Urgent but not alarmist, ``An Inconvenient Truth" records the extremely depressing global warming slide presentation Gore has been delivering all over the world. As in his well-researched and highly readable 1992 book, ``Earth in the Balance," he takes his audiences on a journey through the nightmare of climate change. But where Gore the author could be long-winded and self-serving, Gore the screen presence is loose, brisk, and engaging. He stands in front of a smallish audience in an insulated auditorium, often pointing at the charts and pictures on the large screen behind him.
His performance begins with an ode to his newly discovered ability to wow the masses with mock humility and comic timing. ``I'm Al Gore," he says. ``I used to be the next president of the United States" -- laughter, applause -- ``I don't find that particularly funny." From here he offers a brief explanation of global warming, then takes us on a breezy tour through the mess we've made of the earth.
Warming, for instance, has done a number on the Arctic and Antarctic. In a series of before-and-after photos, we see that the snows of Kilimanjaro are virtually no more, Glacier National Park is only nominally so, and the frozen caps of the Alps and the Peruvian and Chilean Andes are drying up.
One chart shows the levels of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide numbers across millions of years. The modern numbers are enough to give you vertigo. More CO2 leads to higher temperatures in the air and water, which of course, induce rapid melting and strengthen storms. Gore reports that 2004 produced the American record for tornadoes and the Japanese record for typhoons. And Hurricane Katrina's power was the result of warmer waters.
As he goes on, Gore cleverly uses scientific fact as ground for criticizing the Bush administration's disastrous environmental record. Aside from observing that recent climatic phenomena in Europe are like ``a nature hike through the Book of Revelations," he keeps religion out of his argument.
