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So An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's environmentalism movie, was #9 in box office returns last weekend, grossing $1.4 million. This seems like a mediocre performance, though a good one for a documentary, until you realize that it was showing on only 77 screens. The #1 movie, the apparently insipid Aniston/Vaughn vehicle The Break Up, grossed $39.1 million... on 3,070 screens. Per screen, The Break Up got $12,759, while An Inconvenient Truth got $17,615. In other words, anywhere it was showing, An Inconvenient Truth was the most watched movie. Good.
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I happened to see An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday, and came away more impressed than I expected. It goes without saying that the film presented a slam-dunk case for global warming caused by human activity. One would have to be, truly, a moron not to see the evidence. It also humanized Al Gore enough that I -- usually too leftist to vote for a Democrat in my non-swing state -- would probably vote for him if he ran for president again. But what I found most interesting was this bit of information: Science magazine examined a representative sampling of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on global warming, and found that a whopping 0 doubted the consensus view that is is caused by human activity. When examining mainstream media accounts, however, we see that more than half question this consensus view. In other words, as anyone who just looks at the available data can see, the entire controversy over global warming is manufactured. There is no debate among scientists, because the evidence is really that solid.
Good on Gore for beating Aniston/Vaughan (and Bush, not that anyone acknowledged that either...).
ReplyDeleteI campaigned hard for Nader in 2000 (Massachusetts is THE nonswing state, and I really wanted to help Nader get funded for 2004), but I've liked Gore ever since I geekily bought a used hardcover of "Earth in the Balance" the summer after eight grade and liked it a lot. I still think he would've been a cooler (bad global warming pun intended) President than Clinton.
As for the MSM manufacturing global warming controversy, it's right in line with how they continue to act as though Bushism is the baseline politics of most people, despite W's pathetic popularity.