Review of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) by Stevek. — 02 Jun 2006

To Kyle Smith of the New York Post: I just read your review of "An Inconvenient Truth." It bothered me because you seemed so consumed with damning the politics of the messenger that you missed the message almost completely.

We are living in dangerous climatic times. The American public does not have global warming and its potential for catastrophe on its "Things We Think are Important" list. Raising public awareness is paramount before action can occur (I remind you that almost no American thought much about the Middle East and Islam on 9/10; after 9/11, it was easy to rally troops and find support for action because Americans deemed the situation urgent).

Gore is putting this issue square in front of Americans. He builds a compelling case for acting now because the evidence is very strong that something horrendous is in the works. The data of hundreds if not thousands of studies supports trends in climate change in support of global warming.

People at odds with global warming still want to argue these data in the same way creationists want to dismiss all scientific evidence as a grand anti-Christian conspiracy against God. Science looks to build models based on the collection of good real-word data.

If you only get two data points, you can still draw a line between it and call it a trend. This, however, is speculation. not science. If you have thousands of data points that form a line, this is a robust scientific model.

Robust models should be able to withstand scrutiny from the scientific community. When non-scientist with political agendas cast doubt for personal or political reasons, we must be sure to scrutinize the objectors as much as the objection itself.

You may want to dismiss the model because it goes against your belief system or might require you to change your way of living, but that won't change the model. The world seems to get scarier by the day.

Reasonable voices must be heard above the noise of polemicists on both sides. I've heard religious conservatives tell liberals they will soon burn in hell for their beliefs. I am worried that we all may be burning right here on Earth if we all don't cooperate and act.