A Startling Discovery

I just finished watching "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on global warming featuring Al Gore. Although I was sleepy when I started the film, the bluntness of the information presented literally woke me back up.

For those of you who don't know, global warming occurs due to the presence of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Don't confuse this with holes in the ozone layer caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), although that is very much apart of global warming as well. Anyway, the C0-2 in our atmosphere causes the rays of the sun to get trapped. As a result, the overall temperature of the earth has been increasing, which is causing the ice caps at the North Pole, Greenland, and Antarctica to melt. I'm sure most of you are at least somewhat familiar with this concept if you've been in school in the last five or ten years.

Al Gore did a great job of using analogies and examples to illustrate the seriousness and severity of the reality of global warming. I especially like the use of the frog who jumps into a pot of boiling water and immediately jumps back out, but when he jumps in a pot of lukewarm water which is gradually heated up, he stays until he's rescued. This analogy reflects the action we've taken to combat global warming thus far. We don't realize how important something is unless it shows it immediately. I feel like this is reflected in my own life as well, such as when it's easier for me to do a short-term assignment than an essay due months after its assigned.

I really urge everyone who reads this to go see this movie, whether you know a lot about global warming or not. It's a real eye opener and it disappoints me to see that more action hasn't been taken despite the fact that this information has been available to us for more than thirty years. One of Gore's college professors saw a trend with the increase of carbon dioxide directly affecting the increase of the temperature, and that was in the 1970s.

What's wrong with an overall increase in temperature? So many different things. At the rate at which the ice caps are already melting, it's entirely plausible that an ice cap the size of Greenland could be nonexistent within the next fifty years. If this happened, the entire sea level across the world would increase 20 feet. The World Trade Center Memorial in Manhattan would be covered in water.

Our climate would change. Already, more species are animals are becoming extinct than ever before. The reason our planet stays at an overall constant temperature is because of the way wind and water currents cool warm air currents. We could very well be on our way to the next Ice Age, although this part of Gore's presentation seemed as if it were a bit stretched.

Overall, it was a very informative documentary. I'd check it out as soon as possible.

/Rant