Just recently saw the movie. Was a mixed bag of feelings for me. Anger, depression, disbelief, inspiration. I saw it at the Tokyo International Film Festival with a packed house of mostly Japanese. I felt myself sinking lower and lower into my seat as the movie played out. Being an American in a room full of people who by and large live in a country which has taken huge steps towards reducing their emissions YEARS AGO made me feel like a total bastard. Granted, I live in the city, take public transportation about 90% of the time, ride a 55mpg motorcycle, and make do without owning a car, I still felt like a total bastard for coming from America. Like somehow it was still me who was about 80% more guilty of polluting the world than the rest of the people in the room.
I think it's great that the term global warming has been changed to climate change. To make it sound less menacing. Kinda like how the estate tax was changed to death tax. I dunno, I'm still gonna refer to it as global warming.
Anyway. The original point of this posting.
Recently, I got into a discussion about global warming with some people on this motorcycle board that I am a member of. No surprise, considering the demographic of the bike, Honda's CBR600RR, the people are pretty much all republican right wingers and most are vehemently opposed to coming to grips with global warming. It amazes me that people are still not willing to accept the hard data that has been presented by the scientific community at large. I wanted to point some members of this board in the direction the thread and see if you guys can't help me out a bit here. Here is the thread:
My handle is Butters and I chime in sometime on page two. Read the responses. Let me know if you can help me out. I feel like if I can tap the collective knowledge of the people here, I can help to enlighten some people over there.
Debating the online crowd can be trying. I commend your efforts, because I know how difficult it can be...it's hard enough getting people to even address the appropriate issues in the first place (what with rhetoric that comes from people simply disliking Al Gore!).
All the more frustrating is how people repeat the same canned arguments that supposedly debunk human-caused global warming, which have long been rebutted in entirety. Which leads me to the most effective way I have found to handle "naysayers".
Don't respond to the ad hominem or derogatory comments--cut straight to the facts.
Enumerate which arguments of theirs don't have legs to stand on. Then explain why.
List them like such:
Common "Human Caused Global Warming Is Not Real" Myths...
1. Climate changes are cyclical and we're merely in an upswing, or this warming is just part of random fluctuations.
[Response here]
2. Humans cannot possibly have an effect on the vast environment.
[Response here]
3. The sun is the cause of warming, and we can't possibly control the sun.
[Response here]
4. Scientists predicted a cooling decades ago, and they were wrong, so they're full of BS in general!
[Response here]
5. Global warming scientists are just alarmists looking to scare everyone to get funding for their projects.
[Response here]
6. We can't say for sure whether CO2 causes global warming.
[Response here]
7. James Inhofe says...Richard Lindzen says...Canada Free Press says...
[Response here]
8. Global warming is good for me; I'll have beachfront property soon.
[Response here]
And so on. It takes a lot of effort to address arguments in an online medium, because one needs to cover one's bases in advance. If you need help explaining the science behind climate change, I recommend pointing people to realclimate.org and scienceblogs.com and raising the fact that there are many disreputable shills out there, being PAID by oil companies to spread misinformation. Also I suggest understanding the science well enough to shoot down the arguments themselves, which can happen after a reading of (the book I keep bringing up) The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. It's a great overview of the planetary climate over the last millions of years and what effect we could possibly have on it.
Anyway, at the end of the day, if you're successful and civil, people will simply stop responding. (Not exactly very rewarding.)
But that's why I tend not to engage folks on the online forum battleground as much of late. It's a time and effort consuming fight. But I am very appreciative that empassioned folks such as yourself still do!
Here's a nice resource from New Scientist magazine, with some pretty pictures and graphs (for instance) to assist you when you're laying the smackdown:
