"An Inconvenient Truth"

The other day I watched the movie "An Inconvenient Truth." I had never seen this movie before, but I was well aware of what the main idea that this movie was based on. Former Vice President Al Gore is the spokesman for this documentary, and he tries to show all of us that global warming is an issue that needs our attention now, if not it will get drastically out of hand. I thought this movie was pretty decent, Gore said some things I agree with and some other things that I am skeptical of, but I admire his courage to call this issue to our world's attention.

There were a few parts of the movie when he tried to play off the emotional appeal when he talked about his son dying and him growing up on a farm. While some of these stories were interesting at some points, I didn't understand the direct connection that these events had to global warming. I thought that some of his quips towards the Bush Administration were humorous at times, including his opening line, "I am Al Gore; I used to be the next President of the United States." I can understand his frustration after the year 2000 elections, but again I couldn't find any connections here with global warming. One graph that confused me a little bit and that Gore didn't really explain was one that he showed at the beginning of the film that was just a jagged red line with a positive slope that was on the rise with no end in sight. The part about that graph that I didn't understand was the fact that he didn't really explain what the Y-axis was, it was just an increasing graph that seemed like there was no data to support it with.

Despite the fact that there were some parts of the film I disagreed with or didn't fully understand, there were parts of the film that were interesting in bringing this issue of global warming to our attention. Some of the animations that he used were frightening because they showed what will happen to our world if we keep treating it the way we are treating it today. I also liked some of the videos and photos he had, such as when some of the polar ice caps were falling into the ocean, or when he compared glaciers in our world today to how much bigger and more incredible they were many years ago. The similulation that grabbed my attention was when he showed what would happen if the polar ice caps melted. The simulation should the Netherlands under water and Manhatten flooded along with many other coastal areas being devestated by such an extreme disaster.

I thought this film did a good job of calling our attention to this growing issue in our world, and I think we should treat it seriously and with caution. We need to trust our scientists that are studying our world to figure out if this is truely an issue, and we must all do our share to help stop global warming.