Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth Review- 11/28/07

Meghan Carroll
Beyond Fossil Fuel Columnist

I recently sat down and watched this wonderful movie about global warming.  I had no idea the damage we could prevent.  I have always recycled and know the basics of how to save the earth but WOW, there is still so much we can do.  No one wants to believe that we can hurt this big planet.  It is extremely important to make big changes now.  We as a country are ignoring a problem that is right in front of us.  Well, we cannot do this anymore.

Let me begin by explaining global warming.  The sun warms the earth with heat waves and some of this is radiation that is re-radiated back up in the form of infra-red radiation.  Some of this radiation gets trapped in by the atmosphere.  The atmosphere holds this radiation and that is what makes the earth a comfortable temperature.  But, now add pollution and this makes the atmosphere warm the earth more due to no release of radiation.  This is causing the extreme temperatures which are melting glaciers, raising sea levels, and causing unpredictable weather.  However, there is an amount of predictability.

Al Gore was not someone I knew of before he was Bill Clinton’s vice president.  I did not know that he has been working on global warming since he was in college.  One of his professors was insistent on stressing the point of we can help the future if we pay attention to this global warming problem.  He wanted students that would change the world.  He did experiments to prove that the patterns of the past were changing.  There have always been highs and lows.  The highs were when the southern hemisphere was pointing towards the sun.  This is caused because there is more land mass in the northern hemisphere.  This vegetation when pointed towards the sun breathes in carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. So when the southern is pointed to the sun there is not as much breathing by the plants which gives us a higher carbon dioxide level.  This pattern is changing though.   There are higher rates of carbon dioxide now and less vegetation.  This is helping to hold onto this carbon dioxide and is polluting the atmosphere and not allowing the radiation to escape, thus warming the earth more.  There are glaciers melting at astonishing rates.  People now get to watch glaciers crumble rather than witnessing a magnificent piece of ice.  The snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro are in danger of having no snow at all.  These are just a few examples of what is happening to the earth, there is much more to come.

Gore started in Congress in the 1970’s.  He started right away trying to get global warming noticed again.  He was amazed that all these predictions that he professor told him about were coming true.  He knew that he had to do something.  Everyone else was slow coming to this endeavor.  Slowly we are doing our part.  The Clean Air Act that was passed has visible results that one can see when scientists take cores of ice.  There are many skeptics to global warming but the evidence speaks for itself.  We are ruining our earth and we must work together as a country and then as a planet to protect this precious commodity.  This is a moral issue more that a political issue.  In 1989, Al Gore’s son was hit by a car and this really had an awakening effect on Mr. Gore. He knows that if we do not protect what we have, it will not be here for our children or our grandchildren.  We are taking this for granted.  We are now breaking all time high temperature records.  Scientists are now predicting warmer oceans which produce great storms.  No one can say they haven’t noticed the increase in damaging hurricanes.  This is not only a problem here but all over the world.  The evidence is staring us in the face and the predictions are getting worse.  It is time for the procrastination to stop and to become proactive in our solution to help slow down global warming.

I believe that this movie should be shown to all students young and old to help awaken people to what is really happening.  I had no idea how bad it is…..Did YOU??

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