| I double dog dare every single person to go see this movie. It is too important to our future to not see it.
Excerpts: REVIEW BY ROGER EBERT / June 2, 2006
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps...S/60517002/1023
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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.
I want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it. I am a liberal, but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it, and it represents, I believe, agreement among the world's experts.
Global warming is real.
It is caused by human activity.
Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it.
Forget he [Gore] ever ran for office. Consider him a concerned man speaking out on the approaching crisis... "Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero."
He provides statistics: The 10 warmest years in history were in the last 14 years... Cores of polar ice show that carbon dioxide is much, much higher than ever before in a quarter of a million years. It was once thought that such things went in cycles. Gore stands in front of a graph showing the ups and downs of carbon dioxide over the centuries. Yes, there is a cyclical pattern. Then, in recent years, the graph turns up and keeps going up, higher and higher, off the chart.
The primary man-made cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels. We are taking energy stored over hundreds of millions of years in the form of coal, gas and oil, and releasing it suddenly.
Gore says that although there is "100 percent agreement" among scientists, a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in the 1990s by the energy industries to "reposition global warming as a debate." It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of tobacco.
The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore's concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless.
Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, has said, "Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." I hope he takes his job seriously enough to see this film. I think he has a responsibility to do that. |
The following was the headline article in the University of Florida Alumni Association newsletter yesterday:
July 3, 2006 GatorNewsTM, Volume VIII - Issue 23
Global warming could accelerate from thawing Siberian permafrost.
Permafrost soil blanketing northeastern Siberia contains about 75 times more carbon than is released by burning fossil fuels each year. That means it could become a potent, likely unstoppable contributor to global climate change if it continues to thaw. So conclude three scientists in a paper in the journal Science.
"Unfortunately, it's another large pool of carbon on the list that could move into the atmosphere with continued warming," said co-author Ted Schuur, an assistant professor of ecology in the University of Florida botany department. "You start thawing the permafrost, microbes release carbon dioxide; that makes things warmer, more permafrost thaws and the process continues."
More reviews (a whole page of them) of An Inconvenient Truth: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/inc...?critic=columns | |
