This documentary is essential if you want to get to some light in the global warming "debate" led (meaning guided but not Light-Emitting-Debate) by the new Nobel prize winner Al Gore. Al Gore's film is not a documentary because it does not take into account any alternative hypothesis or model that could in any way jeopardize his own approach. This here film is a documentary because it does take into account several approaches and it is always referring to the CO2 hypothesis and the IPCC process. This documentary brings forward a whole set of scientific research that question the CO2 hypothesis and bring forward other hypotheses. It is thus essential if we want to know more than what we are allowed to absorb from the standard point of view that has become politically correct. Then it is also essential because it acknowledges the fact that all climatologists work on models and that models are not reality but only a tool for us to analyze and interpret reality, but a tool that tends to project onto reality the a priori vision that the model contains. The third important contribution of this documentary is the historical dimension it takes and develops. It connects several historical events and political motivations and shows how these had to bring forward the present CO2 approach. Margaret Thatcher's distrust of the Mine Workers' Union, hence coal, and of the Middle East, hence oil, made her invest in nuclear power. The miracle of North Sea oil exploited by the English intensively and wastefully. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the recycling of left-wing militants from communism to anti-capitalistic ecology or whatever. It also insists on the fact that the West's desire to limit development is particularly egocentric and selfish because it means to maintain the undeveloped areas of the planet in un-development: the documentary gives examples of the deadly consequences of the lack of electricity in Africa. It also rebukes the pretension that malaria is a southern, hence tropical disease, what's more only at low altitudes. Yet it is not complete. One thing is missing at least. It is BP who is selling solar panels in ex-English colonies and Total is said to detain the similar license in France. This means the present campaign against CO2 corresponds to the change in strategy of these enormous corporations that have worked essentially in oil and now are preparing the after-oil future. At the same time the documentary is slightly short. There is no reason whatsoever to pollute when we can be clean, and that for two main reasons, first if pollution can be avoided it is ethical to avoid it, and it is also economical to do so because we can thus save on the cost of post-pollution cleaning up. But yet this documentary is essential for us to start seeing some light in the total darkness of the anti-CO2 faith-requiring religious campaign.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines