Daniel And All Others Please Watch This Global Warming Documentry

[Muskieman 0]

Very Interesting Documentary on Global Warming. Really makes you think. Let me know what you think after watching this in its Entirety.Coryhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

[Skyblue 0]

Very Interesting Documentary on Global Warming. Really makes you think. Let me know what you think after watching this in its Entirety.Coryhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

And once you watch that read this pleasehttp://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/13...m-with-science/This was made by channel 4 in the UK and shown last week. For people outside the UK channel 4 is really not known for cutting edge documentaries or such like!

[Oziumrules 0]

I cant watch anything...I had the sun roof on my Escalade open and got 1st degree burns on my head.

[GeneralGeeWhiz 0]

I cant watch anything...I had the sun roof on my Escalade open and got 1st degree burns on my head.

LOL nh

[LVToothmkr 0]

Daniel keep your cars and even if you desire add another one, preferably a bigger SUV if you want.The whole Global Warming issue is not real, but a liberal religion that seeks to dupe you into living a lower standard of living.Watch the documentary listed above, it should change your view about the drivel that you saw put out by that fool AL GORE.He doesn't really belive it, he just wants you to change your lifestyle.Please Daniel don't be a bigger fool and follow this totally bogus idea about global warming, only 30 years ago they were claiming to see a coming ice age.Open your eyes to the real truth. There is NOTHING real or factual about the ALGORE movie. It is all pure and unadulterated BULLSHIT.

[GeneralGeeWhiz 0]

Daniel keep your cars and even if you desire add another one, preferably a bigger SUV if you want.The whole Global Warming issue is not real, but a liberal religion that seeks to dupe you into living a lower standard of living.Watch the documentary listed above, it should change your view about the drivel that you saw put out by that fool AL GORE.He doesn't really belive it, he just wants you to change your lifestyle.Please Daniel don't be a bigger fool and follow this totally bogus idea about global warming, only 30 years ago they were claiming to see a coming ice age.Open your eyes to the real truth. There is NOTHING real or factual about the ALGORE movie. It is all pure and unadulterated BULLSHIT.

no one cares

[Skyblue 0]

It's actually hilarious how people believe what they want to believe. I know plenty of you didn't believe in man made global warming before anyway but it's brilliant the way some will watch a channel 4 documentary that has been exposed in sooooo many ways yet take it as completely factual in every sense. Doesn't matter that Al Gore represents the view of such a massive majority of scientists, at the end of the day he's a Democrat so half of America won't believe him no matter what. Thankfully European leaders are starting to really move on this, all we need now is the Americans, Chinese, Russians, etc, etc. Maybe once that complete idiot Bush has to stand down and stop destroying the US we might get an improvement there. It certainly can't get worse. Man is the next president in for as easy a ride as you could get as US president, Bush isn't exactly a hard act to follow.Also, you should see this type of thread on a UK poker forum I check out. In terms of the debate it's so much more sensible. Now I'm not anti-American usually but when it comes to the global warming issue it's becoming very hard not to be. I guess we're lucky we don't see it as a partisan issue. Please stop believing what you want to believe and look at the damn evidence in full!! It's overwhelming.

[LVToothmkr 0]

Evidence of what exactly. Who exactly "believes" this new "religion"? The human species is NOT powerful enough to prevent a new ice age, but can "cause" global warming?Warming from what point, has it been warmer than this, has it been cooler than this. Just so you know, the answer to both questions is YES!, and it will be the same in the future, wamer and cooler than it is now. We can't prevent this from happening.Before you were born, only thirty years ago, everyone like you was talking about a coming ice age. Magazine covers were showing cites buried in ice with only the tops of skyscrapers showing through. then it started warming and instantly we got another crisis. Funny thing is the causes were the same, human beings, cars, polution, etc.First if the globe were really warming beyond any imaginable rate or control, which it is not, we could NOT do a thing to change it. WE are not the cause, we are not the cure. Assume that the plant were really cooling to a new ice age, could we prevent it?This is nothing more than a scare designed to grow government, decrease human prosperity, limit our options, and stir up the emotions of the less intelligent .Yes the planet is warming, as part of a cycle that happens. The planet Mars is also warming, no really, and this is happening without the help of people or Martians. The planet will begin to cool again, soon and then you and your ilk will begin to cry about ice age and another catastrophe, but with the same cause, just like before. The only real fact is that the climate changes, always has and always will, warmer then cooler, for many, many years, hundreds, thousands and even millions of years. Mankind has not in the past had any impact and we do not have any impact now.The REAL evidence shows this, REAL scientist who study the climate know this. Using scare tactics, shouting, claiming to know or having "faith", and just acting rediculous does change the "real" facts of the matter. Get away from reading the garbage that you are being indoctrinated with and look at other sources. It is always hard to go against the orthodoxy of your religion, to buck the trends and ideas of those who have power in your society, but they are telling you lies to keep you poor, to make you feel bad about your life, to limit your options, to make you feel gulity and change your future goals to more closely match the pathetic future that your ruling class has designed for you.Use your brain, do some research, watch the link above and really listen to the respected voices.

