An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth
File:Aninconvenienttruth.jpg Promotional poster for An Inconvenient Truth
Directed by	Davis Guggenheim
Produced by	Lawrence Bender Scott Z. Burns Laurie David Lesley Chilcott (co-produver)
Starring	Al Gore
Edited by	Jay Cassidy Dan Swietlik
Music by	Michael Brook
Distributed by	Paramount Classics
Release date	2006-05-24
Running time	94 min
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	US$+1,000,000
Box office	US$46,243,403 (worldwide)

An Inconvenient Truth is a controversial Academy Award-winning documentary film about climate change, specifically global warming, presented by former United States Vice President Al Gore and directed by Davis Guggenheim. A companion book authored by Gore has been on the paperback nonfiction New York Times bestseller list since June 11 2006, reaching #1 on July 2 2006.

The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened in New York and Los Angeles on May 24 2006. It is the third-highest-grossing documentary in the United States to date. The film's distributor, Paramount Classics, is donating 5% of the box office receipts and Gore is donating all of his proceeds from the film to The Alliance for Climate Protection (of which Gore is both founder and chairman). The film was released on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment on November 21 2006. The film has been generally well received by critics, scientists and politicians, even becoming required classroom material in schools across the world, including Norway and Sweden. On the other hand, skeptics opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming have attacked the film as "hype" criticizing the science as "exaggerated and erroneous."

Synopsis

You look at that river gently flowing by. You notice the leaves rustling with the wind. You hear the birds; you hear the tree frogs. In the distance you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. It’s quiet; it’s peaceful. And all of a sudden, it’s a gear shift inside you. And it’s like taking a deep breath and going, "Oh yeah, I forgot about this."

— Al Gore in the opening monologue of An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth chronicles the plight of Al Gore, his life and his efforts to educate the public about the severity of the climate crisis. Looking back at his earlier failed efforts, Gore broods, "I've been trying to tell this story for a long time and I feel as I've failed to get the message across." Ostensibly an elaborate exploration of data and predictions regarding climate change and its potential for disaster, An Inconvenient Truth intersperses Gore's life story, giving a contemplative account of events that changed his worldview, including his college education with early climate expert Roger Revelle at Harvard University, his sister's death from lung cancer, his young son's near-fatal car accident and his loss in the close 2000 Presidential Election.

Through a Keynote presentation (dubbed "the slide show") that he has presented worldwide, Gore reviews the scientific evidence for global warming, discusses the politics and economics of global warming, and describes the consequences he believes global climate change will produce if the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is not significantly reduced in the very near future.

The film includes many segments intended to refute critics who say that global warming is insignificant or unproven. For example, Gore discusses the risk of the collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or in West Antarctica, either of which could raise global sea levels by approximately 20 feet (6m), flooding coastal areas and producing 100 million refugees. Meltwater from Greenland, because of its lower salinity, could halt the Gulf Stream current and quickly trigger dramatic local cooling in Northern Europe.

In an effort to explain the global warming phenomenon, the film examines annual temperature and CO₂ levels for the past 600,000 years in Antarctic ice core samples.

The documentary ends with Gore noting that if appropriate action is taken soon, the effects of global warming can be successfully reversed by releasing less carbon dioxide and growing more plants or trees. Gore calls upon viewers to learn how they can help in this initiative.

Gore's book of the same title was published concurrently with the theatrical release of the documentary. The book contains additional, detailed information, scientific analysis, and Gore's commentary on the issues presented in the documentary. A 2007 documentary entitled An Update with Former Vice President Al Gore features Gore discussing additional information that came to light after the film was completed, such as Hurricane Katrina.[4]

Scientific basis

Main articles: Scientific opinion on climate change and Global warming

The Pale Blue Dot, a Voyager 1 photo showing Earth (circled) as a single pixel from 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometres) away, is featured in An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore points out that all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home.

Gore's claim is that global warming is real and largely human-caused. Gore presents specific data that supports the film's thesis, including:

• The Keeling curve, measuring CO₂ from the Mauna Loa Observatory.
• The retreat of numerous glaciers is shown in before-and-after photographs.
• A study by researchers at the Physics Institute at the University of Bern and the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctic presenting data from Antarctic ice cores showing carbon dioxide concentrations higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years.
• Temperature record since 1880 showing that the ten hottest years ever measured in this atmospheric record have all occurred in the last fourteen years.
• A 2004 survey by Dr. Naomi Oreskes of 928 peer-reviewed scientific articles on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003. The survey, published as an editorial in the journal Science, claimed that every article either supported the human-caused global warming consensus or did not comment on it.

