Why did Al Gore have to make a movie?

[Bjorn Against]

I just saw "An Inconvenient Truth" yesterday and it was every bit as good as everyone said it was. It was extremely powerful, at times very frightening and at other times very moving. It is a film that everybody should see as soon as possible.

Yet while the film was extremely powerful I had to keep asking myself, why did it have to be made? Why had this story not been told before? Sure there have been many books and scientific journal articles that have been written about global warming, but none of them have been heavily promoted in the media and most of them would be difficult for the average person to truly grasp.

There may have been a few stories on the news about global warming, but I never saw a story that showed the powerful images that Al Gore's movie showed even though those images have been available to the media for quite some time.

Instead the media gave us this false sense of "balanced journalism", which gave global warming skeptics equal time. Given the facts of the case, giving skeptics equal time is no different than giving skeptics of gravity equal time in a debate on whether gravity really exists.

It is not balance to put people who are either ignorant or outright liars on the air to cast doubt on scientific facts. And let us note that the media never put the graphs Al Gore had which completely refuted any notion of the rising temperatures being based merely on the Earth's natural cycles. They never pointed out that every single scientist disagreed with these skeptics, Michael Crichton a man who wrote about killer Gorillas in the Congo agreed and that was good enough for them.

Yes I enjoyed Gore's movie immensly, but I could not help thinking through out the film that it would not have needed to be made if the media had done their job.

[mbee]

1. It is a brilliant way for him to show what he believes without the

pug media interrupting him with their lies and could very well set the stage for him to run in 2008. The critical need of the country at this time is alternative energy so I see this as a win, win for him!

[Minnesota Libra]

2. You answered your own question of why the movie was made..................

...."There may have been a few stories on the news about global warming, but I never saw a story that showed the powerful images that Al Gore's movie showed even though those images have been available to the media for quite some time."

That is exactly why he had to make the movie to bring it all together and connect the dots for people. You know "a picture is worth a thousand words" thing.

[Bjorn Against]

6. I realize that, but my point is that the media did not do there job

and if they did do there job there would be no reason for this movie to be made.

[Minnesota Libra]

8. Of course the media didn't do their job, the media is owned and...........

.....run by neocon/fundies and of course neocons say that "global warming" is a myth. Why because the warming temperatures and melting glaciers are simply a cycle that the earth is going through. The neocons can't report this and chance people thinking they are siding with a:wow: Liberal now.:wtf:

I know I'm using a lot of :sarcasm: but if I don't I'll start :cry: and I won't quit. Let's face it the neocons don't care about global warming because they will be in their well protected, air conditioned, air filtered buildings while the rest of us suffer through the affects of global warming.

I'm truly beginning to wonder if Bush/Cheney aren't the antichrist in the flesh.:shrug:

Have I mentioned how much I totally loathe :puke neocons/fundies:puke: and everything they stand for?

[crikkett]

3. ...to get to the other side? n/t

[Bjorn Against]

7. There is only one side in this debate...

There may have been a time years ago when global warming was still a controversy, but that time has long past.

The "other side" is made up of people who are ignorant and people who are liars and those people should not be given air time. The scientific community is on Gore's side.

[DBoon]

4. because any major network that tried to show this

as a documentary would get demolished by the right wing swiftboat squad, and probably find itself targeted for many other unrelated "offenses"

[existentialist]

5. An Inconvenient Truth

I haven't seen the film yet, but I will--among other things I would have to drive nearly 90 miles to get to a theater from here, any theater, and I doubt that its showing out here in this part of the boondocks just yet anyway.

But you're right. The film exists only because the primary media haven't been doing their job. As stated in another context, "If the mainstream media had been doing their job Bush never would have been elected governor of Texas, much less President."

That's probably also one of the reasons for the growth of the blogosphere, although the power of the medium is formidable even if the older media had been functioning freely.

Bottom line: You're correct. The mainstream media is largely bought off and wholly pathetic. That's just one of the givens that we have to deal with and try to get past.

