DVD Review: Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”
Mention Al Gore’s documentary on global warming An Inconvenient Truth
- Liberals and environmentalists who have long been alarmed by this problem. They have waited years for a truly “accessible” mass media event to give the issue the attention they feel it deserves. They welcome it and instantly accept its thesis.
- People who don’t know much about global warming or haven’t done much research into it. They will also welcome it and then hunt out the criticism of it to see what’s being said on the other side, too.
- People who reject or belittle it out of hand, suggesting that global warming is more theory and political posturing than fact, and chuckling because this movie stars Al Gore — so how could it hold anyone’s interest?
But, guess what? The movie DOES holds your interest. It presents Gore as a witty, charming, engaging personality rattling off facts and theories not to impress or win over, but because he has done his homework and uses the data to make the case that time is being lost.
When you watch “An Inconvenient Truth” you’re blown away by Gore’s research and the way veteran TV director Davis Guggenheim packaged it with the pacing, graphics, inter-cut film clips, dramatic musical scoring and sound. Gore (and Guggenheim) effectively communicate what’s at risk if, as the former Veep charges, man’s carbon dioxide emissions continue warming up the atmosphere, melting snow caps, threatening water supplies, put coastlines with advancing shorelines in harm’s way, and making vital soil less fertile. And you come away feeling:
–Al Gore needs to sue his political consultants who advised him in 2000. If they had let the Gore we see on film come through, he most likely would have been sitting in the Oval Office. This is a PASSIONATE Gore, someone who is conducting a conversation — not unlike passionate “blog conversations” done with facts and figures and analysis. YES…he is making a case. But YES he makes it well.
–The attention-deficit nature of American society, the American news media, and the often contradictory pull of info and entertainment media have relegated this issue to a spot where some other vital issues have been tossed: to the peripheral vision of America’s collective consciousness.
To be sure, experts are split on global warming:
After listening to two local climate scholars talk about Al Gore’s global warming primer “An Inconvenient Truth,” you might think they sat through different movies.Ken MacLeod, an associate professor in the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Geological Sciences Department, saw a refreshed Gore, liberated from the campaign march, presenting a strong, accurate summary of global warming science.
“I thought he did a very good job,” MacLeod said. “It was a very nice presentation of a pretty big field that’s not difficult in core concepts but potentially very complicated when you talk about it on a global scale and on different time scales.”
On the other hand, Anthony Lupo, an associate professor of atmospheric science at MU, saw a one-sided presentation that ignored scientists, like himself, who disagree that humans are to fault for global warming. He also saw Gore once again campaigning for president….
“His whole tone of this was, ‘We’ve got to make radical changes in our lifestyle, and we have to make them now, and that’s because the science on the issue is settled’,” Lupo said. “Well that’s not entirely the case. The science, for one thing, is not settled.”
But Gore’s title is about the fact that it is an “inconvenient truth” for many. And he cites a key Mark Twain quote that reflects a main theoretical strand in this film:
What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know but what we know for sure that just ain’t so.
Anyone who’s turned on conservative talk radio — or tried to conduct a serious or unemotional discussion of this issue with someone who keeps their radios or cable TVs tune on certain talk shows — knows that Gore’s film is dismissed and ridiculed because well, it features Al Gore!!!
But that isn’t enough anymore.
At best, Gore’s movie is a call to policy arms, urging Americans (and presumably a Democratic Congress) to start taking this issue more seriously and to scrutinize the data Gore himself presents. And, at its least, the flick nails down a start-off point for a serious, substantive discussion on how real this issue is.
But Gore and Guggenheim do what has never quite been done before: make a truly compelling documentary that is part illustration, part speculation but a large part presentation of a rock-solid talk Gore has given on the subject for years (he estimates he has given “the slide show” at least a thousand times in various cities to get the word out). Gore offers statistics, graphs, anecdotes and shocking illustrations of places that once had lots of ice…but have since melted.
News reports have centered on his contention about hurricanes and those who immediately dismissed this film and DVD because it was a movie with Al Gore!!! are really changing the subject: Gore deals with far more in his film than hurricanes.
But in this age of political demonization and attempts at image control, trying to discredit a movie by attempting to paint cartoonish images of a former politician is easier than arguing a counter case. (This game was taken to new levels when Fox News‘ Neil Cavuto blasted the smash cartoon “Happy Feet” for being part of the liberal agenda and, in effect, a propaganda piece for environmentalists. “I half expected to see an animated version of Al Gore pop up,” Cavuto said. Note the use of “Al Gore” as a derisive punchline/buzzword.)
