an inconvenient truth

Saw an inconvenient truth last evening. The movie directed by Davis Guggenheim is focused on Al Gore and his climate change presentation. It runs for 100 minutes, accompanied with a lot of power point graphs, maps and statistics. It is important to see this movie, on the affects that our actions are having on climate change on Earth. The effects are causing consequences like global warming, floods, hurricanes and changes in ecological balance.
Al Gore starts his presentation with “I'm Al Gore and I used to be the next president of the United States,” and then he starts to deliver the message.
From the globe and mail

The lecture begins with an image of the planet in the first photograph taken from space, followed by more current images. He explains the theory and shows the effects of global warming. He debunks the idea that there is anything cyclic about the changes. The graph that shows increases in carbon-dioxide emissions and the corresponding rise in temperatures is jolting — even without the visual aid of Gore standing on a hydraulic lift to show the line going off the chart.

There are photographs of dramatically retreating ice-fields, animated demonstrations of deep cracks through the ice on Greenland and Antarctic, computer simulations of disappearing coastlines, plausible explanations for the current rise in hot summers and hurricane activity.

Much of this material is familiar, but presented in total, over the course of 100 minutes, the impact is frightening.

In fact, one of the most intriguing statistics offered in An Inconvenient Truth isn't about water levels and pollution, but about the media environment. In a sampling of 900-plus peer-reviewed studies in recognized journals, not one scientist challenged the idea of global warming. In contrast, more than 50 per cent of articles in the American popular press present it as a “theory.”

In an atmosphere of so much heat and haze, An Inconvenient Truth is decisive and clear. Here is a man who was almost the American president, who declares that global warming is here and, unless checked, will lead to catastrophic results.

What changed in the U.S. with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences. Al Gore

He described how the Hurricane Katrina was not so severe when it hit Florida, but when it came inland and before it hit the gulf coast, it came in contact with warm temperatures this caused a severe reaction within the eye of the storm that was devastating. Katarina happened because of global warming.

It was shameful to see that U.S. is one of two countries it the world that had not signed the Kyoto Treaty on controlling CO2 emissions, the other being Australia. The U.S. is the biggest polluter of Carbon Dioxide emissions, through fossil fuel combustion. C02 emissions are causing depletion of the ozone layer. This is the layer protecting the earth from the suns rays, without this protection we are facing global warming. The U.S. says that it will not sign the treaty since its industry will suffer financially. But Asian car manufactures like Honda and Toyota are much better financially then U.S. companies like GM and Ford who are showing losses, since they had not kept up with controlling fuel emissions standards. Big gas guzzlers like Hummers and S.U.V’s are not fuel efficient and a waste of resources.

I think this quote summed up the position of the U.S. industry and government well.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. Upton Sinclair

The message of the movie was positive, stating that the situation was serious, but if we all did something to protect the environment and change the government we could reverse the trend.