Movie review: Al Gore heats up the big screen

Hot enough for you? Even in the air-conditioned cocoon of a movie theater, Al Gore's primer on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," will have viewers wiping away sweat. It paints an unnervingly convincing picture of manmade climate change that is pushing our planet toward meltdown.

Gore's movie has three objectives: to inform viewers of the facts, persuade them to act and entertain in the process. While the latter two goals are fair game for a movie reviewer, weighing the facts demands specialized expertise. University of Minnesota climatologist and meteorologist Mark Seeley viewed the film with me and shared his reactions. They were decidedly mixed. More on that soon.

While cynics might groan that Al Gore + lecture + global climate dynamics = a trifecta of tedium, "An Inconvenient Truth" is a riveting piece of filmmaking. Far from a dry presentation of statistics and charts, it is a fast-paced, slickly produced multimedia briefing about the causes and consequences of climate change.

In a filmed version of the lecture he has delivered on stages around the world, Gore and director Davis Guggenheim present the issue as an emotionally engaging morality play. There's a victim (Mother Earth), a villain (carbon dioxide from fossil fuels), a band of heroes (eco-conscious consumers and voters who may yet save the day) and a lesson (planetary disaster looms unless we act).

With dramatic scenes of melting ice caps, retreating glaciers, record heat waves, intensifying hurricanes and plaguelike eruptions of insects and disease, the film vividly illustrates what the former vice president calls our "nature hike through the Book of Revelation."

He argues that our ability to rationalize and ignore imminent threats, combined with disinformation and doctored science from defenders of the status quo, has put us perhaps a decade from a point of no return. To drive home the seriousness of the situation, Gore quotes Winston Churchill on the spread of fascism in the 1930s: "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequence."

That consequence could be disastrous. Slides show how a breakup of polar ice could submerge Beijing; Calcutta, India; Manhattan; San Francisco, and the Netherlands. The film ends by listing dozens of ways we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions and influence policymakers. Gore is no showman, but his patiently constructed case is a compelling call to action.

A scientist's view

As for its accuracy, climatologist Seeley, who describes himself as a liberal-leaning conservationist, called the film well-intentioned but seriously flawed.

If Gore had offered the film as his Ph.D. dissertation, "I would have failed him," Seeley said. Gore presents debatable conclusions "without question and without any differing opinion," and focuses too narrowly on the harmful effects of carbon dioxide, which also is a boon to plant life, he noted. The Northern Hemisphere's temperature increase in the past century also can be explained by changes in solar activity, deforestation, loss of wetlands and land-use change, but "the uncertainties and optional explanations are never even alluded to."

What's more, Seeley said, Gore "completely neglected the most significant greenhouse gas on Earth, which is water vapor. We couldn't live if it weren't for water vapor." He also thinks Gore is on shaky ground attributing a wide array of hurricanes, blizzards and storm episodes to global warming.

Do such shortcomings negate Gore's overall message that the earth is warming, human activity plays a role in that change and something must be done? Not at all, Seeley said.

"Though we can argue until we're blue in the face about the causes of climate change, there's unanimity among scientists that climate is changing. And our vulnerability [in terms of ] human mortality [and] economic loss ... is going up exponentially.

"We do as human beings affect the environment and we have to find ways to better treat the Earth. I think that's a great message to get out to people."

*** out of four stars

Rating: PG for some thematic elements.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186