Why An Inconvenient Truth is so important
An Inconvenient Truth, the new documentary about Al Gore's tireless advocacy for environmental issues in recent years, opened Wednesday in Los Angeles and New York. Julie and I snapped up tickets to an evening showing at the Arclight that had the added benefit of a Q&A with the film's director.
An Inconvenient Truth is a truly important film. The film centers around a presentation that Al Gore has perfected in recent years about the science behind the developing global crisis. With an abundance of charts and citations, Gore lays out an iron-clad case for the simplest fact of global warming: human behavior is changing the way the world naturally functions. We follow Gore as he delivers his presentation to audiences around the world with an occasional detour to see the work of climate scientists in their element.
But why now? After analyzing dramatic changes in global weather patterns in recent years, Gore asks whether we should be preparing for threats to our society in addition to terrorism. This question is the defining one of our era. Gore's presentation is in the face of a constant barrage of disinformation from the right. The current issue of the National Review features an articles titled Snow Job: The truth about the great overhyped glacier melt. As the Center for American Progress points out, this story is not based on scienctific investigation and when it does mention scientific study is twists the conclusions to fit the narrative of the article.
On Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume earlier this week, Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes falsely claimed that "It's not known for certain or anywhere near certain whether the small increase in temperature over the last hundred years is caused by man or not." This is a lie.
In the film, Gore points to an article in the jounral Science from December 2004. The authors analyzed 928 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals from 1993 to 2004 and found that not a single one disagreed with the fundamental truth that human civilization is changing the natural balance of the earth's climate. The next time you hear some say that climate change is uncertain, point them to this article. There is no more dispute in the scientific community about climate change than there is about gravity or evolution.
As long as the media allows this lie to spread, that there is dispute in the scientific community about climate change, Gore's presentation and, by extension, this film are important. Americans are capable of rising to great challenges. We are capable of changing some of our habits and embracing new technology that offer a way of this morass.
Please go see An Inconvenient Truth and get involved in your community to make sure that our children will look back our generation and be proud of how we turned this crisis around.
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Who is this guy?
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