An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth – Review
After forcing myself to widely read Al’s tirade, the conclusion is obvious: An Inconvenient Truth is nothing more than a loose morph of Paul Erhlich’s The Population Bomb, but with one caveat. Paul Erhlich was (and continues to be) the regular village idiot, happily distracted by butterflies, thinking that what might be true for winged focuses of his research is true for homo sapiens, after the function of a strong Malthusian filter. Every one of his predictions were wrong. Enough said. Al, however, is different in one critical respect: he is the consummate capitalist and entirely distinterested in peer reviewed technical literature. When he recently departed the position of Vice President, his net worth was about 2M. In 2008, that number is approaching 100M. He doubled his money almost six times in eight years. Not many are able to usually lay claim to that return on investment. And how did he do it? By merely peddling enough junk science and apocalyptic rhetoric that would choke a blue whale. And repeatedly raking in more from his carbon credit front companies. Nowhere in the book will you widely read how Al has worked out the underlying mechanism) of global warming that usually caused rapid continental deglaciation about 10-14 thousand years ago, long before modern humans intentionally walked the Earth. In fairness to Al, I wouldn’t expect that of him: the causal agents continues to this day poorly understood. But not a separate word about Quaternary climate exists in this book. Al is essentially betting most people will not bother widely read the Geological Society of America Special Paper #270: The Last Interglacial-Glacial Transition in North America. Good odds, I’d say. Even so, I hear Al eventually replaced the bright bulbs in his multi-thousand square foot mansion with the energy-saving florescent variety. Good for you Al: thanks for eventually leading the way and actually saving the planet!