[Oziumrules 0]

I thought this movie was fiction?

[Skyblue 0]

Evidence of what exactly. Who exactly "believes" this new "religion"? The human species is NOT powerful enough to prevent a new ice age, but can "cause" global warming?Warming from what point, has it been warmer than this, has it been cooler than this. Just so you know, the answer to both questions is YES!, and it will be the same in the future, wamer and cooler than it is now. We can't prevent this from happening.Before you were born, only thirty years ago, everyone like you was talking about a coming ice age. Magazine covers were showing cites buried in ice with only the tops of skyscrapers showing through. then it started warming and instantly we got another crisis. Funny thing is the causes were the same, human beings, cars, polution, etc.First if the globe were really warming beyond any imaginable rate or control, which it is not, we could NOT do a thing to change it. WE are not the cause, we are not the cure. Assume that the plant were really cooling to a new ice age, could we prevent it?This is nothing more than a scare designed to grow government, decrease human prosperity, limit our options, and stir up the emotions of the less intelligent .Yes the planet is warming, as part of a cycle that happens. The planet Mars is also warming, no really, and this is happening without the help of people or Martians. The planet will begin to cool again, soon and then you and your ilk will begin to cry about ice age and another catastrophe, but with the same cause, just like before. The only real fact is that the climate changes, always has and always will, warmer then cooler, for many, many years, hundreds, thousands and even millions of years. Mankind has not in the past had any impact and we do not have any impact now.The REAL evidence shows this, REAL scientist who study the climate know this. Using scare tactics, shouting, claiming to know or having "faith", and just acting rediculous does change the "real" facts of the matter. Get away from reading the garbage that you are being indoctrinated with and look at other sources. It is always hard to go against the orthodoxy of your religion, to buck the trends and ideas of those who have power in your society, but they are telling you lies to keep you poor, to make you feel bad about your life, to limit your options, to make you feel gulity and change your future goals to more closely match the pathetic future that your ruling class has designed for you.Use your brain, do some research, watch the link above and really listen to the respected voices.

I don't even know where to start with that post. I'm actually annoyed with myself I got involved in this debate here again. This is my last post on this matter, if some of you people are actually this dumb then go ahead. I'll just hope like hell that there's enough people on the planet with the common sense to make the necessary changes. I hope it feels good to the deniers that the rest of us will make the sacrifices so we can ALL live as we are on this planet. I really loved your last line because that is EXACTLY what I have done! Your post absolutely reeks of hypocrisy. I was going to pin point the 4 or 5 main hypocritical sentences but I've realised it is completely pointless and will have no impact whatsoever so goodbye from me on this issue.

[Pot Odds RAC 23]

I don't even know where to start with that post. I'm actually annoyed with myself I got involved in this debate here again. This is my last post on this matter, if some of you people are actually this dumb then go ahead. I'll just hope like hell that there's enough people on the planet with the common sense to make the necessary changes. I hope it feels good to the deniers that the rest of us will make the sacrifices so we can ALL live as we are on this planet. I really loved your last line because that is EXACTLY what I have done! Your post absolutely reeks of hypocrisy. I was going to pin point the 4 or 5 main hypocritical sentences but I've realised it is completely pointless and will have no impact whatsoever so goodbye from me on this issue.

You'll be back.That's right, call me a "Denier", try and link me to the Anti-Holocaust Pro-Nazis. That'll help foster a true debate. But a true debate isn't really what you want is it? You want to present a "Fact" and then have the rest of the World fall in line not just with the "Fact" but with your assumptive "Correct Solution", because you've thought it out for us and it makes sense to your value system. Again, if we don't happen to subscribe to that value system, then we are just not smart enough. Oh, and I REALLY love the shot you are making at martyrdom.Seriously - the elitist, "you're too stoopid to think for yourself - If you don't come to the same conclusion that I do, then you're obviously not as smart as I am" attitude of the Non-Deniers cracks me up.

