I finally got around to watching An Inconvenient Truth. If you are not familiar with it, it is a documentary about the Al Gore presentation. This is the presentation that Al Gore shows when he travels around telling people about Global Warming and how we'd better do something about it now otherwise we are going to see lots and lots of problems. So the documentary is basically this presentation on steroids. It includes video clips, background information, and other side stories that you just wouldn't get if you only attended the presentation itself. And I have to say that is is very convincing. In fact, it scared the crap out of me. I'm a pretty conservative guy that has become more environmentally conscious after moving to California, but I still am sometimes skeptical when I hear about global warming on the news and the different things that environmentalist groups are doing. I've had my own questions about global warming which are:
Could the warming that we are going through right now be just a normal part of our planet's heating and cooling (ice ages, etc...) cycles?
If global warming is really happening, what can we even do about it? Isn't this just a runaway train?
If we try to stop global warming isn't it going to hurt our economy and cost lots of jobs?
Are environmentalists just plain crazy? Do they even care about people?
Al Gore answered all those questions in An Inconvenient Truth. He builds the case mythodically and takes apart all of the various arguments against the existence of Global Warming and the inertia of doing nothing to stop it. I've actually seen some of the effects of global warming when I lived in Alaska. The main signs that I saw were the Spruce Bark Beetle infestation on the Kenai Peninsula and the melting of the permafrost. I've seen large tracts of forest killed and then later burned because the spruce bark beetles have gotten out of control. I've also seen houses and other buildings get twisted and broken because the permafrost under them has melted causing the ground to move up and down.
So even if you are skeptical about what the environmentalists are saying just watch this movie with an open mind. Even if only half of what Al Gore is saying is true, we still need to do something about it. And I'm fairly certain that all of the things he is saying are bullet proof, otherwise he would have taken them out of his presentation a long time ago.
Posted by troutm8 at October 18, 2007 05:12 PM