An Inconvenient Truth: A Documentary About Global Warming

Skeptics outside the field of science participate in a debate about the validity of the science supporting the conclusions of global warming, while another question, not dependent on the science, also awaits decision. An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary film, by Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim, addresses both these concerns and offers clearly thought out and presented ways to look at, sort through and come to personal and societal resolution on these questions arising from the debates over global warming.

An Inconvenient Truth combines, in an excellently crafted fashion, highlights of Al Gore's biography and a detailed overview of the science investigating the phenomenon of global warming. Film segments alternate between biographical scenes, such as those from Gore's Senate career and the bulls his father raised, and presentation of charts and photographs, such as those showing global warming temperature patterns and shrinking glaciers. These seemingly disparate themes - biography and science - are aptly tied together through one of the elements in the introduction to An Inconvenient Truth. A shot of a beautifully flowing river is prolonged while Al Gore's voice is heard to say that, because of the distractions of modern work and life keeping us away too long from natural scenes of beauty, "I forgot it could be like this." Thus, the personal is made an essential element of the scientific.