Review - An Inconvenient Truth

9.20 pm Saturday - Channel 4

Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth (film documentary)

DKav 2009 – zebras54 website (www.zebras54.co.uk)

update July 2010

This is a documentary from 2006 that

generated a lot of discussions. US politician Al Gore has
the right stamina, enthusiasm, connections and beliefs to
make a documentary like this. In fact, this is a film by
Davis Guggenheim and produced by Laurie David and
Lawrence Bender showing him give a power-point lecture
- slide show. The visuals are by Duarte Designs. The main
message that we as human beings influence the climate
and the fate of our planet for the worse and for the best
is powerfully rendered. I liked his comment that science is
neutral and that a regime which tells scientists to agree
their way commits scientific fraud. What I learnt from the
documentary is that scientists agree that global warming
exists and the controversy about it is at media level with
some groups that dispute it and lobby accordingly. In
2006,The USA and Australia were the two countries that
had not ratified the 1992 UN Kyoto Protocol on reducing
carbon emissions. (the countries that did not express any
opinions on the protocol are: Afghanistan, Andorra,
Brunei, Chad, Iraq, Palestinian Authority, Sahrawi Arab
Republic, San Marino, Somalia, Taiwan, Vatican-City and
Zimbabwe because the USA is responsible for a large
percentage of emissions, one can understand why the
urge to make such a presentation in that country.

It has to be said that a UK court ruled that

there are nine errors in the documentary: . For example -

Mr Gore's assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet

would be caused by melting of ice in either West
Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future". The judge
said this was "distinctly alarmist" and it was common
ground that if Greenland's ice melted it would release
this amount of water - "but only after, and over,
millennia".
# Mr Gore's assertion that the disappearance of snow on
Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was expressly
attributable to global warming - the court heard the
scientific consensus was that it cannot be established the
snow recession is mainly attributable to human-induced
climate change.
# Mr Gore's reference to a new scientific study showing
that, for the first time, polar bears had actually drowned
"swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the
ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either
side before me can find is one which indicates that four
polar bears have recently been found drowned because
of a storm."

Mr Justice Burton said he had no complaint

about Gore's central thesis that climate change was
happening and was being driven by emissions from
humans. However, the judge said these nine statements
in the film were not supported by mainstream scientific
consensus. In his final verdict, the judge said the film
could be shown as long as updated guidelines were
followed. The case was brought by a school governor
who wanted the government to stop sending the film to
schools. Gore responds that scientists may disagree with
him on some details, "but we do agree on the
fundamentals." Personally, I am not concerned about the
errors because no lecture is 100% accurate and it is rare
that mainstream scientists agree on everything, hence the
ruling was wise and this documentary needs to make it
better is to edit out the points of the presentations that
are wrong, some of the errors are from the examples he
uses and one of them is a big clunker (the estimate of the
rising sea-levels) and Mr Gore will still be left with an
important message. It is also very easy to go through the
book and highlight the errors (by downloading a copy of
the judgement) and juxtaposing them with what is
supposed to be correct.

Al Gore wanted to generate discussion about

our relationship with our planet, talk to individuals,
families, groups - and he has done so with extensive
lectures. This is a mamooth task just like reducing
pollution and waste on our planet. An academically-
flawed but compelling document and an excellent,
intelligent presenter who engages with his audience .
Respect. For his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world’s
attention to the dangers of global warming including An
Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore, along with the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has
won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

The film won many awards for Best

Documentary including the Oscars 2007 for best
documentary.

Further information on the documentary :

www.climatecrisis.net/