And, indeed, liberals, environmentalists, moderates, independents and open-minded people who watch it saying “CONVINCE ME” will be amazed at how quickly it moves, how charming and naturally intelligent Gore seems, the amount of info packed into every segment, and the films quick pace. An Inconvenient Truth provides useful research and clarity on this issue.
Ironically, the movie trailer (SEE THE YOU TUBE BELOW)gives a false impression of the movie because it over-hypes the film’s most dramatic spots. Actually, many parts of the movie record Gore giving a serious, compelling slide show talk. Meanwhile, Guggenheim also weaves in bits about Gore’s political and personal history, showing him working on his laptop in a car and at home etc. Extras include a featurette update on the issue by Gore, and some audio commentary tracks with Guggenheim and several others.
An Inconvenient Truth does what some once felt was impossible. It makes global warming dramatic without a Hollywood script and it seamlessly shows you an Al Gore who is highly-passionate about a serious issue — not a kind of “environmental wacko” as his critics long suggested or the candidate who seemingly changed his persona each second when he ran for President in 2000. He’s comes across as a man who reads, asks a lot of questions — and then concludes.
Don’t believe me? Get the DVD and watch it for yourself. If you don’t like it, sell it on Amazon Marketplace. If you like it, do what I did: I donated it to a small school nearby.
And, yes, I did so even though it…is a movie with Al Gore!!!
SOME OTHER VIEWS ON THIS MOVIE:
An Inconvenient Truth(Pros and Cons)
Rotten Tomatoes (93 percent favorable reviews)
Blood Diamond hates it (…”one of the worst documentaries”)
Planetary horror story filled with Gore … thankfully
DVD Talk Review
Peswiki Review
Tail Slate has a MUST READ review. A small part of it:
The only time I felt An Inconvenient Truth was being unfair is when it shows the after effects of Hurricane Katrina, which occurred while the documentary was filming. It’s unfair because it shows the aftermath of that terrible storm as a means of showing what can happen as global warming creates more and more powerful storms. And while there’s truth to it, the damage caused in New Orleans wasn’t so much about the storm but about poor government response and weak levees. Had the levees been built properly, chances are the damage the city suffered would never have taken place. So, while the storm’s strength was an issue, the film over simplifies that particular event to make a point that isn’t really accurate.I will make a note to defend An Inconvenient Truth in that the campaigns against the film are largely organized by special interest groups hired or backed by the oil or automotive industries that want to discredit the film for their own reasons. The facts presented in the film are fairly simple and are not disputed. The issue is really about interpretation.
GLOBAL WARMING:
Eight Reasons Why Global Warming Is A Scam
The Case That Global Warming Is Not A Scam
19 Responses to “DVD Review: Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth””
Laurie David, producer of the Gore film, offered the National Science Teachers Association 50,000 DVDs of the movie for distribution to science teachers, but she was turned down. NSTA is worried about risking the association’s capital campaign, which includes big bucks from Exxon Mobil.
Does anyone recall the Ibsen play “An Enemy of the People?” in which the protagonist concluded: “The enemy of the people is the people.”
The facts are in dispute (even by people agreeing that global warming is a problem just not that the “interpitations” of the film are correct) as well as the way in which the facts were displayed. Did they say that global warming caused Katrina? But how else would people percive it?
I’m super, super, super serial. EXCELSIOR!!!
This is sort of like the intelligent design debate, where they found many more scientists named “Steve” on the pro-science side than scientists total on the ID side.
Experts are not split in any meaningful sense.
Are football players small because some kickers only weight 170lbs? This is the same sort of completely incorrect generalization.
It seems the only scientiss that are “split” are actively funded by the oil and gas industry. Global warming “skeptics” sound an awful lot like asbestos cancer skeptics or cigarette cancer skeptics in the past. Thankfully, the flat-earthers no longer have an ally as head of the Energy and Environment Committee in the Senate.
It is possible that human’s do not materially effect global warming. But I would prefer to not take a chance. If in the future we discover that we overstated the impact of human emissions on the environment we can adjust our standards then.
But why risk annihilation?
I work in climate research at Harvard (admittedly as something less than a grad student), and what I’ve heard from several people in the department is that some of the facts actually are in dispute. I don’t claim to represent anyone; this is just what I’ve heard talked about in various climate seminars. The fact most disputed around here is the extent to which CO2 levels cause global warming. There are many processes dependent on the carbon dioxide, and there are feedbacks in both directions — it can be argued, for example, that global warming CAUSES higher CO2 because carbon is more readily dissolved in the water or something. I’m not sure exactly what the models are. The point is that, while everyone agrees that there is anthropogenic climate change, we don’t know exactly what the climate’s response to increased CO2 will be — some warming is clear, but maybe not to the extent Gore predicts.
