Dave and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth tonight. As an ecologist, I wanted to support the movie, and I also had a feeling that people might ask me my opinions of the movie (as Susan did), so I thought I’d better go ahead and see it now rather than waiting for the DVD as I usually do.
I thought the film was very well-done, for all the reasons Susan’s already mentioned. Gore impressively managed to give a very good overview of the global warming issue in a relatively short, entertaining, and thought-provoking film. It wasn’t dry, nor too preachy, and the graphics were fantastic.
In terms of the informational content, I have no complaints–everything Gore presented was consistent with what I have read in scientific literature and learned about in classes and seminars. There were even a few nice little images and pieces of information that I hadn’t seen before, such as the graphical comparison of various countries’s auto fuel efficiency standards (with US dismally at the bottom), and the photo of the large lake in Africa that has completely dried up. I wished he could have spent just a tad longer on a few points–developed them just a bit further, but…that might run the risk of losing the nice pace and therefore the audience, so he was probably right to just keep things at the overview level. Similarly, I kept waiting to hear certain key words and phrases, like “positive feedback cycles” to describe the phenomenon of global warming causing changes that further accelerate global warming (e.g. warming melts ice caps; loss of albedo means that more of the sun’s radiation is absorbed, thereby causing even more warming). I mentioned this to Dave, and he said emphatically that terms like that were jargon and would have turned the audience off. Might be true. I argued that it might help improve people’s scientific literacy, say, if they were to come across these concepts in other media, but Dave said no, it was fine the way it was. And… he’s probably right. Understanding the concept is FAR more important than knowing the jargony “name” of the concept…
My two criticisms of the movie:
1) I wish that Gore had handled the Bush/election reflection portion of the movie a tad differently. As it was, the reviewing of the whole election scandal felt a bit out of place and not directly relevant to the global warming issue, and it runs the risk of alienating some folks who might be potentially receptive to the global warming message but sensitive to anything that looks directly anti-Bush. I think he dwelt just a bit too long on that sequence, without making an important enough point. He either should have made it more subtle, OR what I really would have liked him to include there is a statement accepting some responsibility for that outcome–something along the lines of “In the course of the campaign, I strayed from the issues that had been so important to me for so long. Now that it was over, I realized I needed to refocus on those same issues…” (Only, you know, stated more eloquently than that.) I think that could have been quite powerful.
2) I wish that Gore had included a few interviews with some of these leading scientists and researchers who study global warming and it’s implications–just a few statements here and there, spoken by the actual scientists who have collected, analyzed, and interpreted the data. I think Gore does a fine job of acknowledging that there are a lot of different scientists working on this issue, and he mentions some of them by name, but if he could have shown a few of these scientists speaking about their work, it not only would have been a nice break from the Gore-narration, it also would have helped to put a face on science for the general public. There’s a perception among the general public that science is something distant, dull, and not relevant to daily life, and I think including a few brief interview clips with the actual scientists could have helped people connect to this strange thing called “science.” Plus, then people wouldn’t be left with the doubt that they might just be hearing Gore’s special interpretation of the data–it might be more convincing (particularly to some skeptics) to hear it direct from the source.
In summary, I liked the film, and I certainly HOPE that a lot of people see it and are moved to action by it. I am a bit skeptical of the latter, but I think there’s at least the potential for this movie to play a part in changing some perceptions, which is a start. More important than whether I liked the movie is that Dave really liked it and felt he learned a lot. And really, it’s the non-scientists that this movie most needs to reach, so…that’s a good sign!
I’m by no means the first alien to be trapped in an elevator, and probably not the last. As you may recall, Mary was once trapped in an elevator. She told us about how she laughed with friends and then was whisked off to safety by several handsome, idle firemen. I, on the other hand, sat alone on a dirty carpet for 1.5 hours breathing through the one inch slit I managed to pry open between the doors. A company security guard who looked like Richie Cunningham stood outside the doors on the level that my cage was approaching and accepted little post it notes I managed to squeeze through with messages like “call my Board of Directors and tell them I’ll be late” and “my alias is blahblah”. They really wanted to know my corporate alias for some reason. They also wanted to know if there was someone “they should contact”, which is when I first started to get scared. When the elevator went “kerchunk” and suddenly dropped two more inches is when I second started to get scared. The guard outside yelled “so… were you having a good day, you know, before you got stuck in the elevator?” When the elevator man finally arrived, he stuck his finger between the outside doors so I could see his eyeball at the level of my foot. He told me it would just be a few minutes, but then he came back and eyeballed me again. There was some sort of complication that meant he had to go up a level and approach me from the roof, so it would be a few more minutes. Ten minutes later the elevator just started moving and I got out on the first floor. From there, I had to take another elevator back down to meet the security guard and verify my corporate alias at his request.
Amy’s Roasted Vegetable No Cheese Pizza is my favorite frozen pizza EVER. EVER. And it’s strange too, because I am a red-sauce on pizza kinda girl, and this is not a red sauce on pizza kind of pizza. It has quite a lovely crust for a frozen pizza, and then it’s topped with this amazing mixture of marinated sweet onions, shitake, roasted red peppers, artichokes… And the sweet onion mixture makes this yummy yummy “sauce” like replacement. I don’t know, I can’t explain it… usually I’m just super disappointed if my pizza lacks red sauce, but in this one and only pizza I don’t miss it at all. It’s just a completely different pizza experience. Red sauce is great, but on this pizza it would just mask the delightful wonderous something something veggie topping. Oh, and there’s no cheese to get in the way and make you feel all fat and guilty while you eat. I don’t mind cheese on pizza, but more and more I find myself wishing there were less of it on pizza, and I find this pizza has just the perfect amount (i.e. none!).