Saturday, January 13, 2007

Al Gore and Condoms?

Sometimes I think the universe is ordered strictly around your own, personal reality. That is, events come together in that strange phenonemon we call coincidence...but it's not really that....it's some kind of cosmic plan.

So last night I finally got to go see An Inconvenient Truth. I've wanted to see it forever (okay, at least since it came out)and last night everything came together and I got to go see it along with some of my bloggier type friends.

I decided I would view the movie with "an open mind"...that is, I would try to approach it with a critical, analytical and objective mind and refrain from gushing over Al Gore or maybe even go off the deep end over global warming. I listened carefully to what he said and tried to absorb the documentation as much as it was presented and form my own opinion...

It thought the data was dumbed down for the general public but since I have two meteorologists in the family I knew what the charts meant and understood some of the concepts better than they were explained in the movie. To me the data is pretty clear, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are at levels greater than they've been in 600,000 years. Worse yet, historically, much more minor variations in the levels have meant huge changes in global climate.

But here's the cosmic crazieness of it all.

Take a look at this article from Huffington Post:

Here's the crazy snippet:

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."
After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists' findings.


Al Gore's documentary about global warming may not be shown unless the teacher also presents an "opposing view."

and the "money quote"?

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

Nutzoid!

Completely, 100% certified, prime NUTZOID!

It crossed my mind last night while watching the film, that when Gore showed scientists measuring the "ice cores" that traced climate chemical history for 650,000 years, that some of the religious fundamentalists would freak out.....What surprises me is that the above quoted Frosty Hardison says that the earth is 14,000 years old when other fundie cults claim the bible only supports that the earth is 6,000 years old.

But the universe did come to a cosmic convergence for me see the film, evaluate it for myself and then to watch the extrordinary lengths some people will go to deny....

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH


1 comment:

LoLo said...

Excellent post! Wonderful movie! Glad you got to see it. The story from Federal Way was amazing, especially in the "blue" state of WA. How could anyone present an opposing view of scientific facts? Who would even want to? Every high school student in the nation should see that movie. After all, each member of that generation will have to cope with the follies of their elders.