Review:

The An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film made in the early 2000s by director David
Guggenheim. Shown at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, it received worldwide acclaim and success,
winning two Academy Awards, for Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song. These words
seemed big to me, so I readily anticipated when our professor said that we would be watching it for
class.
The documentary follows and narrates the story of former United States Vice President Al Gore, in his
travels and his campaign to educate the public of one terrifying idea, a realization that is is not only local
but global in scale. He talks about Global Warming, one of the most controversial, most important and
one of the most talked-about topic in the environment. Global warming refers to the increase, observed
or projected, in global surface temperature, as one of the consequences of radiative forcing caused by
human-induced emissions. Global warming is a very important issue as it affects everything and all of us.
Al Gore presented in his talk that Global warming is caused by the greenhouse gases, gaseous
constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and emit radiation at
specific wavelengths within the spectrum of infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface, the
atmosphere and clouds. Water vapor (H
2
O), carbon dioxide (CO
2
), nitrous oxide (N
2
O), methane (CH
4
)
and ozone (O
3
) are the primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere. Greenhouse gases, in turn,
cause the greenhouse effect, which is the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere
due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared
radiation emitted from the planet's surface.
He presented to the audience several evidences of Global Warming, which included graphs of recorded
and projected air, water and land temperatures. He also presented a chart for carbon emissions, and
their projected effects. Lastly, he included a satellite imaging program, which shows the gradual melting
of glaciers and ice caps, and the projected rise of water level, submerging land masses like Florida and
India should this problem be ignored. Scary and real, these consequences are backed up by years of
research and study, proving that Global Warming is worth talking about.
He also presented some effects of Global Warming, like the obvious temperature increase, the melting
of polar regions, the submerging of certain areas of the globe. Some however, he presented with more
subtlety, like the melting of permafrost in Russia. Permafrost is something that holds on to some of
Russias structures, and if this would melt, some of these structures would fall down and collapse. Also
an effect would be extinction of species, and not to mention livestock, which would then lead to famine
which would lead to war and conflict.
Seeing that this issue is of great and utmost importance, he presented us with a question: What are we
going to do about it? That question lies in us. Sure, there are already some solutions presented and
planned, but what can we do as individuals? This question, hopefully, will wake our environmental
consciousness and help in the battle to conserve our only home in our own little ways.