[LVToothmkr 0]

Screaming and hollering about how you and your position is correct and even if it is wrong what if it were right and we don't do what I say is the correct choice is NOT an argument. It is nothing but posturing.There is NOTHING in the scientific evidence, not one thing, that points to HUMAN beings causing climatic warming on a global scale. Local warming, heat island effect, minor fluctuations in surface temps, yes. But Global warming caused by humans is nothing but pure folly and socialist BULLSHIT.The warming is cyclical, and caused by the SUN. When the sun shines brighter it gets warmer, happens every year that is how we get summer, the sun shine passes through less atmosphere and the corresponding hemisphere get warmer. When the activity of the sun increases, which we can actually chart and see,(sun spots increase during these periods and historical records reflect this) the earth gets warmer. There is a cycle to this of hundreds of years and it happens everytime the sun itself warms or cools. How do you explain that the ice caps on Mars, a planet without human habitation or industry, are melting and the atmosphere is being warmer?Your hysterical response, reiteration of your superior position and sanctimony are not support for your position, no matter how good it makes you feel. There is nothing in science and nothing in the real world that supports your erroneous position. Sorry, but you and AL GORE are just is plain wrong.

[Miguel McHarris 0]

What is the big deal? I like it warmer.

[LVToothmkr 0]

That is a good question. What is so bad about it getting warmer, last time it got warmer, Iceland, Greenland and Scotland could grow crops, some desert areas became lush with vegitation. More water evaporates, making more clouds and rain. There are places on this planet that have in the recent past been greener than now when it was warmer, as there are places that when it was colder, had thick coverings of ice in the past, that are now covered with grass.It changes from time to time always has always will. Warmer is not bad nor is it good it is just WARMER. Milder winters, longer growing seasons, more rain, nothing to fear.The Earth will NOT catch on fire if it gets warmer.

[Pot Odds RAC 23]

Screaming and hollering about how you and your position is correct and even if it is wrong what if it were right and we don't do what I say is the correct choice is NOT an argument. It is nothing but posturing.There is NOTHING in the scientific evidence, not one thing, that points to HUMAN beings causing climatic warming on a global scale. Local warming, heat island effect, minor fluctuations in surface temps, yes. But Global warming caused by humans is nothing but pure folly and socialist BULLSHIT.The warming is cyclical, and caused by the SUN. When the sun shines brighter it gets warmer, happens every year that is how we get summer, the sun shine passes through less atmosphere and the corresponding hemisphere get warmer. When the activity of the sun increases, which we can actually chart and see,(sun spots increase during these periods and historical records reflect this) the earth gets warmer. There is a cycle to this of hundreds of years and it happens everytime the sun itself warms or cools. How do you explain that the ice caps on Mars, a planet without human habitation or industry, are melting and the atmosphere is being warmer?Your hysterical response, reiteration of your superior position and sanctimony are not support for your position, no matter how good it makes you feel. There is nothing in science and nothing in the real world that supports your erroneous position. Sorry, but you and AL GORE are just is plain wrong.

[LVToothmkr 0]

I watched the documentary last night, and was impressed by the information and the sources for same. When the founder of Greenpeace is telling you that the "Global Warming Crisis" is a scam I would think that his former fellow believers would at least listen and re-consider their positions.Every argument that the wackos put forward was addressed and destroyed. Even the source of their alarm, and reason for the nashing of teeth was presented. This is nothing but pure folly and a power grab by those who lost the great issues of the 20th century but still want a seat at the table. Socialism, Communism and those who seek greater power for government by other means are the ones pushing this to cripple Western civilization and the United States in particular. Those in the west who subscribe to this are for the most part, weak, sad, self doubting creatures who mostly deserve our pity and protection from their worst impulses.Modern, prosperous, capitalist, "Western" societies are the cleanest least polluting, period. We are also riddled with self doubt, guilt and excess time to question and indulge our worst tendencies. Yes, environmental concerns were correct in the past, but now they have gone around the bend are becoming a parody for their former selves. The earth has never been cleaner in modern history.

[Figger 0]

It's actually hilarious how people believe what they want to believe.

You keep on believing what you believe, but your brave leader, Al Gore, has me believing that he's full of shit.Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy. Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES). In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home. The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average. Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359. Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006. Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year. “As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson. In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

[Pot Odds RAC 23]

Carbon NeutrAlGore.

