Well if you want to know what an Al Gore Presidential campagin would sound like you should check out this book or the flick by the same name. Off hand I think if he is as zeroed in on this as he appears he may have a harder time picking back up the presidential trail than I thought. That he is convinced I have no doubt. That he is very persuasive in this book I can bear witness too.
Also if you are one of the many people steamed by Crichton's "State of Fear" book you should deffinately pick this one us as it is the Yin to the Yang.
My initial impressions ? The book is Thick but isn't dense. Its printed on glossy paper (says 30% recycled) which is very Media centric. Highly illustrated. This book under no circumstances will ever be confused with a text book. It bounces back and forth from personal rambles by the man to chorus punchline segments shouting global warming global warming global warming. To give you an idea about what I mean about not dense... it is 370 some pages long and I read it comfortably in about 2 and half hours. It is quite litereally a page turner as you are constantly turning pages. The exeption being the brief personal interludes.
There are no footnotes. Kind of odd actually considering how many studies are being refferenced throughout. I imagine there is enough information in most places to hunt down any study in question... just that there is no formalized refference, No page number citations etc.. There are lots of quotes and lots of statements of fact and yet little in depth discussion of the issues at hand. Very much a politicians account. It is emotional, poignient, and catchy. It is also one sided as hell with little to no attempt to dig into the details. This is like a nature documentary brought to you by Jerry Bruckheimer. Long on the hype, excitemnt, pictures of boats in the middle of the dessert, glaciers dissapearing, and fears of 20 foot ocean level increases. But short on the boring details.
There are a lot of pictures. And they are captivating. There are lots of charts. And they are alarming with dramatic trends ominously rising at the present day... or in some cases 50 years from now. Yet the charts I can't help but notice are carefully drawn so that the trends ARE easily descernable. Doesn't mean its not a good idea. Clear illustrations are a good thing. The pictures are dramatic. Boats stranded in a dessert of a dried up sea. Glaciers that are no more. An ice shelf that dramatically dissapeared in hours rather than decades (as predicted).
I mostly point these things out simply to show that the book has flaws. On the other hand compared to your average magazine article its a regular encyclopedia. So it all depends on what your comparing it too. It is also very very very approachable and there is enough information here for someone really interested in the issue to dive a bit deeper into the mess that is global warming.
One thing I did find interesting was the Kyoto Protocol bits. Gore had a hand it it comming together and he tosses out there a couple of cheap shots about the US and Austrailia being the only ones to not have signed it yet.
1) this is a long way from the US or Australia not doing anything about carbon emmissions.
2) "As we said from the very beginning, we will not submit this agreement for ratification until key developing nations participate in this effort," Gore declared. "This is a global problem that will require a global solution." (CNN) Seeing as the key issue of no time table or even provisions for developing nations (China and India) having to abide by any limitations on their emmisions I would say his comment from 98 still holds water.
Me personally I think the Kyoto Protocol is nonsense. Especially considering what this book tries to show. By 90 we were already belching out most of the carbon we are now. Going back to 90 standards, only with all the major developming natures approaching the developed worlds levels for their populations will still be no solution to carbon emmissions. In the meantime China, India and several others get free rides and nations like the EU and Russia develop a new source of income trading carbon emmission vouchers. If such an idea is going to work we need to figure a sustainable per capita carbon emission foot print and work to reach that point. The problem is that short of a major change in the basic method of human industrial power most of our posturing in the manner the Kyoto protocol suggests will simply be arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. If Global warming is the boogey man it is made out to be then going back to 90 isn't going to help. We have to go back to pre-industrial levels which means either closing our cycle (not just liberating more and more via fossil fuels) or developing an entirely new means of energy.
I am not saying we need do nothing. Just saying that sometimes plans like Kyoto can be far more dangerous than they seem. Using it as a goal could lead us to thinking we had done what we needed to do. At best Kyoto would be a first step... and frankly that is its biggest power if you ask me. And we HAVE signed it. We have admited a problem and that I think is the biggest use of Kyoto. Not the absurd system which it proposes for sorta limiting current growth from known producers while completely ignoring the corners from which the most new explosive growth will come from. The very fact that current per capita emmissions in undeveloped countries is miniscule is the very reason they need to be dealt with in a carbon policy. China is already number two and yet its per capita emmsion rate is a fraction of that of the US. Put them at 90's US levels and they would be producing several times what the US was at the time. Thats the joy of a Billion people population (to the US 300 million or so).
In light of that I would have to say that quote from gore in 98 is something of an inconvenient truth in and of itself. Ok that was a cheap shot. By and large I really do think Gore put together a great global warming primer. I think if he had speant a bit more time defusing the common misconceptions rather than a brief few pages toward the back then it would have been damn near perfect. They also could have used the website to link out to all the numerous studies that form this incredible scientific consensus Gore continually points too. As is they left an awful lot of open ground for counter attacks.
1 comment:
yes but it makes a great talking point doesn't it ;-). I think that whole topic of discussion falls under an uncomfortable subject for Gore to Cover. Namely Kyoto and the fact that while China is the fastest growing environmental concern there are no limitations placed on them by the agreement. I agree the idea that China's laws are irrelevant compared to their actions. My guess is that state of affairs serves as a protective sheild against foreign competition in their domestic car industry.
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