[kentuck]

9. He needed some independent "funds" in case he decided to run..

for the Presidency. He wanted money of his own to counter the M$M that he knows would surely come.. :)

[karynnj]

10. The norm for this type of thing would have been

things like documentaries (which this is), scholarly articles in journals and articles in magazines like Scientific American or an environmental/nature magazine.

What Gore has done is to stimulate interest beyond the people who already are interested and concerned about the issue. This is major. It is rare when a scientific issue actually becomes a major topic of conversation.

He also connects the research on what is happening and the scientific communitiy's recommendations for fixing it with the politics. Gore's role here is popularizing the information and pushing the political solutions. There are scientists who are far more expert on the phenomenon, but they don't have the platform or ability to explain the politics.

[MrPrax]

11. It's not rocket science...

Attempts to address global climate change necessitates government intervention.
The media is owned by interlocked corporate entities.
These entities want the public regulated, not them.
They will destroy entire nations and change any Constitution by whatever means necessary.

While I will watch the movie, I am not too comfortable with a very political public figure, hyping a movie to get the public informed and angry and then not providing a viable vehicle for those motivated to use to act on this information and anger--it just contributes to disillusionment, cynicism and ultimately acceptance that further fuels the 'corrosion', keeps our people from the polls and a general breakdown into widespread apathy.

The issues facing us are a little more important than 'showboating' antics under some out-moded notion of that an enlighten public will hopefully act?

Has this worked?

How much time, money, lobbying and public enlightement to promote womens' reproductive rights? Is there anyone who is a member of, say NOW, that can honestly state that while they were collecting money for this cause and enlightening the public as early as five years ago, would have imagined that a raped woman would be imprisoned for refusing to carry her rapist's baby constitutionally?

Not only hasn't this worked but even the minimum protections of 'choice' have been lost and the Pro-Life movement has gone further than even it's moderate stances of twenty years ago. Who exactly got enlighted out of this 'struggle'?

Seriously people--this guy was the Vice-President at one time...what god damn point is there to send someone BACK into power that did nothing to protect us when they were in power.

I am sure the movie is very good--in fact I have been told by people I respect personally that it is astounding...but really, if the environmental movement has simply become an excuse to sell movie tickets and play 'roger ebert'--we are finished as a cause and a free people.

[CTyankee]

13. If not him, who? If not now, when?

I saw Inconvenient Truth last Friday. I would like to comment on your statement, as follows:

"While I will watch the movie, I am not too comfortable with a very political public figure, hyping a movie to get the public informed and angry and then not providing a viable vehicle for those motivated to use to act on this information and anger--it just contributes to disillusionment, cynicism and ultimately acceptance that further fuels the 'corrosion', keeps our people from the polls and a general breakdown into widespread apathy."

When you see the movie, you will see at the end of the credits a somewhat long list of steps you can take to do your part in saving the planet. The movie sets up the importance of action, destroys not only the argument that there are "other" credible viewpoints to global warming, but also to the argument that it is environment vs. the economy. Gore points out that not only CAN action be taken to correct this situation, it already HAS (with the passage of the Clean Air Act, which he does with his charts).

So your point is well answered in the movie. I beg you to see it. Do it as soon as you can. Gore addresses the view you have essentially taken: that the move from denial to despair is very short and it need not be, because we CAN turn things around.

I am not attacking you, please know. I think you need to take in Gore's essential argument in its entireity and not judge the film on what you think it does, rather than what it really does.

See the movie.

[long_green]

12. I think of "An Inconvenient Truth" as Al's dance in the end zone

people ridiculed his environmentalism when he published "Earth In The Balance." Now, the tide of opinion is with him. If Al Gore is never elected president, future generations will wonder what was wrong with us.

[Mabus]

14. I think of it as Gore's PDB to Bush. Bush will, of course, ignore it

When all the signals point toward a crisis you can bet that BushCo will ignore them especially when their peeps are reaping record profits across the board.

edited subject line in hopes of it making sense.

[Radical Activist]

15. The corporate media is financially tied to polluters.

General Electric is the most obvious example. Does anyone really think NBC News and MSNBC are going to report facts that will hurt the bottom line of their parent corporation? This is the real bias in the media.