We had Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, and Silly Symphonies, back in the early days of talkies and animation in Technicolor.
Why not a Symphony of Science now? This is entertaining, and important — overlook the Autotune issue; it’s better to make Billy Nye sing with Autotune than to change the entire song and orchestration for Rex Harrison, especially if you have a small budget.
Here’s one guaranteed to make climate change denialists sputter — the music and quick image montages sneak through skeptical barriers. Truth wins in a fair fight, Franklin said. This is fair, entertaining, and you might draw a little inspiration.
Production information:
A musical investigation into the causes and effects of global climate change and our opportunities to use science to offset it. Featuring Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley and Isaac Asimov. “Our Biggest Challenge” is the 16th episode of the Symphony of Science series by melodysheep.
The following materials were used in the creation of this video:
– Are We Changing Planet Earth?
– Bill Nye – Climate
– Eyes of Nye – Climate Change
– Earth: The Operator’s Manual
– An Inconvenient Truth
– Hot Planet
– How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth
– Human Planet
Oooooh. I see they have one that features our hero Feynman.
Tip of the old scrub brush to P. Z. Myers, who reminded me this one existed after I saw it a while ago.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
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Wow, Ed. Reading the responses of folks like David, tool and some of the other anarchist characters in the Silverman thread is really astonishing.
Erudition, academia, science and simple logic are all suspect these days. Conservatives and Anarchists openly mock “college boys” and “poindexters”; preferring intellectual role models like The Decider, Rush Limbaugh and Caribou Barbie…
I remember a time when I could open a conservative magazine or read a conservative columnist — remember Bill Safire…William F. Buckley…even good ‘ol George Will — and be intellectually challenged, forced to think through my positions and every once in awhile, made to change my view.
Safire and Buckley, alas, are pushing daisies. Will, decent fellow that he is, is openly ridiculed by conservatives as a “RINO” and an “egghead”.
I suppose I could offer up Bill Buckley’s son as an intellectual heir to dear old Dad. But just as his father probably would have…sonny boy has re-endorsed Barack Obama. I could mention bright conservatives like David Stockman or Bruce Bartlett. Maybe some former office holder like Dave Durenberger or Larry Pressler. They were all regarded as pretty intelligent conservatives. But oh my…they’ve all endorsed Barack Obama, too.
Have all the brains left the sinking ship?
Fear not, Mr. Xavier. You still have some candidates who believe in actual science. Like the guy at the top of the ticket. He’s a smartie. Just ask him how airplanes work.
That is all.
Jim
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Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, not Peace. A little different, except perhaps to diehard denialists. I do wish you’d offer citations, particularly when making extraordinary and fantastic claims, like Krugman’s claim of fact contradicts the claims of the IPCC.
IPCC’s analysis — if you’re relying on the last IPCC report — is about a decade old. We’ve got ten to fifteen years more data on corn in the American Midwest and the effects of global warming. I’ll wager you can’t quote IPCC contradicting Krugman, if you quote both of them accurately.
For anyone interested in the real facts instead of the imagined ones, you could start here with Joe Romm’s comment on Krugman’s column.
Also, for the record, note that it’s the drought that was the major driver of high corn prices, not ethanol production.
David, how much can one person “know” that is not so?
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Rogers-Hubbard-Ward Effect (“it’s what we know that ain’t so that gets us into trouble”): Increasing ice in the Antarctic?
You should read the “mentions” that explain why Antarctic doesn’t “balance out” ice loss in the Arctic — the fact that it won’t help currents around Greenland would be enough for a person of reason, the fact that more ice near the South Pole can’t help fisheries depended on by Europe, America and Asia, and the obvious evidence that ice on the continent of Antarctica can’t possibly help the ice-at-sea hunting polar bears would seal it.
A good article in the Christian Science Monitor explaining the futile grasping at Antarctic ice by climate change denialists said:
Not to mention, it’s winter in the Antarctic when it’s summer in the Arctic. Have you noticed these stories pop up every Northern Hemisphere summer, and that the people who crow about them in August go silent when the record Antarctic thaws hit about February?
