The inconvenient truth

The inconvenient truth is a documentary about global warming, directed by Davis Guggenheim and presented by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The film provides hard data and forecasts about the climate change in the world and also shows some episodes of Al Gore’s life related to his personal experience in this issue. In other words, it analyzed the causes of global warming from a scientific perspective, discussed the problem as a moral and political issue, and finally pointed out its devastating consequences.

Although some people and politicians in U.S. believe that human beings cannot have an effect on global warming, the main claim of the film is that this phenomenon is caused basically by human activity and its immediate effects could be catastrophic for human life in the next decades.

In the beginning, Al Gore offered a general definition for global warming “carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere”. However, he pointed out that human activity can increase dramatically the temperature by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil, that is, raising the amount of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere.

In order to prove that global warming is human-caused, Al Gore used specific data, images and illustrative and useful graphs. All these information is used as evidence of the following reasons:

1. The temperature in the earth is rising considerably: He shows a graph that asses the constant increase in earth temperature and explains that earth had experienced earlier global warming, but currently the main difference is the non stop increasing trend and its intensifying velocity. As an example, he mentioned that the last ten years have been the hottest in the past four decades and the hottest year was 2005.
   
2. There really is a positive correlation between CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and temperature in northern hemisphere: according to the results of a study of Antarctic ice sample, he demonstrated that there is an extremely similar trend between the increase in CO2 concentrations and earth temperature. This relationship has many effects on the earth. Al Gore mentioned the following examples.
   
3. The melting ice in the Antarctic glacier and Greenland and in important mountains such as the Himalaya.
   i. Higher temperatures in the oceans imply an increase in salt concentration, if that happens in the Atlantic Ocean Europe would face an ice era.
   ii. If one of those glaciers melts away the sea level could rise approximately 20 feet and cover some important cities such as San Francisco Bay or Netherlands.
   
4. The variability in oceans’ temperature: the global warming produces an increase in storms, tornados and hurricanes. Al Gore used examples of the most recent natural disasters such as Katrina or others occurred in Asia.
   The seasonal changes: the global warming changes the way of life of living creatures and can put in jeopardy many species almost in the edge of extinction. A good example was the polar bear.
   
5. Spread of diseases: because of the rising in earth temperature many pests can arise as insects, rats and mosquitoes. As a result, it is likely that diseases such as avian flu can arise dramatically.

The documentary also used some warrants. The first one emphasized on how Al Gore’s father stopped producing tobacco because his daughter died of lung cancer. This is a good example to show us that even though people know about negative results of, in this case, smoking they do nothing until the consequences are irreversible.

Another example of warrant was the story of Al Gore’s son. He almost dies in a car accident and the former Vice President had to rethink his life priorities, as a result he realized that all of us have to take care of our environment to next generations.

In the end of the documentary, Al Gore encourages all people to reduce its own CO2 personal generation, and make small changes can have huge impact in the short run.