An Inconvenient Truth Reaction

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary, which explores the world’s current climate crisis, lead by former United States Vice President Al Gore. The film is a collection of presentations given by Gore around the world. Gore’s “slide show” has brought a huge awareness to global warming and calls for more government action in regard to the climate. The film contains a copious amount of fascinating information. Personally, the aspects which stand out most to me are: the examination of annual temperature and CO2 levels for the past 650,000, the melting ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland, and Philip Cooney. The most visually striking and memorable element of the film was Gore’s impressive graph of the Earth’s temperature and CO2 levels for the past 650,000. The chart not only illustrated the past but an alarming future. Using ice core samples scientists conclude CO2 levels have never gone above 300 parts per million. As of 2005, there were approximately 380 parts per million. (Brook 2005) This number is rapidly climbing each year. These samples come from the deepest ice core in the word located in East Antarctica on a site called Dome Concordia. (Brook 2005) Using a 10 centimeter wide drill bit in 3 meter sections, samples are extracted, leading to the examination of minute CO2 bubbles within the ancient ice. (Brook 2005) This truly amazing science is vital for understanding the climate crisis. As CO2 levels go up so does the temperature. As temperature climbs so do the seas. Thus a large, seemingly never ending, deadly domino effect begins. An Inconvenient Truth is rich with pictures and computer graphics indicating the effects of rising temperatures. None are more effective then the images of the Larson B ice shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula. From January 31, 2002 to March 5, 2002 about 3,250 km2 of the ice shelf’s area broke apart. (NSIDC 2002) Meaning a massive 720 billion tons of ice, larger then the state of Road Island, disappeared in just

Bibliography: 1. Brook E. 2005. Tiny Bubbles Tell All. Science. [Internet] Available from: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5752/1285 2. NSIDC. 2002. Larsen B Ice Shelf Collapses in Antarctica. National Snow and Ice Data Center. [Internet] Available from: http://nsidc.org/iceshelves/larsenb2002/ 3. Revkin A. 2005. Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming. The New York Times. [Internet] Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html?pagewanted=1 4. UNEP. 2007. Melting Ice-A Hot Topic? New UNEP Report Shows Just How Hot It 's Getting. United Nations Environment Programme. [Internet] Available from: http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=512&ArticleID=5599&l=en