Oscars

2007-2-25 06:24:00

The Oscars are this evening, my friends. We are told this may be the longest running one yet.

This is that yearly occasion where the authorities in Hollywood tell the rest of us where we were wrong in what we thought were the best movies.

Someone must have thought Pirates of the Caribbean II was good for it grossed much more than any other movie in the U.S., or $366,387,380 (USD). In fact, more people went to see it then all the nominated best picture movies combined.

Even though all the movies I picked for academy awards were later all nominated I hadn't seen any of them. I just picked the movies with the type of flavor that Hollywood authorities would pick. I guessed that The Departed would win best picture, but Letters from Iwo Jima also has a good chance.

My personal favorite for best picture is The Illusionist, staring Edward Norton. It is out on DVD. We just saw it Saturday evening and I was pleasantly surprised. This was the first movie I had seen in a long time that had a great story line and plot twists that fooled me.

There is a later movie called The Prestige starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale that is also about magicians around the turn of the Century. I am looking forward to seeing this.

A no-brainer is that Al Gore will win for best Documentary. I also expect him to get a massive standing ovation. His glory will be as a fading flower, however, because as soon as the truth gets out about what real science says about human caused CO2, and effects on the earth, public opinion will change. Gore, the U.N., and his Hollywood friends will look like the Flat Earth Society 100 years from now.

We keep hearing that there is a "consensus" among all but a handful of fanatics that man is causing Global Warming and drastic measures must be taken. The truth is that this consensus that makes up the UN body called the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is made up of mostly bureaucrats and not scientists. Numerous papers and studies accepted by them are the result of an accepted mindset and have not been circulated for peer review among well published climate scientists.

Actually, Gore's movie is technically not eligible to receive an academy award.

They have a "rule 12" standard for documentary films which says that the story telling elements must be based upon fact. Numerous parts of Gore's film are mere scare tactics that either distort or completely ignore the truth.

For instance, he makes it appear that the Polar bears are headed for extinction because of man but in recent years their population has increased from 5,000 to 15,000.

Here's a quote from Gore's film:

"A new scientific study shows that for the first time they're finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances - up to sixty miles - to find the ice,"

Here is a response from another observer:

John Berlau, author of a new book on the environmental movement entitled "Eco-Freaks," claims the polar bear scene alone should disqualify Gore's film from consideration for best documentary, because it departs from reality.

Berlau noted that while the movie's companion book says the bears were drowning in "significant numbers," the study Gore is most likely referring to only found four polar bear carcasses in the sea off Alaska.

That episode took place after a severe storm, he noted, but Gore makes no reference to a storm during the film's animated polar bear sequence.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200702/CUL20070222b\ .html

The article continues:

Another area in the movie that has raised eyebrows is Gore's suggestion that climate change could lead to a 20-foot sea level rise, jeopardizing coastal areas of the U.S., including Florida and Manhattan.

The film shows computer-generated images of water flowing into New York City and covering the area where the World Trade Center once stood, as Gore draws a link between global warming and 9/11.

"Is it possible that we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists?" he asks. "Maybe we should be concerned about other problems as well."

But climate experts who have spoken with Cybercast News Service scoff at the "alarmist" claim.

Even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), supposedly the basis of scientific "consensus" on the issue, does not project sea rise levels anywhere near 20 feet.

Instead, the IPCC predicts a sea level rise by the end of the 21st century of between 0.3 feet and 2.8 feet with a "central value" of 1.5 feet.

It should also be noted that the IPCC errs on the side of the alarmists so the fact that Gore is projecting destruction beyond what they do shows that he is really out there in la-la land.

What is amusing is that many people think of CO2 as a pollutant. It is not. True it is a greenhouse gas, but the more of it that is released the less effect it will have on temperature. A larger effect from this gas is that of fertilization. It stimulates plant growth throughout the earth and the increase of CO2 in recent years has actually been an aid to feeding the peoples of the earth.

Remember 20, 30 and 40 years ago when they were predicting world wide famine by the turn of the century? One reason this did not happen was because of help we received from global warming and an increase in CO2.

Gore and others say that even a raise in global temperature of less than one degree C could cause the extinction of thousands of species. On the contrary, the temperature of the earth has risen just under a degree in the past 100 years and there is not even one species going extinct that can be linked to global warming.

It is disturbing to look at what the world blindly accepts as truth just because their political or religious leaders say it is. Remember, one of the Principles of Discovery is to look at what is widely accepted as truth and then look in the opposite direction. This opposite direction is often an eye opener.

Global Warming Enlightenment: We'll check out the reasons why many people today fear global warming. This fear of warm weather comes in dramatic contrast to our forebears - who loved warming climates and hated the mini-ice ages.

After all, it was during the cooling Dark Ages that the Roman and Mayan empires collapsed, after they had thrived during a warming that was hotter than it is today. And, it was during the cold of the Little Ice Age that Europe had its worst-ever floods and famine.
Unstoppable Global Warming, Every 1,500 Years
By S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Page 7