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I Saw Al Gore Speak Last Night at UCSD by kriser
Tue May 22, 2007 at 02:07:39 PM PDT
I'd like to first state that this is my first diary, in spite of being a longtime member of this community, so please be gentle. I'm not much of a diarying type, but the experience I had last night, and the feeling of hope and inspiration I came away with was something that I really wanted to share with the dKos community.
I was extremely fortunate to receive one of the 4000 free tickets to Al Gore's talk last night at UCSD. The tickets were completely gone within an hour or so of becoming available, and I came by mine through a stroke of luck. Now, I'm a scientist who is very familiar with the negative effects of man on the environment, but I may be one of the only people on the planet who has yet to see An Inconvenient Truth. My reasoning, and my experience last night watching Gore's speech are below the fold.
kriser's diary :: ::
Is there anyone else out there who hasn't seen "An Inconvenient Truth"? Before yesterday I would have been one of you (if 'you', in fact, exist). Yesterday I had the great honor to see Al Gore give his presentation at UCSD. It was truly one of the greatest things I have ever seen!
I am a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a marine ecologist, to be exact. I never really wanted to see Gore's film, because I figured I knew what he was going to present, and what I didn't know, I didn't really want to know...ignorance is bliss, after all. (o/t...w must be the happiest person in the world). I figured it would be far too depressing...well, the data were a bit (okay, HUGE understatement) depressing, so I was completely surprised that I came away from the talk feeling totally energized, and with a sense of hope!
I feel so lucky to have seen Al Gore give his presentation live, even more so to have seen it at UCSD.
Chancellor Fox spoke first. She described the newly endowed 2.5 million dollar Revelle Chair.
The gift, which will be used to recruit a climate scientist to the institution and establish an environmental science chair in Revelle's honor, is the largest single donation ever made for an endowed chair in Scripps' 104-year history.
This information got a huge round of applause. She spoke a bit about Roger Revelle and his legacy at both Scripps and UCSD and then introduced his widow, Ellen Revelle, who received a standing ovation.
Ellen spoke about her husband and children and grandchildren. She spoke fondly of Al Gore and then went on to say that she (and I'm paraphrasing) wasn't here to introduce him, but to welcome the man who should have been our president. I got tears in my eyes (I have them again as I type this).
Al Gore walked out on stage, hugged Ellen and then applauded her as she walked off stage. He then spoke at some length, thanking all the people here in San Diego (predominantly at SIO) who have played important parts in his presentation. Having been a research associate here at SIO for almost 18 years, I know, or have met most of the people he mentioned (and have heard of the rest). I had met both Roger Revelle (when I was an undergrad at UCSD) and Charles Keeling (early in my career here at SIO). I felt a huge sense of pride being a part the community here at Scripps.
He was clearly emotional giving this talk here. He said it was a lot like the time he gave the talk at Harvard and realized it was in the same room that he had been in when he was a student of Roger Revelle's. After all of his acknowledgements, he began with "An Inconvenient Truth". Like I've said, I hadn't seen it before. The people that I was with said it was similar to the film, but that it was much more up-to-date. In fact, he had slides that included data from yesterday! I was extremely impressed. He is constantly staying up on top of the science and is keeping the presentation current, and completely accurate.
I loved all of the subtle, (and not so subtle) digs on w and his pathetic administration. I loved his sense of humor. In speaking of some of the skeptics he said he heard recently that some people's solution to global warming was to begin to colonize other planets...to which he responded (and again, I'm paraphrasing): we can't even evacuate New Orleans! That got a huge roar from the crowd.
I was really inspired by his passion and enthusiasm. He gave me hope.
When I got home last night, my best friend called and asked me about it. He wanted me to sum it up in one sentence. I couldn't. Still reeling from the event, here's what I gave him: Global warming sucks. We can stop it. There IS hope. I love Al Gore.
Before yesterday I thought that the work that Gore was doing to educate people about global climate change and to help stop it was more important than him being our next president. I feel very differently today. We need someone in the White House who understands the magnitude of the problem and who will do something to stop it. he would be in a position to have the best scientists in the world helping to shape policy, instead of having a non-scientist editing the data!
I hope he decides to run. He is by far my first choice.
I was looking forward to reading about Gore's visit in the paper this morning. What a joke. The San Diego Union Tribune is (and has always been) a pathetic excuse for a newspaper. I only get it for the sports page. There is no real coverage of the talk. There is some coverage of a republican convert to the global warming crisis on the front page. The only mention of Gore's talk is a couple of paragraphs that state that the 4,000 tickets were gone in an hour (which happened over a week ago), and that Gore was paid (worded as 'charged') $100,000 for his appearance. (The money came from an anonymous donor, the San Diego Foundation, a UCSD lecture series and a research initiative by SIO)
This sort of "coverage" really pisses me off! It is really fitting, though. Gore detailed a study in his talk of a review of peer reviewed literature that included over 900 scientific articles with a total of 0 (ZERO) disputing global warming. He went on to cite a study of over 600 'popular press' articles where 53% of them disputed global warming on some level. No wonder some people are confused.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/22/1186/17049
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