Eric D. Snider
An Inconvenient Truth (documentary)
Movie Review
"An Inconvenient Truth (documentary)"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: B+
Rating: PG
Released: Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Directed by:
Cast:
The main argument I've been hearing against global warming is that the Earth naturally goes through cycles, and that there's nothing we can do about a periodic cooling off or heating up of the atmosphere. The point Al Gore's shockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" makes over and over again is that yes, things like this have happened before -- BUT NOT THIS MUCH.
Scientists can determine the Earth's carbon dioxide levels for the past 650,000 years, and in that time the level never went above 300 parts per million. Now it's at 380 and rising. So yes, the CO2 levels have gone up and down over time -- but they've never gone up THIS high before.
More CO2 means higher temperatures -- Gore has the graphs to prove it -- and sure enough, 10 of the hottest years on record (that is, since 1880 or so) have been in the last 14 years. The very hottest year on record? A little year we like to call 2005.
So the world IS heating up, and that's pretty well irrefutable. I mean, the temperature is easy to agree on, and it's a cinch to keep track of. The question, then, is two-fold:
1. Is it our fault?
2. Can we do anything about it?
Gore, as you already know, says the answer to both questions is yes. "An Inconvenient Truth," directed by TV-drama man Davis Guggenheim, feels like the summation of Gore's life's work. He starts out folksy and accessible, talking to his audience (most of the film was shot at one of his PowerPoint-based public speeches) and presenting the facts in a simple, easy-to-understand fashion. As he progresses, he becomes more impassioned, more fervent. It's clear he has no ulterior motive. He believes this whole-heartedly.
About an hour of the film focuses on what's happened so far and what's happening now. There are alarming before-and-after photos of the world's glaciers, many of which are now lakes or gone altogether but which were enormous masses of ice just 30 or 40 years ago. Gore shows us huge chunks of Antarctica that have broken off the ice shelf and melted into the sea. We get the stats on the polar ice cap, which has grown progressively thinner in the last 100 years.
He explains why it would be bad if the ice caps melt, and why increasing temperatures have done some major damage already. He explains it better than I could, but suffice it to say, it's not good.
Gore says the biggest misconception people have about global warming is thinking it's still being debated within the scientific community. "Not really," he says, and then he unloads these findings, which I found very enlightening:
They did a random sampling of 928 global-warming-related articles from all the regular peer-reviewed scientific journals. Of those 928 (which comprise 10 percent of the total published), how many suggested that global warming was not a reality, or that it was part of a natural Earth cycle, or that there was nothing we could do about it? A grand total of zero. What Gore is saying -- it's real, it's not natural, but we can stop it -- is the overwhelming consensus among scientists, if the articles they publish are any indication. It's not being "debated." It's accepted as fact.
[UPDATE: In July 2006, I posted a blog entry detailing how this study was inherently flawed and its findings incorrect. Gore probably wasn't aware of that yet when he endorsed it in his film, but it does hurt part of his case.]
Yet 57 percent of newspaper stories related to global warming mention the "controversy" or "uncertainty" of it. Gore says this is due to a campaign of misinformation by Big Oil, which wants to reposition global warming as a "theory" rather than a fact. He compares it to the tobacco industry, which still insists there is some "debate" as to the harmfulness of their product, when really the only debate is in their imagination.
Gore is at his best when he's on the stage, presenting the information like a particularly engaging college professor. His lecture is compelling and alarming, smart enough to be useful but not overloaded with so much scientific jargon that it makes your eyes glaze over. Gore post-2000 reminds me of Bob Dole post-1996: If he'd been this personable and normal during the campaign, he might have won.
The film's less useful moments are some narrated segments in which Gore suggests that major incidents in his personal life -- his son's near-fatal car accident in 1989, his defeat in the 2000 election -- refocused his vision on environmentalism. It may be true, but it smells sanctimonious and self-aggrandizing, which he tends not to be otherwise. A lone reference to 9/11 is manipulative and unnecessary, too.
Does he have his facts straight? Well, unless scientists have been refuting his claims and simply failing to publish articles in scientific journals saying so, then yes, he apparently has the vast majority of the scientific community behind him. And if what he's saying is true, then we ought to do something about it. This isn't a "fun" film, per se, but it never ceases to be fascinating and eye-opening.
Grade: B+
Rated PG, alarming statistics and some intense bar graphs
1 hr., 40 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 10 comments
December 8, 2006 at 12:09 am
about those 928 journal articles: "a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words “global climate change†produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it."
that's from the wall street journal: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
the comparison of the global warming debate to the tobacco / health "debate" is what logicians call a strawman.
December 10, 2006 at 6:30 pm
"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels. It's a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of science or scientists agrees on something, rather, reach for your wallet because you're being had. Let's be clear. Work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics...The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There's no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. And if it's science, it isn't consensus period." - Michael Crichton
December 10, 2006 at 8:32 pm
I like what I'm reading.
December 10, 2006 at 9:30 pm
As a scientist myself, I feel the need to stick up for "consensus science" since I feel this is a big no-brainer. All this means is that many different scientists have tested or studied a particular phenomenon and have come to similar conclusions. For example, the age of the earth has been independently determined by numerous scientists using vastly different methods (astrology, geology, radioactivity, etc.) and since most of the conclusions are the same, it makes sense to accept the consensus that the earth really is really, really old. So, using the facts and testing methods we have now, scientists draw conclusions. However, things CAN drastically change when new evidence or testing methods are discovered. There is nothing magic about breaking away from the consensus. True science does not try to prove or disprove anything anyway. Now the interpretation of results is an entirely different discussion...
December 12, 2006 at 5:15 pm
I hope they are not really trying to date the earth using astrology. Can you picture it?
"Since Venus was in Libra when Saturn was in Leo, we can see that the age of the Earth is really 29 and a half, and must avoid associating with a brownish planet that will come calling within the next week."
December 12, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Oh, consensus is not really valued all that much in science. Things that everyone already agrees on do not make good papers. What science wants is peer-review. The process of peer-review helps keeps quacks and nuts from publishing. There are actually good peer-reviewed papers on each side of the global warming debate. Consensus really is more politics than science.
February 21, 2007 at 7:59 pm
It's ok for a review. I've heard better.
April 10, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Such fears had been building for many years. In the first Earth Day in 1970, UC Davis’s Kenneth Watt said, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.†International Wildlife warned “a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war†as a threat to mankind. Science Digest said “we must prepare for the next ice age.†The Christian Science Monitor noted that armadillos had moved out of Nebraska because it was too cold, glaciers had begun to advance, and growing seasons had shortened around the world. Newsweek reported “ominous signs†of a “fundamental change in the world’s weather.†From a Crichton Speech, "Our Environmental Future."
Another Scientific Consensus, population explosion...
"Back in the 90s, if someone said to you, “This population explosion is overstated. In the next hundred years, population will actually decline.†That would contradict what all the environmental groups were saying, what the U.N. was saying. You would regard such a statement as outrageous. More or less as you would regard a statement by someone in 2005 that global warming has been overstated."
From another crichton speech.
There is plenty of scientific research out there against global warming. "State of Fear" footnotes several which show an increase in ice thickness in antarctica (despite several shelves breaking off, as shown in gore's film) as well as cooling trends all over antarctica.
May 9, 2007 at 12:15 pm
i love polar bears
October 10, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Courts in Britain found there are 11 inaccuracies that children in schools must be made aware of if they are shown this movie. Here are a few of the inaccuracies found by the court:
1. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
2. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
3. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
4. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.