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Sunday, October 29, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

Perhaps I should thank Miliband.

I first read about private screenings of this film in David Miliband's blog, where he boasted that DEFRA organised the first private screening in the UK, that was way back in July.

This is not a film, as such, it's a ninety minute documentary about the science, history, and impact of climate change. Presented by the 'ex-next' President of the United States, Al 'bore' Gore, and titled An Inconvenient Truth, it is something that really is worth seeing. I recently visited some old friends in Sheffield and took the opportunity of going to see the film there, unfortunately it is only showing in 21 UK cinemas at present.

It is an eye opener in more ways than one! Al Gore comes across as a much better lecturer than campaign politician, he manages to inject some real human humour into that wooden frame of his, perhaps he has found his 'niche' at last - America's Attenborough perhaps? There is plenty of doom and gloom to be portrayed by the man with the lap top, and being American it is packed with scientific anecdotes but a little short on solutions, however, there is sufficient there to prick the conscience and to make one think rather more deeply about our own impact on the planet.

I have been a little sceptical over some of the claims made in the name of climate change in the past, particularly over rising sea levels, but in An Inconvenient Truth there is compelling content, enough to make me question my own previous conclusions. The sequences showing the melting of pack ice at both the North and South poles is quite revealing, I had previously believed that it was a greater than normal melting of the sea ice around Antarctica and Greenland that was the cause for concern - it is not! Land based glaciers and shelf ice is melting and breaking up at an alarming rate! Just eighteen days ago the River Tyne was flooding parts of Newcastle's Quayside and lapping over the pavement at the Mill Dam in South Shields, and this was the result of an unusually high tide coupled with the effects of a full moon, it only requires a little imagination to picture the effects of a one metre rise in sea levels to think about it's effects in parts of South Shields and Jarrow!

If you get the opportunity or chance to see An Inconvenient Truth, take it! It is entertaining and instructive and thought provoking. Thank you Mr. Miliband, for bringing it to my attention!

You can view a trailer - here.

# posted by Curly : 9:21 am

Comments:

Curly,

This is a recent email from my cousin's husband who is an engineer on a trawler in New Zealand:

We are not too far off kiwi a hundred or so miles & this morning A massive iceburge appeared out of nowhere From the angle I saw it, it was at least a couple of miles long possibly bigger really high like cliffs like you see on the national geographic, It looked like rivers of ice or water coming down its sides like rivers ,mind I wont see anything like that again. it was Probably thousands & thousands of tons. Quite spookey as far as i know you don't get them this far north imagine it hitting Bluff or somewhere , there have been no reports of such things about , they were on about getting in touch with the media , I think the Mate got in touch with the weather & shipping people to put a warning out, but dont know if that happened as it all was going on at the end of my last shift about 6 this morning & iwent to bed about 7 30
It was quite magnificent ( Global warming? )

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:53 pm