The science behind climate change is not highly disputed, so Gore doesn't present a dispute, but climate change is highly disputed in the popular media. (If I can attempt to summarise that basic concept, it’s that we are substantially increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere above historical levels and that this will result in a rise in average global temperatures and a massive range of impacts on climate (that will vary from place to place) including higher temperatures in some places, lower temperatures in others, more rainfall in some places, lower rainfall in others and an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events – droughts, floods, fires – pretty much everywhere.) There’s a lot of uncertainty at the margins about exactly what’s likely to occur, what the impacts will be, etc, but the basic concept has essentially unanimous support among serious climate scientists. The science behind climate change is not highly disputed. But after seeing the movie, I can understand why Margaret said this. That discussion riled me when I saw it because, of course, exactly such a body does exist – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and it has answered most of the big questions. It ought to galvanise people in power to discovering the truth. I mean, it's very easy to get people's gander up with a documentary like this, and I think it's been very well done, but, the truth of the situation is significant, and that's what this documentary ought to do. I actually think we owe it to our kids and our grandkids to find out the truth, and, you know, I mean a lot of money ought to be put into finding out the truth of this situation. I mean, it can't be a scientific stretch to discover whether we're losing the polar ice caps… MARGARET: Right, well, I mean surely it's possible to set up a body that doesn't have any vested interest in either outcome, you know, that just wants to know the truth and finding out what the truth is.
But what I want to know is, you know, if there is doubt about what Gore is claiming.ĭAVID: Well, some people have attacked the film. MARGARET: David, it's done very lucidly, the graphics are great, you know, if this is fact, then it's pretty scary. He gives the opponents’ arguments short shrift and I sometimes think this is a problem.įor example, I watched the ABC’s At the Movies show (for those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s a chatty film review show usually in the form of a discussion between the two engaging hosts, and they had this to say after watching the film: He explains the link between carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures, shows that current carbon dioxide concentrations are unprecedented and tells us the impacts that that will have. Gore is engaging though and he lays out a convincing argument. That does give it a kind of one-sided feeling, even though the facts that Gore is presenting are mostly indisputable. No-one else gets interviewed or really speaks in the movie. It really is a talk by Al Gore on climate change, albeit mixed with some spectacular footage and some very convincing and illuminating visual explanations of the science. The presentation was unusual, even for a documentary. My girlfriend, Cat, found the presentation staid and she almost nodded off a couple of times. I found it pretty riveting, but of course I’m very interested in climate change and - more importantly - I'm a sucker for diagrams, charts and graphs.
Ninety minutes later, our reactions were mixed. We purchased our choc tops, which seemed to be melting faster than when I was a kid, and settled in to enjoy – if that’s the right word – An Inconvenient Truth. But then again, it was cold, it was a Friday night and we were there to watch a documentary on climate change. We had booked tickets for the sneak preview but we needn’t have – there were not a lot of people there. Well it was an unseasonably cold September evening in Sydney as we shivered and shuffled our way up Oxford St to the cinema and I couldn’t help but think "Bring on global warming".