I just watched most of tonight's episode of "Planet in Peril" with Anderson Cooper, Sanjay Gupta, and other CNN staff. My initial reaction is that it is not a bad summary of where we are right now in terms of global warming and the rest of the environmental mess. They did predictably produce the contrarian global warming skeptic dude who whined about the pointlessness of reducing carbon emissions. I did find myself thinking sheesh, fine, it costs money to replace coal with other energy sources, point taken, but if you want to argue against the idea you need to come up with an alternative.No, buying a bigger air conditioner and staying indoors the rest of our lives is not an alternative.
But enough about my feelings. How about yours. This program was about science, public policy, economics, and our children's future. Boring stuff? Was it overly one sided? Would you recommend it to friends and family, or is it same old same old and who cares?
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Comments: 12
I'm glad environmental issues are getting more attention. It's at the point now where we need to stop talking about causes and projections and actually do something to mitigate the effects. Our public services need to be prepared to handle areas that will be hit by environmental disaster, like Georgia. I heard on the news tonight that they have 3 months of drinking water left. Doesn't matter what caused it - doesn't matter if it was a local drought or the first signs of global environmental damage - we need to focus on how to get people through it both now, and for the long term.
They are designed to make people feel complacent that the issue is something to be afraid of, what's to blame for it and the - always - why it's all hogwash (the opposing view). At the end, a discerning viewer, like yourself, is left feeling it was a waste of time.
My personal issue is why these programs are specifically designed to promote ignorance and boredom?
I just realized that I got this completely wrong! What I watched today was actually just sort of a lead in, or infomercial, for "Planet in Peril"- which is going to air Tuesday and Wednesday, the 23rd and 24th, two hours each evening.
I think it sounds fasicnating and i will either watch it live or record it. Anderson cooper in a comment on the show states that "I think there's alot of heat in this debate but I don't know if there's a lot of light at times. We didn't want this to become an advocacy piece for one agenda or another. We're not trying to prove any particular point; we just want to find the facts and let people interpret them."
Hmm- that pretty much expresses the difficulty of doing a news show on environmental issues in a highly partisan era. Yes, to some extent the media end up singing to the choir and being ignored by the opposing side. But it should be noted that six years ago in the USA a majority disagreed with the scientists on global warming, and now we have a majority who agree with the scientists. So to that extent the media are doing something right, because we pay the scientists to know science and we might as well stop arguing with them.
The studies have been done and there's little or no doubt as to the conclusions, as summerized by the IPCC and others. Instead, we should focus on the most effective ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, etc). In my view, the most effective way to achieve this is by taxing fossil fuels, meat and fertilizers, while using the proceeds to subsidize local supply of better alternatives.
In regard to energy, we need a mix of clean, safe and renewable resources. Surplus energy from wind turbines (say at night) or from solar power (say during midday) can be stored. While it makes sense to feed electricity from solar and wind power directly into the grid when other supply is low, it also makes sense to store power when there is abundant supply. Intelligent metering will assist with this.
Just like we should not rely on any single source of power (i.e. we should use wind, hydro, solar power and more), we should not rely on a single way of storing power either. We can store surplus electricity in many ways, e.g. in car batteries or by turning it into hydrogen. Some of the more exotic technologies include storing power by turning flywheels, compressing springs, lifting weights such as stones or water or by compressing air in underground cavities. Surplus power can also be used to pump water back uphill, e.g. we could use the Great Lakes as a reservoir not only of water, but also of power. At times of peak supply of wind and solar power, surplus power could be used to pump water back from a lower to a higher lake, in order to use hydro-power at times when supply of other types of power is low.
Personally, I believe hydrogen has tremendous potential, but free markets are best in sorting out which technology works best where and when. Government needs to create the conditions for suppliers to operate in competition, in markets that give easy access to new suppliers and where consumers are free to make their choices.
You had me confused there for a moment, because I though this program aired early next week. But if what you watched is what I watched - basically, the "skeptics hour" with Miles O'Brien, then I think it was little more than an attempt to demean Al Gore. One skeptical scientist was allowed on the program, and he presented his views, which are easily dismissed by anyone, who follows this issue - most especially, his framing of environment vs. economy. That has been shown to be a false choice for nearly a decade, and yet, here he is putting that out there again.
It was a bit humorous, though, that O'Brien spent the program ridiculing Gore, and yet concluded the hour-long special with a one sentence acknowledgement that Gore basically got the science right.
So, I give your article a "10" for discussion of the issue, but I'd give the program a "3" for accuracy.
i apologize again for my sloppy reporting on this series. Thanks for being so forgiving. Sam, I agree with you that the "equal time" theory of media coverage makes dummies of us all. It might be okay for arguing about things that are entirely matters of faith or opinion, such as religion, but it is obviously inappropriate for matters of science. Lining up a panel of 19 members of the IPCC and one skeptic might be okay, since that would be representative of the scientific community's numbers on global warming.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the 19 IPCC members supporting the official IPCC conclusions. Oh, I didn't miss it...? BTW, Chris, have you noticed that the same folks supporting nuclear power now are the same folks (by and large), who have been denying global warming all along? Case in point, the "skeptic" on this program mentioned nuclear energy - and nothing else.
Our country is going to the dogs right now with the Globalist agenda and a flood of ILLEGAL aliens and they are worried about a 2 degree rise in temperature over the next hundred years or so and no difinitive cause of that. Bull KaKa