Climate change for my birthday! How sad is that! ... anyway, what do you think of these presents?

OMG now my friends and family are buying me climate change items as gifts! I have to confess, I was delighted to receive them. I really must give this work/life balance thing another look!





Anyway, I am too busy to read/view them at the moment so they are going on the back-burner for now.





In the mean time, I was wondering if anyone had seen them and could give me an idea of what I have to look forward to. The items are:





Book: Why We Disagree About Climate Change; Mike Hulme, Cambridge University Press,





DVD: The Truth About Climate Change; David Attenborough, BBC / Open University,





DVD: The Age Of Stupid; Spanner Films





If you are familiar with any of these, what did you think?





What have I got in store?Climate change for my birthday! How sad is that! ... anyway, what do you think of these presents?
Happy B-day!





And yes that truly is sad. I know you think this is important, but you should not let it consume your life. Try actually living. Have some fun.





Dana,


I have a wife and a child. I care about them. Your ';climate science';; your ';0.74 degree change that is going to kill us all';; it really does not hit high on my priority scale. As for learning, I spend time looking into issues, I would not buy a biased book with a biased viewpoint and consider myself educated on the subject.





It does make me happy to know that while I am busy raising my children, you will be busy trying to change the world. Once you die, my children will change it all back, because I'll teach them the value of freedom.





Dana,


Instead I'll have the conversation. ';Dad, why after being willing to serve in the military and give your life, were you so willing to allow idiots scare the public with barely any change at all, so they could rationalize a power grab and grow the government into a communist-like regime? Didn't you think I would like freedom too?'; The Dana answer would be ';Nope I was to full of myself and so happy pretending to be holier and smarter than everyone to actually see what was going on. Now we are living in destitude, reliant on the gov't, reliving history again, just like we saw in Greece and the USSR. ';





Luckily though Dana,


I can't see you with a child. Here is a hint, talk of climate change doesn't really woe most women.





JimZ,


I like the Lowe's gift cards. Seriously is climate change all these people talk about to get gifts like this? Its like they are so afraid of overpopulation, they have created another form of birth control.Climate change for my birthday! How sad is that! ... anyway, what do you think of these presents?
If you get a gift card, go get ';The deniers'; by lawrence solomon.
I always get a card or a shirt or if I am lucky, a Starbucks card. I very much like Attenborough and think he is an honest guy who makes quality shows. I don't think I have seen it but am skeptical about his show anyway but hey I am a skeptic. If I got a climate change book, it might make me stop and wonder, ';geesh I am taking this all to seriously.';


Happy B Day
i saw the age of stupid when it was free online for one day a few weeks ago. i cried, lots, but that's me.


anything by attenbro' is bound to be excellent.





i got a goat for christmas*! i would have preferred a composting toilet, not too sure a goat or rather its many offspring wont end up part of the problem, but hey, my nieces are so cool.





happy birthday :-)





*or rather an african lady got a goat from me.
Haven't read/seen/owned any of those, so can't be of much help there. Have a good birthday in any case.





';If I got a climate change book, it might make me stop and wonder, 'geesh I am taking this all to seriously.'';





This is strange reasoning. I enjoy reading about climate change and atmospheric science in general in my free time as well. Same with physics, math, and some chemistry. I received a book on time series analysis and another on the evolution of the biosphere for my b-day several months ago. I've downloaded hundreds of papers on topics ranging from D-O events to the resolution of SR with absolute simultaneity in QM, not because I take these topics ';too seriously';, but because they fascinate me. The fact that I can then make a more informed decision on things like climate change doesn't hurt either.





Don't get me wrong -- I like to get a gift card to Home Depot or Bass Pros or REI too, but I don't wonder about my sanity if I unwrap a new book on Cloud-Resolving Modeling either.
Happy birthday!





I'm not familiar with those books and films in particular. For my birthday I did recently get a book by Gavin Schmidt and another by Joe Romm on the subject. I also asked for Hansen's new book, but didn't get that one.





*edit* personally I enjoy learning about climate science. I guess CO2 expeller doesn't feel the same way. Maybe I'm a bit of a geek, but climate science fascinates me.





*edit* I find it ironic that a person wouldn't be interested in spending time learning about climate science *because* he has a child. If you're a denier and you're wrong (which you are), you're actively engaging in making your child's future life more difficult. You're refusing to try and solve the problem because you don't even understand that global warming isn't linear, in Expeller's case. But I guess when faced with such a disturbing reality, denial is almost an understandable reaction.





I can just picture the conversation 30 years from now. 'Dad, why didn't you do more to prevent climate change?' 'Well kiddo, you see I thought I knew more about climate science than the world's climate scientists. It seems pretty stupid in retrospect, considering that I didn't even take the time to learn basic stuff like what the various known feedbacks were. Sorry about that'.





*edit* I happen to be married, Expeller. 5-year anniversary in a couple weeks, in fact. Though we don't have kids and don't plan on having any.