What is your Realization after viewing an inconvenient truth?

Answer 1

"An inconvenient truth"

The film "an inconvenient truth" is a documentary that is all about global warming, global warming is spreading hot air that may affect diseases to people and animals. This hurts many people, animals, and plants. The documentary showed the basic process of global warming which is the greenhouse gases are trapping the sun's heat in the earth's atmosphere which makes the earth warm. The greenhouse gases are caused by producing too much CO2. When the movie compared the old and new photos of the same place, the difference was very obvious. I can clearly see that the glaciers are starting to melt. It also showed graphs and charts showing that every year the production of CO2 is getting higher also earth's temperature is getting warmer.

The documentary also has elaborate Cartoons and diagrams so that people of all intellectual capabilities can understand and relate to the topics under discussion. Added to that, he shows also pictures of the destruction of earth just like comparative photographs from footage of collapsing ice shelves, data on the record numbers of storms, disappearing glaciers around the world, great floods, and other kinds of extreme weather, new diseases which include viruses which hit the people , photos of dying polar bears animations of the effects of rising sea levels, and disappearing coral reefs.

It has in depth explanations as to how all this damage has come to occur and why most people fail to respond to all warnings concerning about the planet. It also states that politics and mislead information has been given to most public, so that this issue can be ignored and not resolved as solutions and alternatives can cause a lot of problems and hassles economically. He tells that only political will can make a change and to encourage the people to stand up for saving the earth.

When sunlight reaches Earth's surface some is absorbed and warms the earth and most of the rest is radiated back to the atmosphere at a longer wavelength than the sun light. Some of these longer wavelengths are absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before they are lost to space. The absorption of this long wave radiant energy warms the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth some of the heat energy which would otherwise be lost to space. The reflecting back of heat energy by the atmosphere is called the "greenhouse effect".

Many cannot take the change, so they die. The sunlight came from the sun in the earth is trap because of global warming that we release from the transportation like cars stops the sunlight to go back in the atmosphere.

According to the researches in the film, 40% of the world is dependent with their drinking water from the rivers and springs of Himalayas. Antarctica, Patagonia and other parts of the world covered with ice are gradually melting. Dry lands, on the other hand, get parched, thus making it unsuitable for vegetation. Personally, the aspects which stand out most to me are: the examination of annual temperature and CO2 levels for the past 60,000 years and the melting ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland. Because of greenhouse effect; the gases act like a mirror and reflect the heat coming from the sun back to the Earth.

For the first time polar bears have been found drowning. When they have swum over 100 km to find ice and still have not found any, they give up and die in the water instead. The ice at the North Pole, at the South Pole, Greenland, and glaciers around the world are all melting - at a speeding record, due to the continous increase of temperature on Earth. Not only does the melting ice affect the local environment, but it also leads to a colder sea and an increase of water volume. The cold water can destroy important transportation of warm water, like the Gulf Stream, and if that happen it does not matter how sorry you will be afterwards. The northern parts of Europe will be uninhabitable.

The most visually striking and memorable element of the film was Gore's impressive graph of the Earth's temperature and CO2 levels for the past 650,000. The chart not only illustrated the past but an alarming future. Using ice core samples scientists conclude CO2 levels have never gone above 300 parts per million. As of 2005, there were approximately 380 parts per million.

Increasing global temperatures are causing a broad range of changes. Sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion of the ocean, in addition to melting of land ice. Amounts and patterns of precipitation are changing. The total annual power of hurricanes has already increased markedly since 1975 because their average intensity and average duration have increased (in addition, there has been a high correlation of hurricane power with tropical sea-surface temperature).

With global warming, there will also be a relocation of precipitation, which means that some places experience a lot of typhoons and rain showers while others drought. The hurricane Katrina is the strongest one that has stricken North America, and is a proof of the global warming taking place in our planet. It is because bodies of water warm up fast, and with warm bodies of water, hurricane can take place anytime.

The fast change in seasons is also one of the many outcomes of global warming. Countries in the Artic and Antarctic Circle experience early spring and late fall. Also, polar ice caps in Antarctica have been found out to decrease by 40% over the years. Thirty kinds of diseases have emerged with the unforeseen changes in climate. Most popular among these are the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or commonly known as SARS and the Avian Flu. Even the corals beneath the oceans and seas are affected by global warming that heats the water of oceans and seas.

The documentary gave me a deeper understanding of what global warming really is and what will be the consequences if we do not do something about it. The way the documentary is presented is very effective. The old man defined and described global warming in a way a non-science-loving-environmentalist-geek would understand. He also adds humor to it by presenting some animated slide show in between explanations. Most likely, the simplicity of the presentation and the thorough explanation are the reasons why the documentary received so many awards and appreciation.