A group of climate scientists, people who actually know what they’re talking about, have made a rap music video to criticize climate change skeptics. And it’s pretty damn good. And entertaining.
The video (embedded below) was created by climate scientists for Hungry Beast, a topical comedy show on ABC. It has racked up almost 100,000 views at the time of writing, and that’s sure to climb higher as the tentacles of the Interwebs reach out.
This is a fun video, for sure. It uses language and a style of music much more likely to resonate with younger generations than any traditional explanation by a scientist would do. You know, pie charts, whiteboards, Bunsen burners, etc. But it’s also lacking in facts and instead reverts to name-calling and euphemism to get its point across.
Do references to oral sex taking place at the Copenhagen climate change talks help the situation? Or a direct, mocking reference to climate change skeptic Andrew Bolt? I’m not convinced, but then I could be overdue for a sense of humor bypass.
I get the point: that most of the people speaking publicly about climate change and what is responsible for it aren’t qualified to do so. Especially on Fox News and especially on the side of the skeptics. But I think there’s still an argument over climate change, and skepticism isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Personally I have no doubt the climate is changing and that it’s going to have a major impact on everyone in the future. But I’m still not wholly convinced humans are to blame, certainly not entirely. We know Earth has experienced multiple climates changes in the past, so it’s at least partly nature at work. Whether the other part is our doing, and to what extent, is the debate that needs to be had.
Then again, I’m not a climate scientist. Hence the use of the long-forgotten ‘Global Warming’ in the title. Ah.
“But I’m still wholly convinced humans are to blame, and certainly not entirely.” Er…certainly not entirely convinced?
Fixed. Thanks for pointing out the typo, Jim.
I see at least one aspect of the denier disinformation campaign has been successful on you Dave. The line about Earth having experienced changes in the past has been used ad nauseum, but it is not the point. It’s the rate of change which is the problem. It reminds me of the classic response to the “speed kills” campaign: “it’s not speed that kills you; it’s stopping quickly that hurts.”
-The thousands of consensus scientists were silent when Obama never even mentioned the climate crisis in his Feb./2011 State of the Union Speech.
-The thousands of consensus scientists were silent when American IPCC funding was pulled.
-If the crisis were real, the thousands of scientists would have been marching in the streets after their warnings of crisis were ignored.
-How is it that there were always countless thousands of consensus scientists out numbering protestors?
-Thousands of consensus scientists also produced cruise missiles, cancer causing chemical cocktails, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, cluster bombs, strip mining technology, Y2K, Y2Kyoto, deep sea drilling technology and now climate control.
-It was the thousands of consensus scientists themselves that originally polluted the planet with their pesticides and cancer causing chemicals they created, thus making environmentalism necessary in the first place.
-The effects were predicted by the thousands of consensus scientists to be “negligible to unstoppable warming”. So what’s not to agree with.
Michael, you have kind of agreed with me there though. The fact is climate change is natural, and it’s the rate of it, and whether humanity is entirely to blame that’s up for debate. I certainly think we’re adding to the problem but by what degree I’m not sure.
That is one of the funniest and thought provoking things I’ve seen.
All persons interested / concerned about “global warming”, whether because of the current controversy or the science, must read the books
of Peter Douglas Ward, Ph D. , paleontologist / astrobiologist, at Univ. of Washington (Seattle).
Begin first with “The Flooded Earth”, then “Under a Green Sky”.
Subsequent books should include
“Rare Earth”, “The Life and Death of Planet Earth”, “Out of Thin Air”, “Gorgon”, “On Methuselah’s Trail”, & “The Call of Distant Mammoths”.
Dr. Ward is a wonderfully entertaining and accessible writer with much to describe of tremendous importance to this debate. He will explain in great detail the many, many interesting things that have happened on planet Earth since higher life suddenly appeared, in the Cambrian age, some 530 million years ago. Eg., five major planet-wide extinctions of 50-95 per cent of all animals & plants. Many more extinctions of lesser effect. Wide swings in oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations, & temperatures.
You will be amazed at the dramatic climate changes during the same period, with median temperature swings of 70 degrees Fahr. During the “snowball earth” period, the entire oceans were frozen!
We are currently experiencing an unusually warm interglacial period, beginning twelve thousand years ago, unprecedented in its extension so far, happening in the middle of a 200 million year span of quite colder climate. Current average median planet-wide temperature is 57 degrees Fahr., while the average temperature over the past 200 million years is nearer minus 20! Without any doubt, this warm time has led to the development of large-scale agriculture and the explosion in homo sapiens population from 1-3 million at 12 thousand years ago to the current 6.4 billion today. It is difficult to imagine this human expansion occurring except in such a period of warm climate stability.
Estimates are for ca. 20 billion humans by 2050. This is not good!
IMO, Dr. Ward’s books should be required reading for any and all responsible citizens of planet Earth. Readers would greatly enjoy the effort and be far more informed about these most serious issues.
Jack E. Martinelli Ph. D. MIT 2011-07-06
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