PrintSeptember 5, 2007
Global warming faces popular backlash
Further evidence that global warming enthusiasts have jumped the shark comes with the box office disaster experienced by Leonardo DiCaprio's film 11th Hour. Roger Friedman of Foxnews.com reports (hat tip: Drudge):
"The 11th Hour," has been a total bust at the box office. After 18 days in release, the film has grossed only $417,913 from ticket sales. The 90-minute snore-fest is playing on 111 screens this week, but that number is likely to be reduced this Friday. The film will be sent to DVD heaven after that.By comparison, Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim's similar but far more engaging "An Inconvenient Truth" had already made $3.5 million by its 18th day of release.I hesitated to say before "11th Hour" actually opened how mind-numbingly dull it was for fear that I would ruin it for those interested in the subject of global warming. But at Cannes, when the film by Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen was shown to journalists, nearly the entire room fell asleep. [boldface in original]
It is very kind of Mr. Friedman to admit that he withheld his true estimation of the film out of sympathy for the goal of raising alarm over global warming. He joins Steve Outing writing in the trade magazine Editor & Publisher in acknowledging abandoning normal journalistic standards in order to act as propagandists for this scare campaign.
I confess to being personally incapable of evaluating all the scientific evidence on climatology, physics, and the other relevant disciplines. But I am experienced in the scholarly method of evaluating alternative hypotheses, and well understand that accepted "consensus" views are often overturned by subsequent generations armed with better data. Thomas Kuhn wrote the classic book on the subject, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a work which I used to ask doctoral candidates to master, in order to learn the lesson that all hypotheses, no matter how widely accepted, remain but tentative models of reality, subject to being replaced by better ones as more evidence comes in.
I am also fairly experienced at spotting snake oil salesmen based on their behavior. Arguing that no further discussion is allowed because the science is "established" and time is of the essence is as bad as the telephone scripts employed by boiler room salesmen peddling collectible coin sets and obscure "hot" stocks traded on the Vancouver Stock Exchange.
I wonder how many years it will require for global warming's snake oil faction to become ashamed of their role in pushing their dogma with their chosen methods. The public seems to have caught on, judging by the box office surprise Leo got, not to mention all the empty seats at various Live Aid concerts. By the way, have you seen Al Gore in the news recently? I haven't. Maybe he and his obsession have become what Variety used to call "B.O. Poison".
