Inconvenient Truth Movie Critique

The film begins with Al Gore, the ex-Vice president and runner up after George W. Bush, on how it feels when you feel and analyzes what nature is. It feels as if you are remembering something that you have known about but it is stored in the back of our minds. He as speaks on the purpose of the film. Al Gore explains that he has been trying to get the message across to people the Global Warming is really a big deal and not something that should be pushed aside. The audience is shown a picture of earth taken during the Apollo 8 mission, called earthrise, to show what the earth looks like from space and how pure it seems. He also shows more pictures and a time lapse of that show the beauty that is the earth we live on. Al Gore recounts his first encounter with the idea of Pangea. In the story a teacher tells a student that it’s impossible for the continents to move because of how large they are. This story leads the audience into the assumption that we, the inhabitants of earth, could not have an impact on the earth. Al Gore goes into why the assumption is not true. An oversimplification cartoon is shown to explain how Global Warming is formed. The atmosphere is thin in comparison to the earth, but now the atmosphere is thickening due to the pollutants we create. As a cause of this is the inferred rays are trapped within the earth causing the earth to heat up. Al Gore tells the audience of when his interest of Global Warming began. A professor named Roger Revelle inspired him because of Revelle being the first person to delve into measuring carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. Revelle experiment on what was yet to come for the earth. The results of the experiments emphasized the significance of how the earth exhales and inhales carbon dioxide once a year. Al Gore continues his telling by speak of his efforts in trying to help the world make adjustments to better the earth. Pictures are shown of areas on earth that were once covered in snow and that are now mostly bare; as well as photos of lakes that have now dried due to the heat. The photos give the audience an ominous feel of the effect we are unnoticeably having. Facts are shown of the temperature rising as years go on and the projected temperatures for years to come. Al Gore takes us back again this time to a horrifying moment in his life. His son ran out into the street and was hit by an oncoming car. The incident gave Al Gore a better perspective on how he should live his life while on earth and strengthen his need to notify people of the dangers of Global Warming. From then on Al Gore wanted to understand more about the earth. Al Gore shows the audience multiple effects on how we are affect the temperatures as well as the oceans temperature. The fluctuations in temperature are what cause daily national disasters. He also explains how Global Warming can cause many odd occurrences within our world. For example in China there had been tons of flooding but at the same time the province next to it was having a serve drought. Also the changes in temperatures cause the glaciers to melt; in turn this could make the sea level rise and cause floods. The flood will be so great it will cover parts of the continents. Al Gore concludes the film with the message that our world is capable of almost anything; we can accomplish such a feat like Global Warming, only if we are willing to take that step. The documentary was enlightening on a high level. Al Gore did a great job with the simplification of the huge crisis that is Global Warming. In the beginning with the cartoon he had showed, Al Gore was able to condense all the definitions about Global Warming into layman's terms. Another strength of the film were the facts that Al Gore stated in the movie. Al Gore toke a position and constantly throughout the movie he was able to back up his position with many different graphs, pictures, and charts. The pictures that were shown affect the audience quite effectively; with the pictures Al Gore had shown you were able to imagine and see for yourself the damage we were doing to the earth. Throughout the film Al Gore managed to stay engaging , draw his audience in with every slide. It was also good the way Al Gore spoke about the power that human had. The way he encouraged everyone watching the film and in the audience that we had all the power to change the way that we live. The oversimplification of the issue of Global Warming could also be considered as weakness. Global Warming is a worldwide issue that could potentially slowly destroy the earth we known. The oversimplification seems like a down play on how Global Warming really can affect us. Also, Al Gore only gives one side, his side, of the controversial argument, not once acknowledge the opposing argument. The progress of the movie was like you were only able to see the one side of a three sided triangle. Another weakness of this movie was that the audience was not able to know whether or not the facts that were given accurate. Unless we did our own research beforehand, for all we know the facts given could have been glorified for the purpose of the film. Also, during the facts that were being shown, awkwardly there were cut scenes periodically throughout the film that highlighted Al Gore life. It is understandable to show how Al Gore’s fascination with Global Warming came to be , but it takes away from importance of Global Warming. The largest weakness in my opinion of this film was the fact that Al Gore mildly addressed how we can help to create a better environment. In a sentence or two Al Gore said how we could help which was not enough. I will say that he did put some ways to help in the credit, but the attempted to notify was in vain because no one watches the credit. How can you have a movie about teaching people about bettering our world with telling us how? Ways to help the environment are just as important as learning the facts. Since