An Inconvenient Truth

Just finished watching Al Gore's movie about Climate change and felt compelled to blog - what an intriguing movie! To give you the brief background:
* Movie released 2006, based on Al Gore's long running slideshow lecture about climate change and global warming. Al Gore explains in quite a scientific way the current theory of global warming - with presentation of graphs of CO2, temperature, migratory birds etc.
* Won 2 Oscars.
* Al Gore won a joint Nobel Peace prize for the movie (shared with the IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - who helped make the movie)
* According to IMDB.com - "This is the first carbon-neutral documentary"
* Various youtube hits - check this one debunking some of the 'facts' from the movie

Should u see this film? Yes, probably. It wasn't the greatest film, but though essentially it was a like a lecture, it didn’t feel like being back at University (I wasn't falling asleep, drooling on my notes and absently drawing squiggly lines everywhere). In terms of impact to people of our age, and for general knowledge about climate change and how it's affecting the earth, and for a subject of conversation - I would say it's a very important film. I must admit that I'm a bit skeptical re: climate change, and I did find myself trying to pick holes in the arguments. (I didn't use to be! but recent reading makes me think the issue is much more complicated than i previously thought)

My issues with the film -
* For a film that presents like a documentary and passes off a lot of scientific data, while talking about research studies and sample groups, there was more than a few inaccuracies in the film. It one section of the movie he talks about when the ice caps melt (somewhere around 2050) that the seas will rise by 20 feet (about 7m) - flooding The Netherlands, Manhattan, SF bay, Shanghai, India etc. However, the most recent study has predicted that the largest the sea levels will rise will be 59cm!!

Many people have defended the movie saying that it's not the scientific accuracy of the movie that's important, it's about getting the message out there - which is ridiculous when you are talking about a documentary film (scientific based one at that) where accuracy is everything. He states that the presentation has been done over a 1000 times ... enough times to get it accurate?
[ on a sidenote: the film has been distrubuted to every secondary school in UK (also 50,000 copies of the film were given away to teachers in the US) - subsequently, film was taken to court for various inaccuracies of the film. See here. ]

* The film doesn't present the other side of the story. There is a lot of data out there that puts the impact of humans much lower than what has been suggested by Al Gore. One website I can recommend is Junkscience.com which has a lot of interesting, but very technical information -e.g. how much carbon dioxide is actually in the atmosphere? how much is due to human beings? (Check out the answers for those 2 questions!)

Regarding climate change there is undisputable evidence. There is no doubt that the earth's climate is changing - no scientist will disagree with that. However, there is massive doubt about wether human's are effecting the environment. This is where scientists are debating currently. There are a lot of other explanations about why the temperature is increasing and many that don't involve a human element - e.g. solar flare, Earth emerging from a mini Ice Age.

* The film concludes with suggestions about what we as should be doing to make a difference in this world. Interestingly the film uses the credits as the time in the movie to do this - in very small print too. Evidently not part of Al Gore's lecture? Well the list isn't that ground breaking - it's recycle, drive a hybrid car, pray for the world , and spread the word.

The important thing I think is to find out as much as you can, try not to be deceived mainstream thought but to make your own decisions based on ALL the available data. (unfortunately that means lots of reading!!) For starters try Michael Crichton's "State of Fear". Very good book. or this website.