A must see – Al Gore’s new movie An Inconvenient Truth. Really all around good: clear and well presented science, a more personal side of the relaxed and helpful Al Gore, interesting and useful graphics, well edited and presented.
And pretty darned scary. Turns out that what the current administration has been telling us, and the media has been repeating – that there is dissent in the scientific community about whether or not global warming is happening – is just not true. The scientific community is of one voice – global warming is real, and escalating.
Some of the scary information concerns how fast some of these changes are happening / can / will happen over the next 10 to 15 years. Remember the movie The Snows of Kilimanjaro? There will be no snow at all on Kilimanjaro by 2020. Our own Glacier National Park will have no glaciers before 2030. And let’s not even talk about the polar ice caps and Greenland, and what their progressively faster melt is doing to sea levels and creating warmer ocean water – remember Katrina, getting bigger as she hit the warmer than normal Gulf water?
Al leaves us with lots of hope – pointing out simple and small steps we can take, which will add up to an easing situation. Not one big thing, but lots of small changes, and the threat will begin to recede. Do you know – I didn’t – that since the US led the way on the banning of flurocarbons, the hole in the ozone layer has begun healing. This time, it doesn’t seem to be Washington, DC that is leading us – the individual states, and individuals in those states, are taking healing steps.
Go see the movie, pick what you want to help heal – and get busy.
P.S. One side benefit will be watching our economy grow as companies invest in and create new technologies as we urge them along – and watching the dollars we send to the Middle East for their oil shrink. Without those oil dollars, those countries are much more likely to educate and use the brains and skills of their women – a win-win for everyone!
P.P.S. And then go see Prairie Home Companion – a real treat of a movie! You’ll come out smiling! A great way to get your popcorn fix….