Not Evil Just Wrong review

Last night I attended the Washington, D.C. premiere of Not Evil Just Wrong, a new documentary film produced largely as a response to Al Gore's effort An Inconvenient Truth. Andrew Breitbart served as master of ceremonies:

Yes, that John Fund of the Wall Street Journal on the right

Hannah Giles was also in attendance (standing):

Note the paintings on the wall from the "Gulag Collection"

I found the movie somewhat disappointing, with its criticisms more often grazing their intended targets rather than scoring any direct hits. That's not to say it is a completely wasted effort, with several good points raised. What I liked:

• The movie points out that doom-mongering, aided by scientists, is not a new phenomenon. Among previous scares were mad cow disease (warnings of 500,000 deaths, actually death toll of around 200), Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb (we would run out of natural resources by the year 2000), the Y2K bug and killer bees (which only kill 1-2 people per year in the U.S.). Obviously none of these have come to pass. I'd also add swine flu and nuclear Armageddon to the list.

• The earth's climate is in a constant state of flux -- including relatively dramatic previous warming periods -- which enabled the Vikings to settle Greenland, where they found green hills with grass, bushes and trees. Indeed, warming has had a number of benefits for Greenland in recent years.

• Blind pursuit of environmental goals can have substantial deleterious consequences for mankind. The disuse of DDT in combating malaria -- because of concerns of a negative impact on bird populations and possible cancer links in humans -- led to a malaria resurgence which has killed hundreds of thousands.

• Warm regions have far greater biodiversity than cool regions. Why is warming automatically a bad thing? And why is carbon, a foundation of life and naturally produced by humans, considered a pollutant?
  

What I did not care for:

• Large portions of the film were dedicated to profiling a family in Indiana whose husband was employed at an coal-fired electricity plant. If Al Gore's recommendations for combating global warming were to be adopted the husband would likely lose his job and the family would see its hopes and dreams dashed. The fact that some people may lose jobs, however, is not a good argument against global warming. After all, free trade also causes some people to lose jobs, but it is still a net positive for society. The filmmakers would have done a more effective job simply noting the increased costs to energy that would result from adoption of Gore's proposed policies and its broader impact across the country, with a minimal benefit to the environment.

• The discussion of the "hockey stick" graph. This is the graph that shows a sharp increase in global temperatures over the last 100 years or so, wielded as proof of man's impact on the environment (as it corresponds with the industrial revolution). The film strongly implies the hockey stick graph has been debunked, but the science is actually rather unsettled. A better approach in my opinion would have been to simply point out that even if one accepts the hockey stick as uncontroversial, it still only shows roughly a one degree Celcius increase in global temperatures over the last century. Is this the stuff nightmares are made of?

• Too much attention was given to the malaria/DDT issue. It was worth pointing out, but it wasn't worth all of the time devoted to it, which included a trip to Africa to interview a woman who lost a son to malaria. It made the movie seem unfocused and random.
  

My own thoughts on global warming:

• We should always be skeptical of prophets of doom and anyone who proclaims their agenda must be adopted if -- quite literally -- the world is to avoid catastrophe.

• The earth has warmed and cooled before the advent of man or even industrialization.

• Why is warming automatically a bad thing? Do current temperatures represent a perfect climate?

• Global warming is not an unalloyed bad thing, bringing with it benefits as well as costs. Opening the Northwest Passage for example reducing shipment costs between Europe and Asia. Canada is likely to see higher agricultural yields.

• The cost-benefit of proposed solutions doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense. Why should we impoverish ourselves in exchange for a fraction of a degree in a temperature reduction?

• If sea levels rise, doesn't it make more sense to simply build a seawall rather than shut down our industry?

• It seems awfully convenient that the proposed solutions for global warming dovetail with long-held anti-capitalist views of many environmental radicals.

• Polar bears can swim up to 200 miles.

Update: Also, why won't Al Gore debate his opponents? If his ideological opponents really are a bunch of know-nothing knuckle draggers he should seek to debate them as frequently as possible to expose their nonsense and end the debate.