[LVToothmkr 0]

Gores purchases the "carbon off-sets" from himself. He has an investment company that is basically a mutual fund that buys stock in companies and plants trees. Another scam!The more that you look at any of this stuff, the sicker that those who are leading the charge appear. This is the biggest scam in the history of the world, getting people to do so many things that are directly against their best interest, at tremendous cost with absolutely no benefit.Take a Prius, costs too much, never get your money back unless gas like doubles in price and you drive about 20,000 miles per year and keep the car for more than 5 years. In addition the "carbon footprint" to make the thing is bigger than any other car made. Big net loser if you are buying it to be environmentally correct.

[chrozzo 19]

i think global warming hyope was made up by the company that make slatine crackers.dont ask me for my reasoning or proof, because im sure there is none, its just what i believethank you

[Zeatrix 0]

Yay! Another thread! :DFirst: Why does it matter if it gets hotter, I like hot! Well, yeah sure, for us humans, a warmer climate don't have that big an effect. We can live in a lot of different climtes. But it isn't humanity that will be affected. Today we can see that galciers around the world are melting, changing the ecosystem of their surroundings. For example, the pacific coast of Peru will run out of fresh water in 3-4 decades. If the ice on greenland melts and the ice of antarctica melt we'll get sealevels unseen in modern times, destroying the lands of millions of people, manhattan will be at the bottom of the sea. Now do we know this will happen? No. We don't know for sure what a global warmer climate will result in, but there is a very good chance it will have big and serious effects.Secondly: Al Gore is stupid, why should we listen to him?Al Gore is not a climatologist. He's just like me, he believes strongly that global warming will have a grave effect on the ecosystem that we call earth. If you think he's an a-hole, don't listen to him, listen to the scientists behind his beliefs. The IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch) spent years looking at the facts and presented their findings: Man made global warming is a fact. Thirdly: We humans are puny, we can't possibly affect the climate!We can surely do it on a small and big scale. There are thousands of examples of this in nature. Ever heard of the Aral sea? Soviet damed up the rivers that flowed to it and because of this this HUGE sea has shrunk tremendously. Mankind can't possibly be the culprit behind this? The use of fertilizer around the baltic sea have resulted in a much higher level of nutrition in the water which in turn have caused great algal blooms each year, producing tons of toxic algae. Mankind can't possibly be the bad guy?We (as in those that listen to the scientists when it comes to global warming) don't want to force our beliefs down your throat, we jsut want to make you aware that global warming is an existing problem. We aren't here to force an opinion into your heads, we just want you to realize that global warming is a fact, what isn't is what global warming exactly will result in. The best part is that you don't have to believe in this, changes will be done anyways. Governments around the earth are allready taking small but vital steps towards bringing this around. I believe, no, I know, the US will sooner or later too together with the rest of the world. I just hope mankind doesn't repeat our most common mistake: Act too late.Global warming is real, the earth will not implode because of it, we should still take it seriously.

[Zeatrix 0]

You keep on believing what you believe, but your brave leader, Al Gore, has me believing that he's full of shit.Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average...

I don't understand why people bring this up. So he uses a lot of energy. Does that mean that global warming is a myth? No, I fail to see why. It might make him a hypocrit, but it does not take away that global warming is a fact.

[superleeds 0]

Screaming and hollering about how you and your position is correct and even if it is wrong what if it were right and we don't do what I say is the correct choice is NOT an argument. It is nothing but posturing.There is NOTHING in the scientific evidence, not one thing, that points to HUMAN beings causing climatic warming on a global scale. Local warming, heat island effect, minor fluctuations in surface temps, yes. But Global warming caused by humans is nothing but pure folly and socialist BULLSHIT.The warming is cyclical, and caused by the SUN. When the sun shines brighter it gets warmer, happens every year that is how we get summer, the sun shine passes through less atmosphere and the corresponding hemisphere get warmer. When the activity of the sun increases, which we can actually chart and see,(sun spots increase during these periods and historical records reflect this) the earth gets warmer. There is a cycle to this of hundreds of years and it happens everytime the sun itself warms or cools. How do you explain that the ice caps on Mars, a planet without human habitation or industry, are melting and the atmosphere is being warmer?Your hysterical response, reiteration of your superior position and sanctimony are not support for your position, no matter how good it makes you feel. There is nothing in science and nothing in the real world that supports your erroneous position. Sorry, but you and AL GORE are just is plain wrong.

