Post by Jerry KrausPost by Richard Schultz: The really fascinating thing here is that the wikipedia article says
: that Soylent Green is about the Greenhouse Effect, even though in
: 1973, when it was made, no one had conceived of the Greenhouse Effect!
Huh? Svante Arrhenius conceived of the Greenhouse Effect in the 19th
century,
and Ursula Le Guin refers to it by name in her 1971 novel _The Lathe of
Heaven_. Please crawl back under whichever rock you came out from under
of.
-----
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time." -- The French Knight
My friend, if you really are a Chemistry Professor, your department
should certainly fire you. My point is quite straightforward. There
is no evidence for a dangerous Greenhouse Effect on our planet at this
time, no broad claims were made that there was one prior to 1980, and
the film Soylent Green is most certainly NOT about the modern concept
of the "Greenhouse Effect", despite the confident claims made in the
Wikipedia Article cited. Just propaganda and disinformation, pure and
simple. Is that what you specialize in , my friend?
-------------
Even if you're right about no one claiming or believing that the Greenhouse
Effect was an extant and currently dangerous phenomenon at the time the film
was MADE, it's clear that the screenwriter(s) theorized that it might well
be an extant and currently dangerous phenomenon at the time the film TOOK
PLACE. Whether they arrived at that theory by research, guesswork, or just
plain imagination is beside the point. It IS the phenomenon mentioned in
the script. Are you arguing that when the Greenhouse Effect is (plainly
and
specifically) mentioned in the script, that the writers were referring to
something else than what we currently mean by the term? That they had no
intention of suggesting (along with all the other speculative warnings about
future circumstances) that the Greenhouse Effect might indeed come to be a
factor in the turmoil the script predicts for earth? If that is your
argument, can you suggest why they would use the term in the script, if the
meaning of the term is not what they meant? Are you willing to consider
the
miniscule possibility that some minor element of what I've posited here
might conceivably in some unlikely fashion have a grain of potential truth?
Or is this just "I said it and it's true and anyone who disagrees is a
loon/moron/idiot, etc.?"
Jim Beaver- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
It's quite clear that when the script says "a greenhouse effect", they
do not mean one caused by human beings producing an excess of carbon
dioxide -- the process involved in "The Greenhouse Effect", as
described by contemporary scientists. Here's the script:
"You know. When I was a kid...
...food was food.
Before our scientific magicians poisoned the water...
...polluted the soil. Decimated plant and animal life.
Why. In my day. You could buy meat anywhere.
Eggs. They had. Real butter. Fresh lettuce in the stores.
I know. Sol. You told me before.
How can anything survive in a climate like this?
A heat wave all year long.
A greenhouse effect. Everything is burning up."
The explanation is quite clear. " Scientific magicians poisoned the
water...polluted the soil. Decimated plant and animal life. "
Whether it really makes sense is very much open to question. But, an
excess of Carbon emissions, it ain't. That, is very clear. It has
nothing to do with THE Greenhouse Effect that scientists are currently
talking about. And it is extremely dishonest for wikipedia to say
that they are the same thing! Propaganda for Global Warming, neither
more nor less than that. In any case, the main issue in Soylent Green
seems largely to be overpopulation, pure and simple.
------------------
So the script's references to "greenhouse effect" have nothing to do with
The Greenhouse Effect. Maybe the writers meant something else besides what
we mean by "pollution," "heat wave," and "climate," too.
The novel on which the film is based, by the way, does discuss air
pollutants vis-a-vis the neverending heatwave. It doesn't use the term
greenhouse, though.
Jim Beaver