An Inconvenient Truth

Dorothy

An Inconvenient Truth

“An Inconvenient Truth” is the name of the documentary that Ms. Liao introduced to us. In this admirable film, the “inconvenient truth” has indeed been revealed at an unprecedented level, which shocked me greatly.

During the recent years, the climate on earth has become warmer and warmer. Some crystal-like ice burgs silently disappeared from our sight while larger water areas came into being. People now have longer rain seasons. At the same time, hurricane, together with flood, seems to be of so great ardor that it visits us more and more frequently. What made these strange phenomena happen? Global warming—this is exactly what the inconvenient truth is all about.

Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century, and its projected continuation. According to recent reports, the average global air temperature near the Earth’s surface has increased 0.74 ± 0.18 ℃ within the 100 years ending in 2005. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes “most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) green house gas concentrations” via an enhanced greenhouse effect. Talking about green house gases, they are gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and emit radiation at specific wavelengths within the spectrum of thermal infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere itself, and by clouds. This property causes the green house effect. Greenhouse gases are essential to maintaining the temperature of the Earth; without them the planet would be so cold as to be uninhabitable. However, an excess of greenhouse gases can raise the temperature of a planet to lethal levels and this is what human beings are experiencing right now. Though Greenhouse gases are produced by many natural and industrial processes, based on ice-core samples and records, currently levels of CO2 are approximately 100 ppmv higher than during immediately pre-industrial times, when direct human influence was negligible, which effectively proved IPCC’s conclusion.

Finally, the ball was kicked back to people ourselves again. In the past decades of years, human beings, the most intelligent creatures on Earth, have been availing ourselves of the capabilities that we were blessed with to develop the world both economically and technically and countless great achievements have been made, but, at what cost? We burn fossil fuel to run electric plants, cut down large areas of forests to grow crops, use chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to freeze foods… As a result of all that we have done, global warming ultimately occurred.

When Al Gore, the American environmental activist who starred in the documentary, clicked that button on his remote, dozens of pictures of ice burgs that are melting into unbounded oceans, snow mountains that are turning into ordinary mountains and large lakes that are shrinking into tiny pools suddenly made my face blanched by the feeling of fear and my heart pierced by the sense of guilty. The environment used to be, at the very beginning, well balanced with its ecosystem which contains all vegetation, animals, microorganisms, rocks, atmosphere and natural phenomena that occurred within their boundaries. However, massive human intervention which took place afterwards broke the harmony. And then, misfortune befell not only nature but also human beings. Hurricane, flood, drought, loss of countless lives… It is not anyone else but ourselves who are currently writing the scripts for our own tragedies.

This documentary is not designed to make people terrified or desperate. Rather it is made to wake up people’s awareness to do something to protect our environment. That is why at the end of the film, it gave out so many tips for us to follow in our everyday life. Only one person’s effort might be a drop in the bucket, however, as long as we work on these problems together, nothing will be insoluble.

Cinderella

an objective introduction to the documentary. Not bad.