An Inconvenient Truth (Em's Rant)

Last night we rented "An Inconvenient Truth" with some friends. One friend is finishing his masters in political science and is an avid Democrat and the other who is a staunch Republican, plus two of us that keep up with environmental issues, and the rest NASA engineers that have a good understanding about the earth's atmosphere. On that note it made the movie entertaining from the living room side. However, I was not amused by Gore and his political antics. Of course I am not a big Gore fan to begin with ( I know all gasp, the tree hugging, prairie burning, composting environmentalist that you all consider me is not a Big G supporter).

I completely agree that there is a problem with emissions and on some level its tied to global warming. The data does not lie, the climate is shifting (hard to convince people in Iowa GW is happening when its -10 below, but ask them in August when it 95 and a drought), the ice caps are melting and weather patterns are becoming more violent. I firmly believe that we need to reassess our energy usage on an individual basis and use our consumer pull to change energy and emission standards. We see these problems and say the government needs to get their act together, but it comes down to us. Its a car pool a few days a week, spending a couple extra dollars and buying a high-efficiency appliance. It comes down to a cost factor, Americans in general are not willing to pay a premium for the environment. What so many don't understand is if we don't put the time and effort in to help provide a change now, we pay the price for it through other mediums.

There were very few graphics on the documentary with hard data attached. Gore would make a comment that US emissions standards for our cars are well below Chinas (which is true), but by how much? Or he would show a photo of a glacier 10 years ago and then the same glacier today. But were the photos taken the same time of year, what was the weather pattern for that specific year? Part of the reason is there is not enough historical scientific climate data to really know how much humans are affecting the current climate change. The million dollar question is how much is human activity affecting the weather patterns and how much is part of the natural cycle?

I was all ready to sit down and see a good documentary on global warming and part of the documentary was on Gore's life and had nothing to do with the subject. Maybe I was disappointed because I have a bit of an ecology/natural systems background and I was looking for something solid, and I found political propaganda without resolve. I imagine that the intention was to provide a shock factor for the public which I hope it did, because our thinking as a society needs to change, but I found it blah and fluffy.