Classic 'When the sun shines brighter it gets warmer'.Anyone who might think this moron has any idea what his talking about should just remember this line

[coesillian 0]

Screaming and hollering about how you and your position is correct and even if it is wrong what if it were right and we don't do what I say is the correct choice is NOT an argument. It is nothing but posturing.There is NOTHING in the scientific evidence, not one thing, that points to HUMAN beings causing climatic warming on a global scale. Local warming, heat island effect, minor fluctuations in surface temps, yes. But Global warming caused by humans is nothing but pure folly and socialist BULLSHIT.

I guess you're just ignorant, there is scientific evidence, validated to 90% certainty by a huge group of scientist ( and before you use this argument: no they are not funded by private businesses with poor intentions)

The warming is cyclical, and caused by the SUN. When the sun shines brighter it gets warmer, happens every year that is how we get summer, the sun shine passes through less atmosphere and the corresponding hemisphere get warmer. When the activity of the sun increases, which we can actually chart and see,(sun spots increase during these periods and historical records reflect this) the earth gets warmer. There is a cycle to this of hundreds of years and it happens everytime the sun itself warms or cools.

yes the world goes through cyclical changes in temperature but what is happening is unpreceented. And this is not because the sun shines brighter, the cyclical changes are correlated to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

How do you explain that the ice caps on Mars, a planet without human habitation or industry, are melting and the atmosphere is being warmer?

well the ice caps have diapeared from earth before also, so you have no point.

Your hysterical response, reiteration of your superior position and sanctimony are not support for your position, no matter how good it makes you feel. There is nothing in science and nothing in the real world that supports your erroneous position. Sorry, but you and AL GORE are just is plain wrong.

no we got it right, I'm going to try and do something about it. It is futile to argue with you about it.

[LVToothmkr 0]

