Tuesday, December 15, 2009

An Inconvenient Al

Well, after seeing it parodied for years, I finally watched Algore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

My first question is “What was this movie about?” The ‘inconvenient truth’ seems to be Al himself! Most of the movie is spent showing him either giving his slide show to adoring audiences or backstage before and after a showing, including the applause. Or it tells some tale of his childhood or some personal tragedy. Throughout most of the film, the personal reminiscences seem like nonsequitors, spliced in for emotional impact only, not moving his ‘scientific’ narrative forward to any conclusion other than that he’s had some bad luck. How is that the fault of Global Warming?

He reaches lots and lots of conclusions without ever explaining exactly how he got there. Bold-faced assertions that some dire consequence will happen in the future without the back-up of real data makes them totally meaningless.

He several times throughout the film says that some friend of his gave him pictures or evidence that supports his conclusions but never shares who these people are. Are we just supposed to trust him that he knows important people who are ‘in the know’?

There are lots and lots of ‘maybe’s in this as well. Well, maybe I’ll win the lottery, too, but I’m not making major financial decisions based on any future lottery winnings. Making decisions that undermine our economy based on a series of improvable ‘maybe’s is just as foolish.

The film’s director, Davis Guggenheim said of the film, “Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message.” All of this is complete nonsense. The film is completely political with Al bring up his lost election over and over. In his first appearance, his makes a joke at the expense of the Bush administration.

Siteing a sampling of ‘peer reviewed’ articles as evidence of the ‘settled science’ is also quite spurious. For decades, it was almost impossible to get published in the ‘peer reviewed’ publications if you disagreed with the Global Warming hysterics. Since the release of the emails from England, we now know why. Anyone who was foolish enough to actually publish anything that challenged the orthodoxy was run out of their job. ‘Peer review’ is meaningless if you can only get published if you agree with the party line.

Gore might be more believable if he didn’t live such an extravagant lifestyle. He jets all over the world telling people that they need to cut back on their carbon emissions that then goes home to a huge mansion that uses more electricity in one month than the average home uses in an entire year. You first, Al!!

And he really does make that joke that he ‘used to be the next president of the United States’! I thought Rush’s parody made that up! He also apparently doesn’t find the joke all that funny. I guess I wouldn’t either. Who likes to be reminded of what a loser they are?

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