An Inconvenient Truth

Who really wants to go and see a movie like An Inconvenient Truth? It's a documentary about global warming starring Al Gore. Just reading that last sentence makes me want to fall asleep and I was a fan and big supporter of Mr. Gore six years ago. I wasn't going to see this movie until I saw the trailer a couple of months ago. Not only did it make the topic sound interesting, it made the star funny. Could it be sustained for ninety minutes?

The simple answer is yes. It's both informative and very funny.

This is a really hard movie to write about because it's so dependant on the visuals. Gore has all sorts of amazing graphics. He shows the first picture ever taken of the Earth as one of the Apollo missions orbited the moon to see the first ever Earth rise. He has a map of the Earth where every bit is lit to its fullest and there are no clouds. There's a time lapsed clip of the earth rotating taken by one of the many probes sent out to explore our solar system. The last picture he shows of the planet was taking by that same probe from millions of miles away and showed the Earth as a tiny blue dot, no larger than the rest of the stars in the picture. While showing this picture, he says that this little dot is the place where all of human history has happened; all the tragedy and triumph; all the art and war; the tiny blue dot is it for mankind.

Along with the photos of the Earth, there are all sorts of graphs to support his thesis. He has a graph showing the annual rise and fall of CO2 in the atmosphere and how the trend is for the amount of CO2 to go up more an more each year. The most amazing graph, I thought, was one that showed the amount of CO2 in the air compared with the average world temperature for the last 600,000 years and the natural cycle of warming and cooling is very visible. He even points out each ice age and also points out where the CO2 has peaked each time. The graph extends to show where the CO2 levels are now, higher than any other peak. Then the graph extends even farther to show the estimated levels in fifty years, a very scary level. And finally it's asked of us to imagine what's going to happen to the temperature? Another graph showed the mile per gallon standards of other nations compared to the US. When he was talking about solutions to slow the release of CO2, he showed a graph that showed each of the things individually wouldn't make a large impact, but all of them together would be a huge step toward the goal of zero carbon emissions.

He also shows a series of photos of glaciers and snow, from around the world from years, ago compared to now. In each case, there's been drastic melting. The one the effected me the most were the two pictures of Mount Kilimanjaro. I remember reading about the eternal snows of this African peak when I was young and I thought it was amazing because this was, I thought, a continent of heat, of deserts and jungles, but there was one mountain that was eternally covered in snow. Now, the snow has been pushed farther up the mountain and it's estimated that within ten years, the snow won't be there any more.

Then the change in weather is brought up. How there was flooding in one Chinese province, while a neighboring province was suffering a drought. In India, they're used to monsoons, but not one that dumps forty inches of rain in twenty-four hours. And he ends by talking about Hurricane Katrina, which, to me, still feels like a kick to the gut, but a storm that size that grew so powerful after making landfall once already. And the there were the animations showing possible flooding of so many major cities along the coasts. These are the things, he said, we need to expect if the planet continues to warm as quickly as it is.

There's more he show and talks about, so very much more, but I don't want to put it all down and I'm pretty sure that you don't want to read me getting all sciencey and statisticy, but it's there and very important.

Throughout, the film breaks away from the global warming slide show and lets Gore talk about other things and shows him preparing for the lecture and even giving it in China. It also follows him to his family farm where he speaks about some of the things that impacted his life and made him realize that he needs to be pushing the his global warming agenda (my word, not his). While I found these glimpses into Gore the man interesting, I thought they were jarring and interrupted the flow he develops in front of the audience. I'd have rather just seen the slide show from beginning to end, but I can understand why the filmmakers wanted to show why this subject is so important to Mr. Gore; it makes him more human than we, ever saw during his presidential campaigns which, for many, will probably make the message he give easier to listen to.

For me, the movie was informative, frightening, important, and funny. I laughed quite a bit more than I expected to. Others out there will not share my reaction, but I hope they at least see the movie before judging it.

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For those who are interested, I'm also mirroring my movie reviews over at Cornerstone Cafe. It seems Blog Dog is wanting to start a 'Zine thing and he asked me to join him. I'll still be posting them all here as well, though.