An inconvenient rant

Saw An Inconvenient Truth last night, Al Gore's stylish documentary about Global Warming.

It was powerful stuff and I went to bed feeling very depressed about people, about society and the world in general, but thankfully the sense of hopelessness didn't last long.

Apart from being an excellent advert for Apple, and two fingers up to Microsoft Powerpoint, the thing that struck me most was how Al Gore tackled the issue of whether scientists debate that Global Warming is a reality, and whether mankind is the cause.

He quoted an analysis of articles on Global Warming published in peer-reviewed science journals over the past 14 years (a representative sample was taken - 938 articles or something like that). The findings showed that in 0% of the articles did scientists dispute the existence of Global Warming, or of man's role in bringing it about. A similar study of articles on the subject of Global Warming published in the popular media, over the same time period, showed that in 53% some doubt was cast over whether Global Warming existed, or whether modern society was the cause.

It's true - we choose what we want to believe, and I am a bleeding-heart liberal after all, but his argument was very convincing. Made me very angry with the b***tards behind the media. Doubt is a powerful weapon to use when issues are controversial, but most frustratingly, it gives the detractors further excuse to be selfish, short-termist, and to deny any personal responsibility for the environment. It's the same thing as complaining that whatever little we do it's pointless because population explosions, and pollutants gushed out into the atmosphere by developing economies are going to negate any positive effect we have.

To all those people, fine, I say. Let's just do f*** all. Because a little recycling, a few energy-saving lightbulbs and switching off taps, PCs and lights is too much like hard work.

And let's just watch our planet self destruct.