Global warming? Never mind that. I want to be president!!! (An Inconvenient Truth (DVD))

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	An Inconvenient Truth (DVD)
Date:	26/05/07 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Informative

Disadvantages: Bias and not science as we know it Jim

Green is the new moral definition of the chattering classes; it’s the chosen superior weapon of defiance to distance themselves from the lower orders. The working class may have infested their universities, piano bars, and Waitrose, but the great unwashed certainly won’t be interesting in saving the planet. Who exactly wants colder winters in the UK! The ‘Chelsea Tractor’ battalions descending on the council tips of the country with pride to let the world know they can save the planet on their own, plenty of boot space for their used and abused M&S packaging. If they could find a pure moral bandwagon to jump on then maybe everything would be back to normal, status returned. The blue collar classes will never be able to afford fair-trade coffee!

Global Warming is the moral issue of the new millennium, a clever subterfuge politically as it gives governments and corporations alike the chance to look they care for the environment they have to destroy to put cheap products in western stores.

With all this ‘green washing’ going on it was inevitable the politicians would embrace the environmental issue on mass, David Cameron the classic opportunist. One of the reasons why this has become the big issue over the last year or so is because of this movie, already a school teachers group in the UK calling for it to be shown in every classroom to spread the truth. But what is the truth and can Al Gore help us out there?

Even though this informative and thought provoking documentary works on a propaganda level, Gore, subtly using this DVD to raise his political profile once again in the US election cycle, painting himself as lonely driven man who can save the planet, its still doesn’t conclusively show that the world is catastrophically warming, the hard facts not backed up with experts in the film. It’s pretty ironic really as if he had beaten Bush in the rigged 2000 Presidential election he would have to have invaded Iraq for the very carbon fuels he fears. There was even talk of him running again for the 2008 Democratic nomination off the back of this movies success and his recent concerned campaigning, but recent pictures of his lavish mansion burning access energy 24/7 didn’t help as momentum feel away.

To be fair Senator Gore is a life long campaigner on the environment, old footage of his efforts over the years are interpolated into the film to give him authenticity and authority on his chosen crusade. The guy clearly is worried about manmade global warming and wants to spread the word while the issue is hot and he has the access. The fact he has done this presentation one thousand times before gives him and the film real credence on the problem, as well as a jack-boot carbon footprint, although we will let him off that one as he does seem a rare beast—a since politician.

What is global warming?
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Well, we pump70, 000 tons of crap into the atmosphere every day but only 65% of it is being absorbed and recycled as infrared radiation, stuff that leaves the atmosphere. The rest becomes ultra violet, coming the other way, and so storing heat up in the atmosphere that traps and bounces it back on to us, meaning the world temperatures are rising. Although the mean temperature has only rising a quarter of one percent in the last century most of that rise has happened in the last thirty years, the real concern for the doom mongers. 97% of C02 is produced naturally though, 15% of that from cows bottoms!

The big question now is are global C02 rises that run parallel with temp rises caused by that increased temp or vice versa, the vast majority of scientist in favor of the former. A cranky group of solar scientists say the temp rises are down to sun spots, when those waves of solar radiation being flung off the sun in majestic and deadly flares hit the earth’s paper thin heat shield, bumping up the temp and so the C02 levels. The heat we feel from the sun is particles in the upper atmosphere being jiggled about and so radiation produced.
What ever is causing the C02 rise it’s directly correlated to planetary heating and it needs to be stemmed. There’s no doubt humans are messing up the planet, but how long do we have? Has the increased urgency and talk of catastrophe been about genuine science or just cynical politics and tax raising ploys.

