Reading this review and its comments, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Two points are worth making.
First, Simon tells us that he prefers to get his science information from scientists. That sounds good! So where does he go for cutting-edge information about planetary climate change? Why, the Russian Academy of Science and the Israeli Space Agency, of course! Not a word about our own National Academy of Sciences or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or even the Environmental Protection Agency. Like Bush cherry-picking the intelligence on an Iraq invasion, Simon is ignoring the overwhelming consensus of the experts in the field to focus instead on a few stray bits of data that confirm what he wants to believe. We all know how well that approach turns out.
The second point is that Simon describes An Inconvenient Truth as “a film validating the conventional wisdom on global warming,” but the comments posted here show that it clearly isn’t the conventional wisdom among the general population. There’s still a broad swath of Americans who have been mislead by oil industry propaganda into thinking either that there is some reasonable doubt about the anthropogenic climate change taking place or that any remedy would be too costly and painful to even consider.
This is why Al Gore’s movie is so richly deserving of an Academy award. It takes a clear-eyed look at the best science available on the issue and presents it to the public in a clear, understandable way. The film teaches us, entertains us, and inspires us to work for a better world. What more can you ask of a movie?
