Swindle

Readers on a New York Times forum are referring others to the The Great Global Warming Swindle for credible (some argue "unassailable") evidence against human-induced global warming. The Swindle movie is so conveniently available on YouTube that literally hundreds of thousands of people have watched it over the past three weeks.

I posted quotes on the forum from the Guardian and the Independent to discredit Swindle. It was pretty much the same stuff posted here on our blog a few weeks ago. If you'd like to read the forum, my comments are under my first name; someone also responded to me (they got my name wrong and spelled it Kristeen, but just ctrl-F that and my name and there's my slice of the debate if you're interested.)

A forum like that shows the depth of doubt and breadth of opinion out there. I felt it was imperative to comment publicly on this film. People with no scientific background are trying to debate the larger issues by arguing over details that most of us simply cannot understand without extensive science education. The details don't change the big picture: we are putting gas in the atmosphere, hence it warms. Period. Many are using a film like Swindle to infer that human-induced climate change is merely a liberal hoax. All I'm saying is, I'm not an atmospheric scientist (either); sometimes you just have to trust the people who are. These are people who are working for a fraction of what they'd get in industry, telling us this thing is real. Endless debating among lay people without PhDs is what keeps the masses from taking action. Why are we willing to believe marketing and all kinds of hype, but unwilling to believe scientists?

Once the real evidence arrives, it may be too late. This view finds support in Oxford Today, which in its latest issue published an article about green energy:

Likewise, [Good Energy CEO Juliet] Davenport agrees that saving the planet is more about people than science. 'I do believe that humanity is incredibly innovative and incredibly powerful. But for governments to take action there has to be real public awareness of the issue', she says. 'I do believe that we will come up with a way of solving this problem. But to get to that critical tipping-point of public awareness, I fear there may have to be casualties first.'

Ben Franklin said it best: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Happy Easter / Passover everyone. More blog entries from me next week.