Once again, YES, there is climate change this time it is warming, about a half a degree c for this century, most of it prior to WWII, with a significant decrease in temps starting around 1950 ending with equal crisis hollering around 1975. NONE of this is caused by us, HUMANS.The planet is just too big and too complex for us to have any real impact over any measurable time or space.The examples cited above are just minor blips on the earth like little pimples. No real consequence, no real impact.If the earth were heading to an ice age, again circa 1973, we could not stop it. If we are so very powerful that we can plunge the earth into a heating spiral headed to a "ball of fire", how is it that this fragile planet ever handles something as large as volcanic eruptions that create years without summers, that should plunge us into the deep freeze, a global ice age.There is NO consensus, no supporting facts just oral emenations designed to empower governments to take more from you and I, taxes, opportunity, resources and years off our lives. Communisim failed and morphed into environmental extremism.You are a subscriber to a flawed and disasterous religious orthodoxy. Al Gore and your other preists have no standing amongst real climate scientists and are having to sound more and more shrill to get the attention they require to get a future opportunity to ruin your lives.Read this article published in the NEW YORK TIMEShttp://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...mp;pagewanted=1Excerpt:"''Hardly a week goes by,'' Dr. Peiser said, ''without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,'' including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.''Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,'' Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. ''Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.''In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore's claim that ''our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this'' threatened change.Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to ''20 times greater than the warming in the past century.''Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore's assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. ''I've never been paid a nickel by an oil company,'' Dr. Easterbrook told the group. ''And I'm not a Republican.'' "There is ample information from people who have NO political agenda. Here is just another:"Environmentalism as Religion"by Michael CrichtonCommonwealth ClubSan Francisco, CASeptember 15, 2003I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism. And in order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is important to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, and I believe this will always be a need, carrying into the future. I believe the world has genuine problems and I believe it can and should be improved. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance. I think our past record of environmental action is discouraging, to put it mildly, because even our best intended efforts often go awry. But I think we do not recognize our past failures, and face them squarely. And I think I know why.I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs.There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process. And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly: the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. Generations of hatred, tribal hatreds, constant battles. The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated, or learned to build their villages high in the cliffs to attain some measure of safety.How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction.There was even an academic movement, during the latter 20th century, that claimed that cannibalism was a white man's invention to demonize the indigenous peoples. (Only academics could fight such a battle.) It was some thirty years before professors finally agreed that yes, cannibalism does indeed occur among human beings. Meanwhile, all during this time New Guinea highlanders in the 20th century continued to eat the brains of their enemies until they were finally made to understand that they risked kuru, a fatal neurological disease, when they did so.More recently still the gentle Tasaday of the Philippines turned out to be a publicity stunt, a nonexistent tribe. And African pygmies have one of the highest murder rates on the planet.In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die.And if you, even now, put yourself in nature even for a matter of days, you will quickly be disabused of all your romantic fantasies. Take a trek through the jungles of Borneo, and in short order you will have festering sores on your skin, you'll have bugs all over your body, biting in your hair, crawling up your nose and into your ears, you'll have infections and sickness and if you're not with somebody who knows what they're doing, you'll quickly starve to death. But chances are that even in the jungles of Borneo you won't experience nature so directly, because you will have covered your entire body with DEET and you will be doing everything you can to keep those bugs off you.The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk-and as the years go on, and the world population grows increasingly urban, it's uninformed talk. Farmers know what they're talking about. City people don't. It's all fantasy.One way to measure the prevalence of fantasy is to note the number of people who die because they haven't the least knowledge of how nature really is. They stand beside wild animals, like buffalo, for a picture and get trampled to death; they climb a mountain in dicey weather without proper gear, and freeze to death. They drown in the surf on holiday because they can't conceive the real power of what we blithely call "the force of nature." They have seen the ocean. But they haven't been in it.The television generation expects nature to act the way they want it to be. They think all life experiences can be tivo-ed. The notion that the natural world obeys its own rules and doesn't give a damn about your expectations comes as a massive shock. Well-to-do, educated people in an urban environment experience the ability to fashion their daily lives as they wish. They buy clothes that suit their taste, and decorate their apartments as they wish. Within limits, they can contrive a daily urban world that pleases them.But the natural world is not so malleable. On the contrary, it will demand that you adapt to it-and if you don't, you die. It is a harsh, powerful, and unforgiving world, that most urban westerners have never experienced.Many years ago I was trekking in the Karakorum mountains of northern Pakistan, when my group came to a river that we had to cross. It was a glacial river, freezing cold, and it was running very fast, but it wasn't deep---maybe three feet at most. My guide set out ropes for people to hold as they crossed the river, and everybody proceeded, one at a time, with extreme care. I asked the guide what was the big deal about crossing a three-foot river. He said, well, supposing you fell and suffered a compound fracture. We were now four days trek from the last big town, where there was a radio. Even if the guide went back double time to get help, it'd still be at least three days before he could return with a helicopter. If a helicopter were available at all. And in three days, I'd probably be dead from my injuries. So that was why everybody was crossing carefully. Because out in nature a little slip could be deadly.But let's return to religion. If Eden is a fantasy that never existed, and mankind wasn't ever noble and kind and loving, if we didn't fall from grace, then what about the rest of the religious tenets? What about salvation, sustainability, and judgment day? What about the coming environmental doom from fossil fuels and global warming, if we all don't get down on our knees and conserve every day?Well, it's interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say halleluiah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true. As we have moved into the future, these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert. They were never there---though they still appear, in the future. As mirages do.Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on.With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigious science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependent on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.Most of us have had some experience interacting with religious fundamentalists, and we understand that one of the problems with fundamentalists is that they have no perspective on themselves. They never recognize that their way of thinking is just one of many other possible ways of thinking, which may be equally useful or good. On the contrary, they believe their way is the right way, everyone else is wrong; they are in the business of salvation, and they want to help you to see things the right way. They want to help you be saved. They are totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view. In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.I want to argue that it is now time for us to make a major shift in our thinking about the environment, similar to the shift that occurred around the first Earth Day in 1970, when this awareness was first heightened. But this time around, we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead.There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism.First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It's not a good record. Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth---that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric. The effort to promote effective legislation for the environment is not helped by thinking that the Democrats will save us and the Republicans won't. Political history is more complicated than that. Never forget which president started the EPA: Richard Nixon. And never forget which president sold federal oil leases, allowing oil drilling in Santa Barbara: Lyndon Johnson. So get politics out of your thinking about the environment.The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover. We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish. We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs. Religions are good at none of these things.How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There's a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren't true. It isn't that these "facts" are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present it in the strongest way. Not at all---what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false.This trend began with the DDT campaign, and it persists to this day. At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results, that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field get honest fast.Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.Thank you very much.NOTE: The use of speeches contained on this site are the property of Michael Crichton and may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without express permission. For information about reprinting this speech please email speeches@crichton-official.com and be sure to put "Attention: Permissions Dept. / Michael Crichton" in the subject box.Back to The Official Site of Michael Crichton© 2004 Constant c Productions, Inc. All rights reserved.