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June 25, 2006
An Inconvenient Truth Marches on
by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
Al Gore's climate crisis flick will pass $10 million in box office sales by the end of next week, meaning roughly one in 280 people in America will have seen it. It's even doing well on a per-theater basis, earning more than all movies this weekend except for one other indie flick and four movies big budget summer ovies: Click, Cars, Nacho Libre, Waist Deep [no snickering], and Wordplay. Truth has not gained a wide enough release to compete with March of the Penguins, which reached a peak of 2500 theaters in its 11th week of release, and held its value slightly better on a per-theater basis. So the best case scenario for the little Climate Crisis movie that could is probably a $30 million domestic gross (compared to $77 million for Penguins). Quite good, I say, but the environmental movement is going to have to work harder to push global warming to the front of public consciousness.
June 25, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
A right-wing goofball wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle recently to chortle that "Al Gore's movie on global warming has hit rock bottom in the weekly box-office ratings." His point was that Cars had done a lot better. Such an idiot. It's a short letter, quoted in its entirety with comparison box office numbers in this article: Goring the messenger.
Posted by: Zeno | Jun 26, 2006 1:10:12 AM
I'd have to agree that the film has not been a success. The purpose of an Inconvenient Truth is to convince the segment of the population that does not believe global warming is a major issue, that it is in fact a major issue. The box office numbers do not indicate that the film is being watched by a large cross section of society. It appears that the audience is primarily composed of people who already agree with the film's premise.
For the film to be a success, it would have needed to start intelligent coversation on the topic across a broad spectrum of eco-political ideologies and that hasn't happened.
Posted by: dom | Jun 26, 2006 3:37:04 AM
It would take someonme other than Al Gore to start an intelligent conversation. Al Gore only listens to the side of the story that supports his assertions of global warming. The fact that the sun being warmer causing much of the warming, if any, is ignored.
Posted by: Larry Clark | Jun 26, 2006 6:31:50 PM
AP INCORRECTLY CLAIMS SCIENTISTS PRAISE GORE’S MOVIE
http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909
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June 27, 2006
The June 27, 2006 Associated Press (AP) article titled “Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy” by Seth Borenstein raises some serious questions about AP’s bias and methodology.
AP chose to ignore the scores of scientists who have harshly criticized the science presented in former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”
In the interest of full disclosure, the AP should release the names of the “more than 100 top climate researchers” they attempted to contact to review “An Inconvenient Truth.” AP should also name all 19 scientists who gave Gore “five stars for accuracy.” AP claims 19 scientists viewed Gore’s movie, but it only quotes five of them in its article. AP should also release the names of the so-called scientific “skeptics” they claim to have contacted.
The AP article quotes Robert Correll, the chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment group. It appears from the article that Correll has a personal relationship with Gore, having viewed the film at a private screening at the invitation of the former Vice President. In addition, Correll’s reported links as an “affiliate” of a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm that provides “expert testimony” in trials and his reported sponsorship by the left-leaning Packard Foundation, were not disclosed by AP. See http://www.junkscience.com/feb06.htm
The AP also chose to ignore Gore’s reliance on the now-discredited “hockey stick” by Dr. Michael Mann, which claims that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century, and that the 1990’s were the warmest decade in at least 1000 years. Last week’s National Academy of Sciences report dispelled Mann’s often cited claims by reaffirming the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. See Senator Inhofe’s statement on the broken “Hockey Stick.”
Gore’s claim that global warming is causing the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro to disappear has also been debunked by scientific reports. For example, a 2004 study in the journal Nature makes clear that Kilimanjaro is experiencing less snowfall because there’s less moisture in the air due to deforestation around Kilimanjaro.
Here is a sampling of the views of some of the scientific critics of Gore:
Professor Bob Carter, of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia, on Gore’s film:
"Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."
"The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science." – Bob Carter as quoted in the Canadian Free Press, June 12, 2006
Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, wrote:
“A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.” - Lindzen wrote in an op-ed in the June 26, 2006 Wall Street Journal
Gore’s film also cites a review of scientific literature by the journal Science which claimed 100% consensus on global warming, but Lindzen pointed out the study was flat out incorrect.
“…A study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.”- Lindzen wrote in an op-ed in the June 26, 2006 Wall Street Journal.
Roy Spencer, principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, wrote an open letter to Gore criticizing his presentation of climate science in the film:
“…Temperature measurements in the arctic suggest that it was just as warm there in the 1930's...before most greenhouse gas emissions. Don't you ever wonder whether sea ice concentrations back then were low, too?”- Roy Spencer wrote in a May 25, 2006 column.
Former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball reacted to Gore’s claim that there has been a sharp drop-off in the thickness of the Arctic ice cap since 1970.
"The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology,” –Tim Ball said, according to the Canadian Free Press.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Jun 28, 2006 9:18:21 AM
Wow, you can really tell the guys who are doing google blog searches for "inconvenient truth", huh?
just in case he isn't a cross-blogger hitter, though, I'll respond to dom: yes, it has quite likely been seen largely by "the converted"; but that would be the case for any movie on global warming. I disagree thoroughly that there hasn't been an increase in discussion, though- the fulminations online about the movie and its supposed inaccuracies by rentaquote scienticians and doctrinaire bloggers are only going to drive people to view the actual documentary, and that's the problem- strip away the minor things that are disputed, and you still have a very, very strong case for anthropogenic global warming.
Posted by: Demosthenes | Jun 29, 2006 3:35:06 AM
strip away the minor things that are disputed, and you still have a very, very strong case for anthropogenic global warming.
Really?
Try this.
Posted by: Fred Jones. | Jun 29, 2006 10:48:06 AM
Do som research on the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Fred, where you friend from "junkscience.com" works. It's all about money, don't be so naïve.
Posted by: eatsomejuevos | Jul 1, 2006 6:08:26 PM
Competitive Enterprise Institute is a factory for global warming skepticism.
They don't operate a commercial enterprise, CEI relies on donations from individuals, foundations and corporations. The most generous sponsors of last year's annual dinner at the Capital Hilton were the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Exxon Mobil, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and Pfizer. Other contributors included General Motors, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Plastics Council, the Chlorine Chemistry Council and Arch Coal.
Posted by: Rick Simonton | Jul 3, 2006 1:15:29 PM
Some of these comments are from spammers who are searching for blog posts about An Inconvient Truth and posting the same remarks as part of a campaign.
There will always be some experts who express doubt or disagreement with a facet of the science behind global warming. Just because you can quote one professor from a respected university and more from second rate universities doesn't mean anything- that does not change the fact that the vast majority of scientists agree with the global warming theories that Al Gore is presenting. Your goal is to sow confusion, the same kind of confusion that cigarette companies tried to spread when the government first announced that smoking causes cancer.
If you took a vote of top scientists at leading science universities such as MIT, Stanford, Michigan, and CalTech, you'd find over 90% agreement on the major principles of global warming.
Anyway, even if there's only a 50% chance that Al Gore and others are right, are you willing to risk the future of the planet by refusing to reduce pollutants? Of course not.
Posted by: Jon | Jul 3, 2006 8:38:41 PM
