William Gray, who is the head of the Tropical Meterology Project at Colorado State University, told Discover magazine in 2005 that, "nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing." He then went on about how the average person who is not familiarized on the topic will simply look at a graph, see that temperatures and greenhouse gases are both rising, and conclude that it is global warming simply because of the common use of the phrase; furthermore, he concluded with, "just because there are two associations, changing with the same sign, doesn't mean that one is causing the other."
On the flip side, we have former Vice President and star of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore. Gore states that, "in climate science, we only have two things: data (the past) and models or hypotheses (the future)." Gore was focused on the statistics of things, as he spoke about the increases of the dioxide-related greenhouse gases and also the increase in overall temperature of the earth. He then continued to give his two cents about what should be done about the problem. Gore believes that, "there is no known suite of technologies that can affect this rate significantly, so the proper policy is to invest in the future rather than to waste money today in a futile attempt to significantly reduce warming."
Both men addressed the two different sides of the argument but in different styles. In my opinion, Gray tried to appeal to those who were skeptical of global warming and encouraged them to fully believe all that they hear without doing their research. On the other hand, Gore went with a more practical way of getting his point across to the public. He laid out the numbers, and stated research done by professionals.
Looking at both arguments in the eyes of bystander, both men made valid points in an ethical manner. Despite one's belief on the matter, each argument can be read and they can take something away from either one.
All quotes were taken from the online article Global Warming or Just Hot Air? A Dozen Different Views by Sara Goudarzi. Link can be found below.
http://www.livescience.com/4144-global-warming-hot-air-dozen-views.html
Nice job of discussing these two efforts.
ReplyDeleteConsider the difference in how these particular arguments were disseminated. Mr.Gore's movie won an Academy Award and he immediately embarked on a lucrative tour with his show. Mr. Gray, who is a very prominant voice in the weather industry (I believe he is responsible for hurricane projections), was interviewed for a magazine. Even if he were on the cover, the magazine did not come anywhere near the distribution power behind Mr. Gore's appeal. Just how much impact would that discrepancy have?
That said, what about the political ramifications involved here? Because efforts to mitigate climate change would have to involve significant government intervention, the threat presented by human beings to the planet has been reduced to a partisan football, which is comically tragic. Consider how the public's imagination might be re-captured regarding an important issue like this. Keep working!