Al Gore's an Inconvienient Truth

Molly Sheffield-Eisler

11/26/2007

Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a compilation of his research in global warming and rapidly changing temperatures. He has been researching this for decades and despite all the speeches and education, people are still not being responding to this issue and changes are not being made to stop the crisis. Many people continue to doubt or will not make the necessary sacrifices.

Greenhouse gasses are CO2 gasses that rise into the atmosphere and trap heat. The planet produces life-sustaining temperatures that have varied slowly over millions of years. At the point of the industrial revolution there are now records indicating that climate change has occurred faster than ever before due to our excessive use of fossil fuels that trap heat beyond what is sustainable.

Another contributor to global warming is methane gas, which is produced from organic decomposition such as livestock reduction of green plants to decomposing manures or digested plant materials. Life on earth is carbon based. When plants and animals die they release carbons into the system. As forests are burned and cleared, large amounts or carbon are released at one time. The defrosting of carbon-based materials in the permafrost is also releasing carbon.

Scientists have taken ice core samples that measure the amount of gasses in the atmosphere for each major epoch of time. These findings show that fluctuation is natural and has occurred since the beginning of time. Some scientists have used this as an opposing argument stating that we're in a natural warming period and that gasses have been at this level before. However, it's the rapid increase over the last 150 years, which has no precedent.

If drastic changes don't begin immediately, irreversible damage will occur. Gore predicts that as the ice sheet in Greenland and Antarctica melts, sea level will rise about 20 feet, wiping out coastal communities, islands, species of animals and causing major changes to all ecosystems and landscapes. 100's of million of people live at low elevations and will be forced out of those areas, forcing these refugees into already overpopulated, resource-stressed areas. The melting of ice sheets may not only raise sea levels, but may lower salinity in the salt water, and alter the existing currents that effect temperatures