• About Science in School
  • About EIROforum
  • Submit an article
Science in School
Science in School
  • Understand
    • Recent research and science topics
      • Astronomy / space
      • Biology
      • Chemistry
      • Earth science
      • Engineering
      • General science
      • Health
      • History
      • Mathematics
      • Physics
      • News from the EIROs
      • Science and society
  • Inspire
    • People, events and resources
      • Advertorials
      • Career focus
      • Competitions and events
      • Education focus
      • Resource reviews
      • Science and society
      • Science miscellany
      • Scientist profiles
      • Teacher profiles
  • Teach
    • Activities and projects
      • Astronomy / space
      • Biology
      • Chemistry
      • Earth science
      • Engineering
      • General science
      • Health
      • History
      • Mathematics
      • Physics
      • Science and society
  • Archive
  • Login
  • Contact
Ages:
14-16, 16-19
Series: 
Climate change
Issue 9
 -  02/10/2008

An Inconvenient Truth, By Al Gore

Bernhard Haubold

Horror movies are a popular, albeit rather despised, film genre. It is all the more surprising that the most horrific of the current crop of scary movies has recently won an Oscar, not to mention the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to its main protagonist.

Like all effective horror movies, An Inconvenient Truth has a slow build-up; in fact, the setting is about as banal as it gets: a public lecture given by a well-known member of the political establishment, former US Vice President Al Gore. The hair-raising message he relates is also beginning to become as clichéd as last year’s favourite psychopath: inhabitants of industrialised nations are collectively destabilising Earth’s climate. But as the discerning movie buff knows, it all comes down to delivery. And Gore is a master of the unsettling plotline.

It all started, he tells his audience, when one of his professors at Harvard University, Roger Revelle, presented in class the now iconic serrated curve describing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 over time. This curve is also known as the Keeling Curve in honour of Charles Keeling, who took the CO2 measurements from 1958 onwards. He established that in the summer, when the plants in the northern hemisphere are busy fixing CO2, its atmospheric levels decrease; during the northern winter, they increase. So far, this is reassuringly in agreement with high-school biology.

However, the unease starts creeping in as we realise that, in the summer, the curve almost never returns to its previous minimum but levels off at a slightly higher point. The rate of this overall increase looks tiny, but a plot of atmospheric CO2 and temperature over the past 650 000 years reveals that the two quantities are tightly correlated. And then comes the crunch: on the scale of the past 650 000 years, the increase in CO2 since World War II is extremely rapid. More disquieting still, the current level of atmospheric CO2 is unprecedented over the past 650 millenia.

So what? If it gets a bit hotter, crank up the air conditioner, get a beer from the fridge and rent another gory movie. The trouble is, Gore points out, that as the ice at the poles melts due to global warming, less sunlight is reflected by the polar glaciers, which creates a positive feedback cycle of warming at the poles. The effects of this are visible all around us: of the 21 hottest years since 1860, 20 occurred over the past quarter of a century. The heat wave of summer 2003 caused thousands of deaths in Europe. Hotter summers are correlated with stronger cyclones. Gore punctuates his slide show with footage taken in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

The ex-Vice President is not a scientist (he trained as a lawyer) and his presentation is a work of advocacy aimed at a lay audience. Having said that, unless you are an earth scientist, you will probably find something new and stimulating in what he is saying.

This is particularly true if you read the book of the same name. I found the film moving, but the book – with its carefully presented charts and statistics – more rewarding. Being rich today means rich in fossil fuels. It is no coincidence that the leaders of the USA and Russia, and the previous Chancellor of Germany, are closely allied with oil and gas companies. The carbon consumers in the G8 countries are causing environmental change that has its gravest effects on the poorest countries. This thought alone should rouse us enough to act upon Gore’s inconvenient truth.

Details

Book

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Publication year: 2007

ISBN: 9780747590965

DVD

Publisher: Paramount Home Entertainment

Release year: 2006

 

CC-BY-NC-ND

Comments

missing a comment on the scientific accuracy

Permalink Submitted by Jakob on 07/10/2008

An interesting review, esp. the description of the differences between movie and book, but what I really would have like to read here is an evaluation of the scientific accuracy of the work. Are all the bits of information he presents accurate or have the authors succumbed to the temptation of taking facts out of context to boost their message - Michael Moore style. Which points are controversially discussed in the climate research community?

Shall we belive

Permalink Submitted by Recetas de Cocina on 23/02/2009

I agree with previous commenter. I really don't know who to believe. I watched Gore conference on TV last night again, and after a breif investigation on the internet, I really found people on both sides. Gore may say the detractors were payed, but I wont do a full background check on every author I find on the internet to check relationships with any dirty industry. Do you guys have the resources to bring some light on the global warming issue? is this worming caused by human intervention or would have happened anyway?

Log in to post a comment

Issues

  • Current issue
  • Archive

Tools

  • Download article (PDF)
  • Print
  • Share

Related articles

  • Real Mosquitoes Don’t Eat Meat: This and Other Inquiries into the Oddities of Nature, By Brad Wetzler
  • Molecular Biology of the Cell* and Molecular Biology of the Cell: A Problems Approach, By Tim Hunt and John Wilson
  • Classic Chemistry Demonstrations: One Hundred Tried and Tested Experiments, By Ted Lister
  • Exploring the Mystery of Matter: The ATLAS Experiment, By Kerry-Jane Lowery, Kenway Smith and Claudia Marcelloni
  • Learning from Patients: The Science of Medicine

Login / My account

Create new account
Forgot password


Contact us

Please contact us via our email address editor@scienceinschool.org.

  • More contact details

Get involved

  • Submit an article
  • Review articles
  • Translate articles

Support Science in School


EIROforum members:
CERN European Molecular Biology Laboratory European Space Agency European Southern Observatory
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility EUROfusion European XFEL Institut Laue-Langevin


EIROforum
Published and funded by EIROforum


  • About Science in School
  • About EIROforum
  • Imprint
  • Copyright
  • Safety note
  • Disclaimer
  • Archive
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
ISSN 1818-0361

CERN
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
European Space Agency
European Southern Observatory
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
EUROfusion
European XFEL
Institut Laue-Langevin
EIROforum

Published and funded by EIROforum
  • About Science in School
  • About EIROforum
  • Imprint
  • Copyright
  • Safety note
  • Disclaimer
  • Archive
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
ISSN 1818-0361