An Inconvenient Truth

I went to see this movie last night; it was opening night at the Princeton Garden Theatre and organized by the Association of New Jersey Recyclers. ANJR had a bunch of NJ politicians there (NJ DEP commissioner, NJ BPU president, other policy people, mayors etc) who discussed some of the happenings in NJ both at the state level and municipal level before and after the movie. For those people that have not heard of this movie it is a documentary by Al Gore on Global Climate Change*. I know Gore has a reputation of being boring but he has learned his lesson. He presents his arguments in a well thought out, yet entertaining manner. He is not Robin Williams, or Dave Chappelle, heÂ’s not that entertaining, he is just not the robot man everyone remembers from 2000.

Gore has traveled around the world speaking on global climate change, and the movie contains part of his presentation and other scenes of his travels. Some of the information you might have heard before, however there is some info that Gore convinced the US military to release. For example, the military felt that the thickness of the ice sheets in the arctic should be classified for national security (the issue that the US has these records and not Canada is a sore point for Canada). As you can imagine the thickness of ice has declined since they started keeping records 50 years ago. The movie is a good summary of the body of evidence that the earth's climate is changing and we are involved.

Go see this An Inconvenient Truth, and take someone with you.

Although the Crappy Conservative government has discontinued the 1-tonne challenge, in Canada, the calculators are still there. Even if you are not in Canada take the challenge there are a bunch of good energy saving tips on the web site and you can see the difference of using energy star appliances and fluorescent bulbs in your home. The goal of the One-Tonne challenge is to reduce your CO2 emmissions by 1 tonne, on average Canadians produce 5.5 tonnes of CO2 every year.

* in the movie and elsewhere people use the term Global Warming, I prefer using the term Global Climate Change since many things are happening besides an increase in temperatures. There are more cases of extreme weather, intense storms and droughts. Also with the term Global Climate change on a cool day - people don't say "I thought there was global warming, why do I have to wear a sweater in March."