an inconvenient truth
if you haven't seen this movie - you aught to. amazon | netflix
i build and read graphs and charts for a living. i've trained a dozen or two new analysts - kids right out of school - to be able to 1. create a meaningful chart and 2. make sure it tells a story. i usually get brought garbage once or twice - and then they learn that if they can't tell me what their colorful new charts means - i'm going to throw it back at them.
besides telling a story - that story needs to be true. so i've also worked with some phenomenal PHDs who play by the rules of classical music - when i want to play jazz, with statistics. so i also have some sense of where that line is between having significance, and imagining it.
it is with this background that i viewed Al Gore's documentary. and it is with this background that i was more stunned and more convinced by the charts and graphs he used - than by any other graphs and charts i've seen or used. they fricken freaked me out.
a lot of statistics out there in the general media are meaningless at best and misleading at worst... created by reports and editors with no grasp on statistics or significance, and who are looking to create still more sensationalist crap (the mainstay of american media).
i found the charts and graphs Al used to be convincing. appolcalyptically so.
at this moment, i am fairly convinced that the next 50 years will produce cataclysmic climate changes to the point that geography (e.g. the globe) will be redefined. i am not saying "if CO2 rates are left unchecked" this will happen - I am saying given our best efforts - factoring in corporate greed and stupidity - along with our general lack of belief that humans are capable of affecting things on a global scale - this will happen.
listening to NPR, it seems that even the detractors agree there is excess carbon dioxide, and excess manmade carbon dioxide. i guess they think this makes the trees happy. if the best we have is that our models fall short of conclusively proving the causality between excess carbon dioxide and global climate change... we haven't really disproved anything other than that we have inadequate models.
the rest of us look at venus, as well as proposals to terraform mars - and fail to see why the same carbon dioxide -> global warming causality we believe to be effective there, wouldn't also hold true when the subject is politically charged and on earth.
i build and read graphs and charts for a living. i've trained a dozen or two new analysts - kids right out of school - to be able to 1. create a meaningful chart and 2. make sure it tells a story. i usually get brought garbage once or twice - and then they learn that if they can't tell me what their colorful new charts means - i'm going to throw it back at them.
besides telling a story - that story needs to be true. so i've also worked with some phenomenal PHDs who play by the rules of classical music - when i want to play jazz, with statistics. so i also have some sense of where that line is between having significance, and imagining it.
it is with this background that i viewed Al Gore's documentary. and it is with this background that i was more stunned and more convinced by the charts and graphs he used - than by any other graphs and charts i've seen or used. they fricken freaked me out.
a lot of statistics out there in the general media are meaningless at best and misleading at worst... created by reports and editors with no grasp on statistics or significance, and who are looking to create still more sensationalist crap (the mainstay of american media).
i found the charts and graphs Al used to be convincing. appolcalyptically so.
at this moment, i am fairly convinced that the next 50 years will produce cataclysmic climate changes to the point that geography (e.g. the globe) will be redefined. i am not saying "if CO2 rates are left unchecked" this will happen - I am saying given our best efforts - factoring in corporate greed and stupidity - along with our general lack of belief that humans are capable of affecting things on a global scale - this will happen.
listening to NPR, it seems that even the detractors agree there is excess carbon dioxide, and excess manmade carbon dioxide. i guess they think this makes the trees happy. if the best we have is that our models fall short of conclusively proving the causality between excess carbon dioxide and global climate change... we haven't really disproved anything other than that we have inadequate models.
the rest of us look at venus, as well as proposals to terraform mars - and fail to see why the same carbon dioxide -> global warming causality we believe to be effective there, wouldn't also hold true when the subject is politically charged and on earth.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton SinclairIf someone has more compelling information to share on why global climate change is not in the cards - i would love to be aware of it so that i might sleep better. Until then, I will give this my best effort because i believe we really are fucking up this blue-green jewel of the solar system.
To my representatives in Washington D.C.,We must not ignore the climate crisis any longer. The impacts are clear and the solutions to the problem are within our grasp. Congress must take real action now to affect the United States role in global warming. Please put the future of humanity, the welfare of our children - ahead of quarterly corporate profits, lazy American engineering, rampant consumerism, and our general complacency.Please sign Al Gores postcard to your representative demanding real action on global warming below and Al will personally deliver it to Washington in March.
Labels: AlGore, GlobalWarming
posted by P3T3RK3Y5 for meltingearth
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