
5. all of the above
Most of the Web 2.0 content these days is created by small elite of intelligent and educated people who express themselves via blogs, vlogs, podcasts and other modern internet media. The anti-intellectual movements such as ID, creationism and global-warming denial are more popular among the undereducated, unintelligent, unwashed masses.
I must respectfully disagree with you in your assertion that human caused global warming is real. Remember global cooling in the 1970s? Even before that, there have been articles warning us of the next Ice Age or runaway increases in temperatures, none of which have come true. Newsweek warned us that not only would decreasing global temperatures reduce the length of the growing season, but would also result in more weather extremes, including more floods, droughts, more powerful hurricanes, a higher frequency of tornadoes, and even localized areas of warming. Funny, it seems the only thing which prevents “extreme weather” is a completely static climate, which the Earth has never experienced.
We have somewhat “accurate” temperature data for only the past 150 years or so, and the accuracy of anything prior to weather satellites is even up for debate (how accurately can you read a mercury or alcohol thermometer? To within 0.1 degree?), not to mention the possibility of skewed data due to the urban heat island effect.
Dramatically rising sea levels as recorded by satellites? Only after the IPCC inserted a “correction factor” into the data.
Al Gore’s movie is FUD, due to it’s misrepresentation of facts, statistics, and numerous inconsistencies. The use of the infamous “Hockey Stick Graph” (which is falsified, period) seriously affects the credibility of this film.
The recent drop in global temperatures seems to be correlated with a decrease in sunspot activity (the 11 year cycle was supposed to bottom out in 2007 sometime, and start to pick up again in early 2008…it didn’t). Of course, correlation doesn’t imply causation, but there is some evidence that increased solar activity (and hence an increase in solar wind flux) reduces incoming cosmic radiation into the Earth’s atmosphere, which reduces electron ionization and low level cloud formation (which overall would result in an increase global temperature, due to an overall reduction in albedo). The converse also appears true.
What this means is that a small change in solar input is amplified by indirectly affecting cloud formation, which would increase the weighting solar activity should be given in climate models. This doesn’t prove that the sun is primarily responsible for the past 30 year increase in temperature (and the recent downturn), even if global temperatures do correlate with sunspot activity, but the carbon dioxide and temperature correlation is also just as unproven (science doesn’t rigorously prove things, anyway, it only disproves them…and besides, consensus science isn’t real science). The “consensus” prior to Einstein’s work was that Newtonian physics held regardless of the velocity of an object. Science is based on hypothesis and experiment (and it’s hard to conduct full scale experiments on Earth’s long term climate, for obvious reasons. Computer models can theoretically do the trick…but there are way way way too many variables to accurately model our climate over the long term, and besides, we don’t understand all the underlying mechanisms anyway).
Before you dismiss me as a conservative Bible-beating blue collar blowhard, I assure you that you’d only be correct me about me being a blowhard.
I don’t prescribe to the traditional two party system…I identify with neither party, and do not have any fantasies involving religion, either. I believe there is nothing wrong with conservation, and reducing dependence on petroleum (foreign or domestic). The Iraq Occupation is illegal and shortsighted, IMHO, and has to do with oil, period. Any development and investment towards long term sustainability, reduced resource use, and renewable energy are all great goals, in my book (if not for the “helping the environment” cliche, then for us, helping us to become less global, more local, and get off of the limited resource of petroleum, the production of which peaked in 2006, and probably won’t increase again, ever).
What I do have a problem with is using dishonesty and fear-mongering to obtain these goals. Making carbon dioxide a pollutant and dismantling our industrial economy are silly and short sighted solutions to a problem which may not exist (assuming that the majority of climate variability is natural and not affected by human activities). What about other greenhouse gases, like methane? Will that become a pollutant, too, forcing livestock farmers to pay a tax on the methane production of their animals? Or perhaps water vapor? Actually, will I have to pay a carbon tax for breathing, since I’m emitting carbon dioxide?
Conservatives have always had their God given morals and anti-abortion sentiment to force on others. Now, with “Human Caused Climate Change”, liberals can now use science as a basis to pass legislation to enforce their values on others, to “protect the Earth”. I hate to say it, but it seems extremely self centered to believe our activities are having any substantial effect on the Earth’s climate. It harks back of the belief of an Earth centric solar system (which, at first thought, seems logical…heck, we’re not moving, but the sun is moving around us, as well as the planets and stars move around Earth. Therefore, we must be in the middle, and stationary. Of course, we know it’s not really that simple.)
The other problem I have with the Global Warming fear mongering is that it, like the War on Terrorism, is a problem without borders. A problem requiring a Global solution. In other words, a World Government, or the “NWO” as some call it. Individual nations acting in their rational self interest can’t solve these “problems” on their own…a world government might have some advantages, but I think the potential disadvantages far outweigh any advantages, at least in the long term.