How many more things can you bring up to explain denialist views, that are completely wrong?
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As Will Rogers, Kin Hubbard and Artemus Ward were apt to get people to say, it’s not what we don’t know that gets us into trouble. It’s what we know that ain’t so.
Got a citation for your contrary-to-science claim that world temperatures have not increased correspondingly to the rise of CO2 and other greenhouse gases? It would be Nobel-quality work, if it existed.
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“Facts got your tongue? It’s not shallow, it’s deep. Deep enough that denialists can’t swim out of it.”
Ok we are swimming the depths of shallowness….facts? fair ? truth? – Pravada-like truth perhaps, because this is just propaganda. And to be sure , anybody that uses terms like ‘denialists’ have thrown any pretense of objectivity under a bus.
So is CO2 greenhouse gas? -sure.
Is CO2 increasing? – sure
Is world temp increased in last 100 years? -sure
Is CO2 ‘a’ cause of this temp rise?- sure
Is CO2 a atmospheric trace gas measured in ppm?=sure
has world CO2 gas emissions been increasing? = yep
has world temperature increased correspondingly? =nope
does this suggest that there are other underlying processes that influence climate? -=yep
is the arctic going through a de-icing phase ?=yep
is there record ice in anarctica?-yep
does this suggest that there are other underlying processes that influence climate? -=yep
Record ice melt in the Arctic – 19,800 mentions in Google News.
Record ice in the Antarctic: 945 mentions.
Is there a bias in reporting? =yep
Is the hysterical reaction to worst case modelling and new bias causing real time sufferring? yep
Nowadays 40 per cent of corn grown in the US is used to produce ethanol, which does absolutely nothing for the climate but certainly distorts the price of corn at the expense of many of the world’s poorest people.
And here’s Krugman ( nobel prize winner just like Obama)He claims that global warming caused the current drought in the US midwest and that supposedly record-high corn prices could cause a global food crisis.
But the UN climate panel’s latest assessment tells us precisely the opposite: for “North America, there is medium confidence that there has been an overall slight tendency toward less dryness (wetting trend with more soil moisture and runoff)”.
Of course Krugman doesnt withdraw his stupidity , it gets repeated , perhaps turned into a song on youtube where it will be lauded over as the fair honest truth. Much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong…it is reported in newspapers while the boring truth is unreported.
Atmospheric CO2 is food for plants which means it is food for people and animals. More CO2 generally means more food for all. Today, affordable carbon-based energy is a key component for lifting people out of crippling poverty. Rising CO2 emissions are, therefore, one indication of poverty-reduction which gives hope for those now living in a marginal existence without basic needs brought by electrification, transportation and industry.
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Thanks, Ellie. I hadn’t see that one.
I am often reminded, especially by that video, of Darwin’s grand mistake. He wrote, in 1859, that surely the fossil record was about as complete as we’d ever get it, and that there would always be enormous gaps. If he’d been able to live to see what we’ve got out of the rocks in the following century and a half, it might have cured him of his odd disease, just with smiling.
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I notice you offer no suggestion that anything in this piece is inaccurate.
Facts got your tongue? It’s not shallow, it’s deep. Deep enough that denialists can’t swim out of it.
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I love almost all of these videos; the one you posted, “We Are Stardust,” and others. However, as much as I think the climate change video is terrific, I must admit my favorite is:
Too bad so many people can’t grasp the concept of climate change, for whatever specious reason they give. Maybe if they really listened to the message of the video you posted, they might at least think. A little thinking never hurt anyone.
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A “musical investigation”? A Too funny. Do your realize what you are saying. Such basic intellectual shallowness. There can me no such thing no matter what the area under “investigation”. It is a nonsensical formulation.
It does show just how desperate you alarmists have become to have to resort to such misdirection. Setting propaganda text is neither science or debate. It is mental masturbation,
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