An Inconvenient Truth

The Appleton Library had a showing last night of "An Inconvenient Truth", a movie by Al Gore about the global warming crisis, followed by a short discussion period.

The movie had a powerful message and was well-done, although the overt Democrat vs. Republican moments in the film may cause some liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats to ignore the objective and quantitative facts in the film which warn of both US and global catastrophe potential. The audience at the Appleton Library seemed to accept the film's message and want to effect the changes recommended in the film, but that was likely a result of 'preaching to the choir.'

In my mind, the biggest impact of the film is spurring the general public in the US to collaborate with others passionate about global warming. This collaboration will, with hard work and good karma, result in a critical mass of informed, action-oriented citizens pushing for changes in the US which reduce CO2 in the atmosphere and slow or reverse global warming. Although I didn't do a lot of online searching today, it appears critical mass has not yet been reached.

Addressing global warming is an excellent opportunity for Web 2.0 collaboration and communication tools to show how effective they are for allowing and facilitating remote participation in large and small projects. That is one area I plan to research more in upcoming weeks.

Two points of high interest to me in the film were:

1. The dramatic and consistent statistics used by Al Gore to demonstrate with facts the looming disaster which could be caused by climate change -- those statistics don't leave room for waffling or multiple interpretations.
   
2. The apparent fact that, although popular press articles about global warming are split 50/50 as to whether it is a critical issue with severe repercussions, there appears to be little or no disagreement in knowledgeable scientific articles as to whether climate change is a huge problem.

A future post on this blog will summarize the evidence I find online about Wisconsin and US efforts to reduce global warming which have sprung from Al Gore's presentations and people's viewing of "An Inconvenient Truth."

*****