The Associated Press contacted more than 100 top climate researchers and questioned them about the film's veracity. Because these interviews were done before the film's general release, most of those surveyed had neither seen the movie nor read the book, but all 19 climate scientists who had done so said that Gore conveyed the science correctly. In contrast, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, at the time chaired by Sen. Jim Inhofe, a global warming skeptic, issued a press release criticizing this article. Inhofe's statement that "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" appears in the film.

RealClimate, a group blog maintained by eleven climate scientists, lauded the film's science as "remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research."

Michael Shermer, science historian and founder of The Skeptics Society, wrote in Scientific American that An Inconvenient Truth "shocked me out of my doubting stance".

Origins

Gore first became intrigued by the topic of global warming when he took a course at Harvard University with Professor Roger Revelle, one of the first scientists to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Later, when Gore was in Congress, he initiated the first congressional hearing on the subject, brought in climate scientists and began talking to politicians about the issue. He thought that once legislators heard the compelling evidence, they would be driven to action; ultimately, though, the process was a slow one. Gore's 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, dealing with a number of environmental topics, reached the New York Times bestseller list.

As Vice President during the Clinton Administration, Gore pushed for the implementation of a carbon tax to modify incentives to reduce fossil fuel consumption and thereby decrease emission of greenhouse gases; it was partially implemented in 1993. He helped broker the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. However, it was not ratified in the United States due to opposition in the Senate. Gore also supported the funding of a satellite called Triana, to increase awareness of environmental issues and to take the first direct measurements of how much sunlight is reflected from the Earth. During his 2000 Presidential Campaign, Gore ran, in part, on a pledge to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

After his defeat in the 2000 presidential election, Gore returned his focus to the topic. He edited and adapted a slideshow he had compiled years earlier, and began featuring the slideshow in multimedia presentations on global warming across the U.S. and around the world. At the time of the film, Gore estimated he had shown the presentation more than one thousand times.

Producers Laurie David and Lawrence Bender saw Gore's slide show in New York City after the 2004 premiere of The Day After Tomorrow. Inspired, they met with director Davis Guggenheim about the possibility of making the slide show into a movie. Guggenheim, who was skeptical at first, later saw the presentation for himself, stating that he was "blown away," and "left after an hour and a half thinking that global warming [was] the most important issue. . . . I had no idea how you’d make a film out of it, but I wanted to try," he said.

Reception

Box office

The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24 2006. On Memorial Day weekend, it grossed an average of $91,447 per theater, the highest of any movie that weekend and a record for a documentary, though it was only playing on four screens at the time.

At the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the movie received three standing ovations. It was also screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was the opening night film at the 27th Durban International Film Festival on June 14 2006. An Inconvenient Truth was the most popular Documentary at the 2006 Brisbane International Film Festival.

The film has grossed over $24 million in the U.S. and over $46 million worldwide as of March 7 2007, making it the third-highest-grossing documentary in the U.S. to date (after Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins).

Al Gore has stated, "Tipper and I are devoting 100 percent of the profits from the book and the movie to a new bipartisan educational campaign to further spread the message about global warming." Paramount Classics is committing 5% of their domestic theatrical gross for the film to a new bipartisan climate action group, Alliance for Climate Protection, dedicated to awareness and grassroots organizing.

Reviews

The film received a positive reaction from critics. It garnered a "certified fresh" 93% rating at Rotten Tomatoes (as of May 21 2007), with a 94% rating from the "Cream of the Crop" reviewers. Film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave the film "two thumbs up". Ebert wrote: "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."

Journalist Ronald Bailey argued in the libertarian magazine Reason that although "Gore gets [the science] more right than wrong," he exaggerates the risks.

Awards

The film has received a number of various awards worldwide.

File:AlGoreWin.jpg

Al Gore during the acceptance speech for "An Inconvenient Truth" with other members of the crew

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This file may be deleted after 2007-06-11.

• The film won the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature and Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up". It is the first documentary to win a best original song Oscar.

• The film received special recognition from the Humanitas Prize, the first time the organization had handed out a Special Award in over 10 years.

• 2007 Stanley Kramer Award - The Producers Guild of America; recognizes "work that dramatically illustrates provocative social issues".