There are certainly issues with “the science”, but best-case scenario is still anthropogenic global warming. But don’t take my word for it; I didn’t study this myself and just talked to some people. I may not even be remembering very accurately. Research it yourself.
I don’t want to take a chance either and I think there are multiple benefits to reducing emissions even if the global warming doomsday predictions are not accurate. However, I’m not unhappy that the Gore film isn’t going to be distributed to schools because it may be telling the truth but chances are it isn’t the “whole truth” because it gives no credence to those who dissent from it. Giving kids information about current scientific and political debates is fine if the information presents both sides of the issue, but this doesn’t meet that standard IMO.
Mauro here’s a thread we had a couple weeks ago addressing some specific critiques (and my critiques of those) and another thread about some of the foundations of modelling in general.
C Stanley I think the biggest issue is that schools do a terrible job of teaching kids how to evaluate information and critique it. Science classes consist merely of learning knoweldge, while in reality most of science is about evaulating information and creating hypotheses. I don’t think that videos should be given out like this for the simple reason that even if all the information is correct, it’ll still be presented dogmatically and hence have political undertones that ultimately hurt scientific understanding.
For those who think there’s absolutely no controversy even among those who like global warming, please do us all a favor and read this.
“Using poor Ludwig Boltzmann’s law, lambda’s true value is just 0.22-0.3C per watt. In 2001, the UN effectively repealed the law, doubling lambda to 0.5C per watt. A recent paper by James Hansen says lambda should be 0.67, 0.75 or 1C: take your pick. Sir John Houghton, who chaired the UN’s scientific assessment working group until recently, tells me it now puts lambda at 0.8C: that’s 3C for a 3.7-watt doubling of airborne CO2. Most of the UN’s computer models have used 1C. Stern implies 1.9C.”
I’m not a climatologist. Hell, I don’t even play one on TV. Maybe a constant magically changed, or was recorded improperly, or whatever.
That’s still a hell of a lot of controversy for a mathematical equation roughly equivilant to E=MC^2.
Mikkel,
I agree completely- though I also have to add that at lower grade levels, the ability to think critically may not be sufficiently developed so that even with better education toward that goal, we should be extra cautious about what is spoon fed to kids in the lower grades.
Yeah about that article. Actually the post is only the beginning…in the comments it alters between argument and lots of scientific facts that make the article look silly.
In an amazing coincidence I have been completely unable to find a single scientist who disagrees completely with the existence of AGW who isn’t also a conservative Republican, much like the one in the article Joe linked to. Not one.
Mauro, there is a difference between the fact of AGW being in dispute and the details of the models and the degree to which it is occurring or will occur.
gattsuru, that article was incompetent and virtually nothing but pure BS. Every argument he presented has been gone over in other places.
Jim S,
What about the party affiliation of those who believe in the dire global warming predictions? Could there not be bias on that side of the issue as well?
No, not really, CS. I haven’t seen the opposite apply. If you think there is then please show me but when you look at the background of the pretend skeptics they overwhelmingly break down into people who either are conservative Republicans or receive their funding from ExxonMobil, other companies or groups like AEI or CEI. There are people who legitimately disagree with the details of what the models predict. But the ones who say that it’s just part of the natural cycle without trying to explain which of the known contributors to the natural cycle are showing a sign of contributing now are contributing nothing legitimate to the debate.
I understand, Jim, but what some scientists are saying is that the bias in the scientific community is to fund and publish the studies that lend evidence toward the warming models, while the scientists who want to perform research that questions the theory are being blackballed. Personally I believe that global warming is occurring and that we’re probably contributing to it (and more to the point, I think there are other reasons to deal with the pollutant issues anyway). But I think that you guys are blind to the possibility that the scientists themselves have some bias that is interfering with their own integrity because theories SHOULD be questioned vigourously. There should not be such a rush to consensus and a feeling that the scientists who dissent are practicing junk science. Yes, they may not have much evidence to support their dissent but then again, if no one will fund them, how can they produce evidence?
[...] What’s so vital that Gore can’t allow the press to cover a talk that has been seen in movie theaters and see on DVD? FYI, this site reviewed his movie An Inconvenient Truth and gave it a highly positive review. SEE OUR REVIEW HERE. MORE: Kalee Kreider, a Gore staffer in Nashville, confirmed by e-mail that news media will be asked to leave his talk after the introduction and that Gore will not hold a press conference. [...]
[...] What’s so vital that Gore can’t allow the press to cover a talk that has been seen in movie theaters and see on DVD? FYI, this site reviewed his movie and gave it a highly positive review. SEE OUR REVIEW HERE. MORE: Kalee Kreider, a Gore staffer in Nashville, confirmed by e-mail that news media will be asked to leave his talk after the introduction and that Gore will not hold a press conference. [...]