Forty five years ago President Lyndon Johnson’s scientific advisory council warned that greenhouse gas emissions could produce ‘marked changes in climate.’ Over the last near-half century the scientific community has gradually come to “almost universally endorse the view that the earth is warming and that humans have contributed to climate change,” the New York Times recently reported. Yet the so-called “inconvenient truth” of climate change, is still viewed by many to be a lie.
"Many global warming activists have used film and photos of melting ice caps and glaciers, and the expanding reach of deserts, to drive home their point that global warming is already having alarming effects on the earth," Frank Newport, editor and chief of the Gallup Poll writes. "While these efforts may have borne fruit over much of the 2000s, during the last two years, Americans' convictions about global warming's effects have waned."
According to the 2010 Gallup Poll conducted in March, only about half of Americans (53 percent) believe that the effects of global warming have already begun or will begin within the next few years, approximately the same percentage as 13 years ago when Gallup first started polling people on global warming in 1998 (51 percent).
Judging from the opinions of some of the most outspoken global warming rejectionists, such as Weather-Channel co-founder John Coleman, who has referred to Global Warming as a “the greatest scam in history,” there seems to be a fundamental distrust, especially amongst conservatives, of the experts on climate change.
Why there remains to be many who do not believe, who in spite of tangible evidence being produced by scientists don't believe that the planet is warming is probably a book topic rather than a blog topic. In an essay published in the Drudge Report in 2007 Coleman wrote that scientists “look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business.”
This past June was deemed the hottest month in earth’s recorded history, and scientists are becoming even more alarmed. But either the alarms don’t penetrate our selective hearing, or there is a general distrust of our senses. The 2010 Gallop poll found that 48 percent of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is “generally exaggerated.”
Or maybe the bells are not being rung loud enough. The Obama administration has, for the time being, tabled a reform in new energy legislation, and the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference ended without any binding agreements.
Films and media reporting have perhaps spread awareness to the existance of this inconvenient truth but have not convinced us that the news reports on this issue are anything more than an escalation in the practice of media hype or biasesd reporting to which we have grown accustomed.
Do you think global warming is a myth? Or that it has already begun? What has been the most influential study, written work, film, or piece of art that has informed your opinion?
"Airsick" Fusing images of factories, smoke stacks, and forest-replacing condos with a compelling musical score by Randy Risling, Toronto Star photographer and multimedia journalist Lucas Oleniuk used a combination of time lapse video, informative title cards, and stop motion photography, to create a powerful 5-minute piece you won’t forget (many pieces on mediastorm represent some of the best in new-media storytelling)
350.org - When his editor was forced out of the New Yorker where he had been writing for over five years in his twenties, Bill McKibben left urban and office life for the solace of the Adirondacks, which became fertile grounds for his writing of the first ever widely read work about climate change published in 1989, and the beginning of his career as an environmentalist.
Photo couresy of Bill McKibben
The Human Polar Bear After swimming in the 29 degree water of the north pole to promote awareness of melting sea ice, Lewis Gordon Pugh, "The Human Polar Bear," vowed he would never go for another such dip, but then he heard that temperature rises had formed a lake at the base of Mount Everest.
Courtesy of Ted Talk
William Kamkwamba
After finding a book with a picture of a windmill, a boy named William Kamkwamba had his whole African village scratching their heads when he started making daily trips to the dump in order to construct what he had seen. When he finished he had brought electricity to a place that never had it. ( Lucas Oleniuk did a piece on him as well)
Courtesy of Ted Talks
No Impact Man With a young child and a wife who repeats the fact that she "hates nature," writer Colin Beavan decided to drastically alter his lifestyle to see if he and his family of three could live in New York City without making a single negative impact on the environment. The result is an inspiring documentary, his latest book, and a whole campaign to encourage no impact living.
Alamar An understated cinematic journey that is not an activist film by any means, but rather a visual rendering of director Pedro Gonzalez Rubio's deep love for mother earth.
(more about this film)