What would have happened if BBC's "Earth - The Climate Wars" was shown in the U.S. instead of "An Inconvenient Truth"?

I'm glad you enjoyed it.... if "enjoyed" is the right word. Frankly I don't think many people watched the documentary in Britain, and I don't think many people would have watched it is the US. Although it is an excellent documentary, the kind of people that would watch it are not the kind of people that are resistant to the need to do something about climate change.

Even for people like me who enjoy science programmes, at first it sounds worthy, and daunting, and possibly depressing... not the kind of thing that I necessrily leap at spending my evenings watching. In fact, it is actually vibrant and fun, as well as being a brilliant example of explaining science. You can see that guy becoming the David Attenborough of Earth Sciences.

I think documentaries like that do have an effect in the longer term, as people like me mention them to people like you, and people like you mention them to others... but they're not going to sway overall public opinion in the short term. I think especially in the US, from what I've seen of the healthcare debate, rational analyses and evidence don't have a heck of a lot of influence on debate and opinion. People that believe in death panels and convince themselves Canada's a land of rotten healthcare aren't going to buy data from tree ring studies and ice cores if they don't like the conclusions.

> Did it change your views on Global Warming? Why or why not? I got a number of take-aways from it that were not so clear to me before.It clarified to me the arguments the sceptics were using, and what level of credibility they had.

And also that that those arguments have *not* been ignored by the mainstream... they have actually been studied in detail, and either refuted, or taken into account if they deserved to be so. It also underlined that drastic climate change can happen pretty fast. And another thing that came home to me is that yes, the climate is complex, and the models can be wrong.... but they could turn out to be wrong by being too optimistic as well as the other way around.

The fact that Arctic sea-ice is disappearing far faster than had been predicted is an alarming example. It seems one of the sceptics common arguments is "we don't know that much about climate yet"... that doesn't sound all that comforting now! Now I'll go into my Amazon mode.... if you enjoyed that series, you'll also enjoy this: youtube.com/watch?v=UR8wRSp2IXs There's a one hour version of those ideas in a video here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/audio/?podcastItem=david_mackay.mp4 And his website, complete with free download of his book, is here: http://www.withouthotair.com.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.