that movie was short in length it was easy to find it enjoyable especially if you were into the righteousness of saving the earth. I was interested to see what a politician like Al Gore felt on the issue since the only thing we really here coming out of a politician mouth is how the supposedly want to help the community. My opinion of the movie is fair. Necessarily it not something I would seek out to watch again but it was a good experience for a onetime thing. The movie helped me formulate my own decisions about Global Warming and informing me on an issue that I should know a lot about but I don’t. I didn’t like the fact that Al Gore, at one point, tried to use documentary to bash President Bush even though the film had nothing to do with Al Gore and his political campaign. When I was 13 or 14, sadly I had just begun to learn that our world is plagued with the thing that is Global Warming. Around this age I still watched channels on TV like Disney channel and Nickelodeon. At the time, about 2009, Disney and Nickelodeon had just started these Global Warming campaigns called Disney's Friends for Change: Project Green and The Big Help. These two campaigns broadcasts all over the TV why would should help and ways we could, trying to teach children about Global Warming. I had only learned about Global Warming from what I have heard and what people told me, this made me consider Global Warming as huge deal. I would constantly bother my relatives about how much water they used, their lights being on too long, and so on. I was dedicated to saving the earth. As I got older, I forgot how important Global Warming was. To me Global Warming was just a thing that was going to happen regardless if I didn’t anything to contribute or not. The Earth was causing Global Warming naturally. Now I feel that it’s not the earth’s fault it’s the people that live on the earth fault. We constantly pollute the sky with carbon dioxide everyday not caring, only caring about the money that we are making with these factories. We as people should take the incentive to help the earth. Be mindful of what we are doing every day. In the documentary, Al Gore constantly shows graphs, pictures, and animations throughout the film. Each picture had an effect on the audience in some way. The picture called “Earthrise” in the beginning, for example, helped the audience see and feel how beautiful and fragile the earth. The pictures of the fallen glaciers also invoked the feeling of sadness that humans are causing it to happen. Also, the pictures and the graphs correlated, from what I could, tell with each other. In the film, Al Gore presented a graph that showed the rising temperatures since the civil war. Steadily the temperatures go up as the years go father. The years were showed with the hottest years that occurred, highlighted and other in grey; you could see that all of the hottest years all happened with in the last fourteen years. The graphs and charts show that the world is heating; the cause is Global Warming. Some other things that correlated with the fact that the earth is heating are the graphs and photos shown later in the documentary.
A graph called “Alaska Winter Tundra Travel Days” was shown charting the days you were able to drive on the frozen tundra. In the beginning during the 1900s of the graph, you were able to drive 225 days a year. As the years stretched on to the 2000s, you are on able to drive below 75 days a year. This shows that the tundra ice is melting due to the rising temperatures. Pictures are showed of the Antarctica with large black spots on the land. The black spots are the water seeping through the ice shelves. This was water seeping through caused the ice mass to melt away within 35 days. The temperature rising was clearly the cause of the drastically melting ice mass. Also, Al Gore explained how a scientist once tested ice masses by traveling with a nuclear powered submarine under a thick sheet of ice and breaks the ice from below; After they would record their findings. As time went on the ice allowed the sub to break through easier and easier. There are natural causes and then there are human causes. Things like random forest fires, volcanic eruptions (though they are rare they still have happened), sun spots, and etc. Then you have the human causes, which contribute the most to Global Warming. Human’s burn carbon based fuels like coal and gasoline within factories and for means of transportation; carbon dioxide is constantly being released in the air, in turn causing the atmosphere to grow thicker. On October. 1, 1908, Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company created the Motor T. The Motor T caused the transportation industry to spike. Since the Motor T was consider a cheap vehicle of that time, tons of people were able to buy a car. In that day and age vehicles weren’t very advanced so large amounts carbon dioxide would come out of the vehicles. Subsequently, these cars were cheap; there were plenty of cars on the street. The Carbon dioxide levels were able to rise easily. This occurrence is a prime example on how humans affect the earth. Some short term solutions for global warming are recycling and hybrid cars. Recycling helps preserve trees. As humans demand more and more paper, more trees are cut down; which depletes our clean air leaving more room for air pollution. Empty can, plastics, and ordinary human waste causes even more pollution which contaminates our clean environment, but recycling these things is a better use than just throw them in our already huge landfills. Hybrid cars are built with electric motors rather than a regular engine. The electric motor saves the use of gas and stop emissions like carbon dioxide from begin released. It would be helpful if more people owned hybrid cars , the more hybrids are owned the less carbon emissions. Two long term solutions are initiatives and nuclear power. Creating initiatives to change how people use power in