In An Inconvenient Truth the man who used to be “America’s next president”—Al Gore—presents a comprehensive, well-founded, and conclusive documentary on global warming. Aside from American politics and the Bush administration incident in the beginning of the film, Al Gore stays respectfully away from those situations.
Despite the gravity of the subject, Gore’s presentation was light-hearted and often funny. His documentary included a clip from Cartoon Network’s animated show “Futurama,” which featured an animated Gore guest-starring as himself. Taking a more serious tone, Gore convinces his audience of the very real threat of global warming with the use of empirical data from a myriad of scientific studies. One such study was originally introduced to Gore by his own college professor. The documentary included a small tribute to this man as well as a continuation of his studies, which proved the professor’s hypothesis from 40 years ago to be true: Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are continually increasing at unprecedented rates.
After a crash course in the science involved with global warming, the viewers understand why they should be worried about the increasing carbon dioxide emissions. There is a provocative slide show with before-and-after pictures of internationally-recognized landscapes. Each pair of pictures showed disturbing trends—glaciers are receding, rivers are drying up, and snowy mountain tops are becoming a thing of the past.
The pictures reinforce what another study presented in the documentary proved: Earth’s temperature is rising. On the surface, this may not seem to be a big deal. However, Gore connects the temperature change with disturbances in ocean currents. Small disturbances cause climatic peculiarities, such as Hurricane Katrina. What would happen if the ocean currents were largely disturbed? Gore entertains this question while telling his audience about an enormous lake that used to exist in Canada. Lake Agassiz was a glacial freshwater lake in North America about the size of Texas. Its sudden exposure to the Atlantic Ocean 8,400 years ago is believed to have caused a miniature ice age, which is evident in glacial records. A disturbance in the Gulf Stream from melting polar ice caps, which is also proved to be occurring at unprecedented rates, could be detrimental to European nations that benefit from its warm winds.
Although Gore’s tone is generally lighthearted, he truly drives home his point. Because of the effects of increased carbon dioxide emissions, Earth will soon be seeing some changes—changes that previously would have been predicted to occur over thousands of years. These changes are now on track to take effect in our lifetimes and in the lifetimes of our children. If Antarctica’s glaciers continue to melt, the sea level worldwide is predicted to rise twenty feet.
While Gore’s documentary is extremely informative, it is somewhat polluted with his own biography. It also lacks something that is expected from a documentary—testimonies from multiple persons. Instead, the documentary’s information comes almost entirely from Gore and his interpretation of the presented studies. Despite this, An Inconvenient Truth is undoubtedly an invaluable source of information on its respective subject. Bravo, Mr. Gore.