• For his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of global warming including the Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has been nominated with Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Best Documentary:

• Academy Awards (The Oscars) 2007
• Chicago Film Critics Association - 2006-12-28
• Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association - 2006-12-18
• Florida Film Critics 2006
• Kansas City Film Critics Awards 2006
• Las Vegas Film Critics Circle 2006
• National Board of Review - 2006-12-06
• New York Film Critics Online - 2006-12-10
• New York Film Critics Society - 2006-12-12
• Ohio Film Critics Awards 2006
• Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards 2006
• Online Film Critics 2006
• Phoenix Film Critics Circle 2006
• Satellite Awards (Nominated) 2006
• St. Louis Film Critics Awards 2006
• Toronto Film Critics Circle (Nominated) 2006
• Utah Film Critics Awards 2006
• Washington D.C. Film Critics Association 2006

Best Non-Fiction:

• National Society of Film Critics - 2007-01-06

Political response

The documentary has been generally well-received politically in many parts of the world and is credited for raising further awareness of global warming internationally, prompting calls for more government action in regard to the climate. Several colleges and high schools have begun to use the film in science curricula, though at least one US school district has put restrictions on its use in the classroom.

Government

• President Bush, when asked whether he would watch the film, responded: "Doubt it." He later stated that "And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects, and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the environment." Gore responded by saying, "The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming and he [Bush] has today again expressed personal doubt that that is true."
• In September 2006, Gore traveled to Sydney, Australia to promote the film. Australian Prime Minister, John Howard said he would not meet with Gore or agree to Kyoto because of the movie: "I don't take policy advice from films." Former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley joined Gore for a viewing and other MPs attended a special screening at Parliament House earlier in the week. Australia's federal government currently refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Since October 2006 the government has introduced a number of environmental initiatives in response to public concerns.

• In the United Kingdom, Conservative Leader of the Opposition David Cameron has urged people to see the film in order to understand climate change.

• In Belgium, Margaretha Guidone successfully persuaded the entire Belgian government to see the film.

• In Costa Rica, Al Gore met with president Oscar Arias, and was well received by other politicians and media.

• In Burlington, Ontario, the Halton District School Board has made An Inconvenient Truth available at schools and as an educational resource.

• In Spain, after a meeting with Gore, prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said the government will make An Inconvenient Truth available to schools. Gore has been nominated for this year's Prince of Asturias Prize for international cooperation .

Educational

• Following the issuing of the IPCC report into Climate Change on February 2 2007 and following on from the The Stern Review into the economic effects to the UK from climate change, the UK Government announced that it would be issuing a copy of the DVD of An Inconvenient Truth together with further reading material on this subject to every secondary school in England and Wales to increase educational awareness of the issues raised in the movie. This is currently subject to a challenge in the High Court [5] on the basis that schools are legally required to provide a balanced presentation of political issues.

• 50,000 free copies of the film were offered to the National Science Teachers Association, which declined to take them. Laurie David, one of the film's producers, said in a Washington Post op-ed piece that the NSTA wrote her in an E-mail that the DVDs would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." Supporters of the NSTA include companies like ExxonMobil. In public, the NSTA argued that distributing this film to its members would have been contrary to a long-standing NSTA policy against distributing unsolicited materials to its members.

• After a father had complained that "the Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD", the Federal Way School Board in Federal Way, Washington voted 3 to 0 requiring an approval by the principal and the superintendent for teachers to show the film to students. The teachers must include the presentation of an approved "opposing view". After two weeks of being derided in the national and local press, the moratorium was repealed at the subsequent meeting on January 23.

• Following Federal Way's lead, the Environmental Club of Eisenhower High School in Yakima, Washington was prevented from showing the film until it could be reviewed by the school board, teachers, principal, and parents. The school board called the film a "controversial issue" and indicated it would require presentation of an opposing viewpoint if it approved the showing.

• The film will be science curriculum for fourth and sixth-year students in Scotland, as a joint initiative between Learning and Teaching Scotland and ScottishPower.

Other

• In August 2006, the Wall Street Journal revealed that a YouTube video lampooning Gore and the movie, titled Al Gore's Penguin Army, appeared to be astroturfing by DCI Group, a Washington PR firm with ties to ExxonMobil as well as the Republican Party.

Criticism

Further information: [[:Global Warming controversy]]

Richard Lindzen

Richard S. Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, wrote in a June 26 2006 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.