their lives. Not only create and upholding initiatives in the U.S sharing them with other countries that aren’t able to take action own their own. Make it a global policy that is near mandatory. Make it known to everyone that Global Warming is real and we need to act to help subside it. Nuclear energy is also a possible long term solution. Nuclear energy is a way to reduce carbon emission because nuclear energy does not emit carbon like coal does. Nuclear energy can produce great amounts of energy faster than coal can; it also takes less time. There are risks that come with Nuclear energy plants but they have some of the same risk as a gas plant, if one explodes. Some laws and treaties created to help subside Global Warming are , The Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty which was mention in the film, was created in 1992 to help nations (though the U.S has yet to ratify it) order those countries who signed to make reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions. Those who signed pledged to cut their emissions of carbon. The average amount that emissions have been cut between the signed nations was 5% to the 1990 levels, with Latvia cutting emission as the highest which was 140.1%. The Clean Air Act, a federal law, created to regulate air population on a national level. In 2010, the reductions of ozone pollution and particle in air evaded 160,000 cases of death and 130,000 heart attacks. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability (CERCLA) or Superfund was created in 1980 to demand the cleanup of contaminated hazardous sites. As of 2005, at least 1,604 hazardous sites have been cleaned up in the United States. Lastly, the Endangered Species Act has marked a number of animals on their protected list, as well that eight species have been removed for the endangered list and 25 are near the goal. The Group 8 countries consist of: France, Italy, U.K, Japan, Germany, Russia, The United Kingdom, and U.S.A. All of these CO2 emissions are for the latest recorded year of 2009: 1. France is ranked first with the lowest a CO2 emission with a rate of 5.61%. 2. Ranked second is Italy with a CO2 emission with a rate of 6.66%. 3. Third is The United Kingdom with a CO2 emission of 7.68%. 4. Forth, is Japan with a CO2 emission with a rate of 8.63%. 5. Ranked fifth is Germany with a CO2 emission of 8.97%. 6. Russia is ranked sixth with a CO2 emission of 11.09% 7. Seventh is Canada with a CO2 emission of 15.24% 8. Lastly , with the largest CO2 emission out of the Group 8 countries is The United States of America with a rate of 17.28% What France has to does to curtail Global Warming is to propose a tax called la taxe carbone or Carbon tax, in 2009, by French President Nicolas Sarkzoy. This tax charged businesses and citizens 17 euros, equal to $25.30 U.S dollars, for every ton of carbon dioxide they produce. The tax was created in hopes that if citizens of France were penalized due to how much carbon they use that would reduce it. The objective of the tax was to make money to be able to clean up pollution which the French would pay for with the carbon taxes. The citizens will most likely reduce their carbon foot prints by cutting back on driving or burning wood less, and other things that involve releasing carbon dioxide. The tax would work by raising the prices of gas by the gallon. The tax, increasing over time, was supposed to take action within 2010, but since the tax wasn’t going well with many voters. But in 2010 the French abandon the plan for the carbon tax, because it might put French companies at disadvantage, also the fact that many people disagreed. In 2012, the French toke the tax off the shelf to reconsider the idea. In 2006 Japan planned to get rid of their carbon emission and fight against global warming by pumping carbon dioxide into underground storage reservoirs as an alternate for releasing the greenhouse gas into the air. The storage began to take place in 2010, and Japan is aim that by 2020 they with have 200 million tons of carbon dioxide buried, which cuts the country’s carbon emission by one sixth. The plan was supposed to take control of the effects of Global Warming by capturing the carbon dioxide. From the film you are beginning to get a new sense of our world. The movie is named “An Inconvenient truth” but inconvenient means a nuisance or an annoyance. Global Warming should not be considered a nuisance or an annoyance. The Al Gore was wrong in naming the movie what he had. It should be a duty, as human being, to take care of the planet we live on. At the end of the film Al Gore shows a picture of earth millions of miles away and it is nothing but a blue speck. On the blue speck many feats have been triumphed in the long run. So we should able to triumph Global Warming. Or at least try to do something about it.

Movie Critique: An Inconvenient Truth Research * http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/melting-snows-on-mt-kilimanjaro-are-not-evidence-of-global-warming/ * http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=858 * http://www.globalwarminglies.com/Sun.html * http://www.nrdc.org/reference/laws.asp * http://www.buzzle.com/articles/positive-and-negative-effects-of-recycling.html * http://www.howtopowertheworld.com/advantages-of-nuclear-power.shtmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/nov/26/kyoto-protocol-carbon-emissions * http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/7ebdf4d0b217978b852573590040443a/f8ad3485e788be5a8525784600540649!OpenDocument * http://www.weitzlux.com/superfundsites/unitedstates_29355.html * http://newyork.sierraclub.org/conservation/esa/esa1.html#success * http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/10/19/frances-solution-to-global-warming-tax-citizens-on-the-co2-the/ * http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/18/france-eu-carbon-tariff * http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/business/global/24iht-carbon.html