13/01/2008

NB1 & NB2 - An Inconvenient Truth

For your information, and in case you were wondering whether the data in Al Gore's film had been challenged.

Just one day before Al Gore won his Nobel Prize, a British high court made an inconvenient ruling. Judge Michael Burton said An Inconvenient Truth could be shown in schools only if teachers added a disclaimer saying the film's facts are disputed. Burton found nine "significant errors," among them:

SEA LEVELS: Gore warns that the sea level will rise 20 feet when parts of West Antarctica or Greenland melt, but Burton calls this "distinctly alarmist" and says it will take thousands of years for this type of melting to transpire.
HURRICANE KATRINA: In the film, global warming bears much of the blame for Hurricane Katrina and the devastating destruction it caused. Burton's verdict? "It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that," he writes.
POLAR BEARS: These gentle giants now have to swim up to 60 miles to find ice banks, says Gore, and they are drowning because of the excessive distance. Burton argues that only four bears have drowned -and as a result of storms.
CORAL REEFS: Gore's film presses the point that coral reefs are being bleached because of environmental change. But Burton maintains that the climate does not bear the burden alone. Overfishing and pollution are also to blame.

1 comment:

Elena said...

In this society, everything that isn’t convenient for developed countries isn’t told. It’s incredible that we live in The Information Society because there are people that live inside an ignorance bubble and they don’t have conscience of the world where they live. I think this documentary is a good idea to show our society everything that we are doing to our enviroment. Unfortunately there are a lot of inconvenient truths that should be also told and solved.

Climate change is a consecuence of enviroment overexplotation. Developed societies don’t think about the future because the consumption rhythm is much faster than the production one. Sustainable development is necessary to guarantee natural resources for the next generations. Developed countries only think about obtaining economic profits NOW without taking into account [the] future necessities. It’s necessary to teach people to take care of our environment since they are children because we are too selfish to change our habits when we are older.

Other inconvenient truth is the undeveloped countries situation. These countries live in horrible conditions and the new social movement named “Globalization” increases the difference between developed and undeveloped countries, ones are much richer and the others are much poorer.

Poor countries live in a insustainable situation since rich countries exploit their resources in order to obtain huge profits. Moreover, in these countries there are great social inequalities because little groups of people concentrate the majority of the country richness, so, a few are very rich while the rest die of starvation.

They have limited access to medical attention and medicines. Diseases as HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis attack them with great power. It’s curious that the medicines to cure these diseases are only 100% extended in developed countries. Undeveloped countries don’t have access to these medicines because they don’t have enough money and it’s unprofitable for developed countries. Pharmaceutical companies don’t invest money on developing medicines for diseases that only affect poor countries because they don’t obtain profits. A writer refered to these countries as: “Here where diseases are so cheap and medicines are so expensive”.

This insustainable situation provokes conflicts and wars, so army conflicts are concentrated on undeveloped countries. Moreover, these countries suffer the worst climate change consequences since the majority of natural catastrophes affect them, deteriorating much more their lives. They have too much bad luck.

We live in a selfish society where the developed world only thinks in his own benefit while our environment is exhausting and the undeveloped world suffers the consequences. We must change our mind and act!!