Al Gore Spit In My Soup

It's my belief, however, that there are folks who will hear about An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's film about global warming, and simply tune out. Like President George W. Bush.

Even after last year, when America was hit by this ... this this uh ... this uh ... huge storm ... Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, both storms achieving Category 5 status, there are folks who just shrug it off.

It's just a trend. It's a normal pattern. There is no possible way that human activity could have such a tremendous impact on the environment.

Based on what? Comparisons of the output of a volcano or a forest fire the pollution generated by a major city? What's with the moral relativism when the question is whether or not we have a lasting or significant impact on the environment?

Humans clear cut forests. We strip-mine pristine land. We start fires. We've destroyed valleys and entire ecosystems to build dams and reservoirs � necessary to the needs of human communities � but hardly an insignificant act of no consequence.

At its most basic, denying man can have a significant, lasting impact on the environment is a sense of scale. Our planet is so big, so vast, so varied, that it seems improbable, if not impossible, that we could ever do lasting harm.

At its worst, this denial is magical thinking of the worst kind, an inoculation against responsibility for our choices.

Gore's film states the case for global warming in a friendly, non-threatening way. The numbers and visible examples illustrate his case and suggest some grim outcomes for the future.

So I ask the sensible and rational question, what would it take for someone who doubts the existence of global warming to believe otherwise? And, given that answer, where does it stand in terms of being too late to do anything about it?

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