The main presentation
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Gores set doesn’t come cheap, a huge video screen behind his lectern bombarding us with graphics, cartoons, graphs and images or supposed global warming, backed up with all manner of static’s and accompanying famous quotes, at time mocking skeptics. Gore is trying to preach-and mock-the unconverted (me) and he feels the funnier and funkier his delivery the more credibility it gives his lecture, Michael Moore style. Hitting the more intelligent people with a lot of information that at times is contradictory means the film is open to critiscm, quickly becoming a polemic rather than a discussion. Showing pictures of here and now shrinking glaciers from different angles and cameras means nothing to me. What about the 75% of glaciers that are not melting Al? Quoting that polar bears are drowning because of global warming is ridiculous. But it’s not all doom and gloom guys, giant Jellyfish near Florida for the kids, the one sea creatures that quite likes the increasingly acidic oceans. As far as being cynical about the whole idea of global heating catastrophe then I suppose I’m the jellyfish in this movie.

The political aspect…
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Al Gore is still a functioning politician and so his film was always going to be about him and his politics, as well as the global warming message. The worse thing for retiring politicians is not being famous or popular anymore, any methods open to them taken to get back in the limelight.
We see his back story on why he got involved in politics in the first place and how the ‘big green issue’ was his driver, Al`s main push mostly to do with his tobacco farming dad losing Al`s big sister to cancer, his cash crop her downfall. We also hear how he nearly lost his son to TB, again nothing to do with global heating but a lot to do with Al Gore wanting this film to be more about his compassionate side than how to beat global warming, which he doesn’t really give any clues on how to do just that, stating the blinking obvious that the planet is getting warmer all the time. He even manages to get 911 into the movie.

Conclusions…
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12% of the people that have ever lived on the Earth are alive today, that ever increasing population explosion always pointing to the end of the world one day. Nobody can really argue with that. There are only so many natural resources to go around and as we have seen in Iraq we will do anything to get it. What the film is really doing with all the graphs ad pie charts is mapping the planets progress in the modern world, not downfall. Nothing can stop the human need to exist and explore and technology will always be the driver.

Gore claims that global warming will be the greatest catastrophe to hit us this century, yet he doesn’t mention AIDS, TB, Malaria and war etc, things we can do soothing about if we only bothered. The reality is that the polluting northern hemisphere where most of the so called ‘west’ is will be the last to feel the effects of global warming, and so has the least urgency to stop it, what ever it is.

Gore doesn’t miss chance to include global weather extremes in his movie, the images as persuasive as you can get for gullible young minds. The first Atlantic hurricane ever recorded of the coast of South America was intriguing as was the fact 2005 was the hottest year on record in America and those beautiful pictures of hurricanes swirls on that big screen are very convincing, Hurricane Katrina inevitably the eye of the propaganda. New Orleans, a city some nine feet below sea level, was mostly a disaster because not enough money was spent on strengthening the dykes and finding the population work and decent housing in safe areas, not an abnormal number of big storms. The following year in 2006 there were no big storms and a record low hurricane count. With the claim that with current global heating models the Artic will have melted doesn’t help his argument credibility.

There are some interesting facts here to impress your mates with in the pub. For instance 40% of the world’s rain is generated by the Himalayas. Or there’s no glaciers left in Glacier National Park. Then there are some real dumbo statement by Gore, proclaiming the worlds coral reefs are bleaching and crumbling away too nothing. Al! That’s what flucking sand is! And there’s plenty of that around as evidence of previous natural coral reef erosion.

Special Features
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Audio commentaries

Number one: Director Davis Guggenheim talks about his movie and backs up the science.

Number two: Producer Laurie David and Lawrence Bender back us the science behind the science. There are no skeptics in this movie.

Al Gore update…

Quite a long piece brings his argument up to date, inevitably Hurricane Katrina dominating. Apparently he had a show booked there on the day off the category five storm. He didn’t have show booked on September 11th at the WTC. He won’t let the hurricane phenomenon go in his argument for, insisting global warming was responsible, rather than the fact the ever increasing population is well below the poverty line and water level in the city of jazz. Even the black major of the city admitted that it was a ‘gift from God’ that a lot of bad people have been washed away from his city to other places. New Orleans crime rate dropped 85% in one year whilst the neighboring cities rates trebled.

*The Making of the Inconvenient Truth*

A behind the scenes look at the stage going up and Al Gores huge trailer. The hand picked audiences were neither Republicans nor skeptics.

Summary: Another polemic to get votes.