Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth explores data and predictions regarding climate change, interspersed with personal events from the life of Al Gore. Through a Keynote presentation (dubbed "the slide show") that he has presented worldwide, Gore reviews the scientific evidence for global warming, discusses the politics and economics of global warming, and describes the consequences he believes global climate change will produce if the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is not significantly reduced in the very near future.

The film includes many segments intended to refute critics who say that global warming is insignificant or unproven. For example, Gore discusses the risk of the collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or West Antarctica, either of which could raise global sea levels by approximately 20 feet (6m), flooding coastal areas and producing 100 million refugees. Meltwater from Greenland, because of its lower salinity, could halt the Gulf Stream current and quickly trigger dramatic local cooling in Northern Europe.

In an effort to explain the global warming phenomenon, the film examines annual temperature and CO2 levels for the past 600,000 years in Antarctic ice core samples. An analogy to Hurricane Katrina is used for those familiar with the 30-ft to 45-ft (9 to 14m) waves that destroyed almost a million homes in coastal Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida.

The documentary ends with Gore noting that if appropriate action is taken soon, the effects of global warming can be successfully reversed by releasing less carbon dioxide and growing more plants or trees. Gore calls upon viewers to learn how they can help in this initiative.

Gore's book of the same title was published concurrently with the theatrical release of the documentary. The book contains additional, detailed information, scientific analysis, and Gore's commentary on the issues presented in the documentary.

Scientific basis

Main article: Scientific opinion on climate change

The Pale Blue Dot, a Voyager 1 photo showing Earth (circled) as a single pixel from 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometres) away, is featured in An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore points out that all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home.Gore's basic claim--that global warming is real and largely human-caused--is supported by current research.

Gore presents specific data that supports the film's thesis, including:

The retreat of numerous glaciers is shown in before-and-after photographs (see Retreat of glaciers since 1850).

A study by researchers at the Physics Institute at the University of Bern and the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctic presenting data from Antarctic ice cores showing carbon dioxide concentrations higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years.[4]

A 2004 survey by Dr. Naomi Oreskes of 928 peer-reviewed scientific articles on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003. The survey, published as an editorial in the journal Science, claimed that every article either supported the human-caused