"An Inconvenient Truth" - Review
I must preface this review with a bit of a disclaimer - when it comes to the environment, I am a tree-hugger 100%. I have been for as long as I can remember being old enough to make a conscious decision to be one. The environment to me is a very important cause, and I do my best to be informed about issues when I can.
This being said, I would like to heartily recommend the movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Let me get a few things out of the way first hand. The movie is basically a slide presentation that Al Gore has been giving on the environment to groups for years. There's a lot of slides, a lot of charts, and a lot of statistics. It's dry in parts, and feels a bit choppy at times. There's also a few bits about his personal life which if you're not an Al Gore fan, you might have problems swallowing. He talks about his political career, his loss of the 2000 election, and the loss of his sister to lung cancer. He also seems to have forgotten to brush his teeth before filming, as he has a very distracting bit of green detritus in his lower teeth.
Now, once you get past these facts, the movie will scare the living crap out of you. It shows photographic evidence of glaciers disappearing, of Antarctica melting, of drought and floods being brought about by global warming. It shows chart after chart, evidence after evidence of the horrible things that mankind is doing to the planet, and is showing how much damage is being done. He takes the comments that are given by naysayers about how global warming is simply a "theory" and blows them all out of the water, over and over.
The movie only makes one or two comments about the "current administration" and those comments revolve around America's neglect to ratifying the Kyoto agreement and the doctored environmental report that was given to Bush during his first term, both of which are heavily documented and can be easily found with a simple Google search (as my links will attest to).
I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, I highly recommend seeing this movie. It is important in a very global sense. And go out and get some energy-efficient bulbs. And walk to the grocery store once in a while - it's only a few blocks and it's good for you!
posted by DB @ 7:46:00 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Using our natural resources wisely is part of being a good steward, which we are called to do.
I think that Darwin Catholic said it best for me (although I haven't seen the movie):
http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2006/06/more-panic-than-heat-gore-on-global.html
I read that review, and am pretty sure she hasn't seen the movie yet.
Gore makes points that contradict all arguments against global warming, backed with more than adequate amounts of scientific studies to prove the points discussed. He has tons of studies, from different angles and different scientific arenas that show over and over that global warming is real, and that humans are contributing to that rise.
Actually, I'm a he. ;-)
I haven't seen the movie yet, it's true. (I don't make it to many before they come out on DVD.) But for what it's worth, I added a long response to your comment on the post in regards to the science.
Let me be clear, I'm not saying that global warming isn't real, or that it isn't caused in part by human activity: It is, and we are. My point is more that the kind of changes that we're talking about (at least in the serious studies that use realistic values for future increases in production of CO2) are pretty tiny compared to the completely natural changes that have taken place in our planet's history, even it's comparatively recent history.
Which is a sense of perspective which Gore's past work that I've read doesn't seem to have.
response to Darwin,
AMEN!
The planet has always been changing like this, there just hasn't always been people around to document it. anyone heard of the ice age?
I'm a crunchcon too.
If you see the movie, you will see that they show a study where scientists have been able to test Antarctic ice for carbon dioxide as far back as 600,000 years. They can tell from the composition of the ice the average temperature for the years, plus from the composition they can also tell how much carbon dioxide was in the air at the time the ice was formed. They do what they call Ice Cores, where they dig deep into the ice to pull out these long cylinders of ice that show buildup for many years. These studies show the cyclical nature of the average heat on the face of the earth. They also show the comparison between the temperature and carbon dioxide and show that the variations in temperature always coincide with the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Then they show the levels we have today - double what they were at the hottest point of the earth in 600,000 years of recordable history. And if things don't change, they show a quadruple amount of carbon dioxide in the air by 2050.
Yes temperature change is cyclical, but scientists have proved by study of this ice that the current conditions of this earth are much worse than anything in earth's history.
Ice-core data conflicts with LOTS of other evidence.
It is based on the questionable premise that there is NO significant changes in the ice-core bubbles. If for some reason carbon dioxide is sequestered after a long time (maybe by reacting with the bubble walls) its value is minimal.
Ice core-data (sometimes referred to as the "hockeystick" for showing basically no change until the last century or so) fail to detect the "Little Ice Age" of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the preceding Medieval Warm Period, (both of which are well documented by multiple independent data sources.
For one colorful instance, monasteries in medieval England routinely made their own wine - the French even put up tariffs against English wine!
In short, the "hockeystick" has been broken - quite an inconvenient truth, for Mr. Gore and his followers.
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