Gore’s film also cites a review of scientific literature published by the journal Science which claimed 100% consensus on global warming, but Lindzen claimed that the study was incorrect. Lindzen wrote:

... A study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy [sic] Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words 'global climate change' produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

Dr. Peiser has recently conceded in a letter to the Australian Media Watch that he does not doubt that "an overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact. However, this majority consensus is far from unanimous." [6]

Roy Spencer

Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the Earth System Science Center of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, wrote an open letter to Gore criticizing his presentation of climate science in the film:

Temperature measurements in the arctic suggest that it was just as warm there in the 1930s ... before most greenhouse gas emissions. Don't you ever wonder whether sea ice concentrations back then were low, too?

Tim Ball

Former University of Winnipeg geography professor Dr. Timothy F. Ball reacted to Gore’s claim that there has been a sharp drop-off in the thickness of the Arctic ice cap since 1970. Ball wrote:

The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Main article: The Great Global Warming Swindle

The controversial documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on March 8 2007, brought together skeptical scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus regarding human-caused global warming. The film claims that in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has misrepresented the data, and that the actual relationship between carbon dioxide and the temperature is the other way round (that is, rise in temperature causes an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere). Climatologist Fred Singer argued that the documentary is "devastating" to Gore's movie: "In spite of its flamboyant title, The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science by recording the statements of real climate scientists. An Inconvenient Truth mainly records a politician."

New York Times article

A March 13 2007 article in The New York Times reported on concerns among some scientists about the tone and the accuracy of the film, noting that they "argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous". Gore's discussion of a rise in sea level of up to 20 feet is contrasted with a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicts a maximum rise of 23 inches excluding non-linear effects on ice sheets; although that too discusses the possibilities of higher rises if the ice sheets melt. The article also states that "a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium." The article quotes both defenders and critics of the film; Gore claims that scientists may disagree with him on some details, "but we do agree on the fundamentals."

Telegraph.co.uk article

An April 19 2007 article in Telegraph.co.uk reported on concerns among parents who claim that the film is "inaccurate and politically motivated" and are "threatening a legal challenge over the Government's decision to send it to every secondary school." Parents claim that "the circulation of the film by the Government amounts to political indoctrination and is in breach of the Education Act 2002."

According to Derek Tipp, the spokesperson for the parents:

"The film goes well beyond the consensus view and is not therefore suitable material to present to children who need to be given clear and balanced, factually accurate information."

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Timeline of environmental events
• United Kingdom Climate Change Bill
• Live Earth

External links

• Climate Crisis official website
• The Climate Project Climate Crisis Presenters' Website
• An Inconvenient Truth at IMDb
• An Inconvenient Truth trailer (Apple.com)
• Al Gore's book
• An Inconvenient Truth Full Length Slide Show Presentation 230MB
• Participant Productions - An Inconvenient Truth
• Template:MySpace
• An Inconvenient Truth at Filmaffinity
• An Inconvenient Truth, book signing in Washington DC
• ShareTheTruth.us Interesting phenomenon of "people-to-people" action, to spread the movie
• Speech by Al Gore, February 2006 in Monterey, CA. at TEDTalks This talk is a follow-up to his now-famous presentation, featured in the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." In it, he outlines what we can do to avert a global climate crisis.
• Convenient Truths - Video contest based on An Inconvenient Truth, trying to find solutions to global warming.
• Alternatives to Valium Gore's remarks from the film's UK premiere.

Reviews

• New Yorker: Ozone Man
• Washington Post: Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man
• The Threat to the Planet by climatologist James Hansen in The New York Review of Books
• Extensive list of critical and popular reviews at Rotten Tomatoes
• cbalz.vox.com: Movie Review, a.k.a. "inconvenient truths": An Inconvenient Truth

Skeptical critiques

• A Skeptic’s Guide to An Inconvenient Truth, a Competitive Enterprise Institute working paper by Marlo Lewis. (120-page PDF)
• Inconvenient Truths, a critique of the movie by Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick J. Michaels.
• National Review
• A Convenient Fiction, a movie issued by the Pacific Research Institute which questions the claims made in An Inconvenient Truth

Interviews

• Al Gore interviewed by Charlie Rose
• Al Gore interviewed in Grist Magazine
• Al Gore interviewed in retroCRUSH
• Al Gore interviewed by J. Freedland, BBC 4
• Producer Laurie David and Al Gore interviews on NOW on PBS
• Watch Director Davis Guggenheim's video interview by Corey Boutilier of IndependentFilm.com