Positive Reviews

Truth, since the Republicans took grip of all five and a half years ago, has taken a back seat to belief.

For example many expect us to believe the "higher belief" of Sterling Burnett. However, I have noticed a disturbing graphic. As carbon dioxide emissions have grown, so have Exxon's donations caused a growth in Mr. Burnett's goiter.



At this rate, Mr. Burnett's head will be over the "event horizon" and sucking in matter by next Summer. Forget global warming, Exxon-Mobil is creating a real black-hole instead of it's current intellectual black hole.

But, as ever, I digress. Gore's movie got a highly positive review from A.O. Scott:

[Gore] is, rather, the surprisingly engaging vehicle for some very disturbing information. His explanations of complex environmental phenomena — the jet stream has always been a particularly tough one for me to grasp — are clear, and while some of the visual aids are a little corny, most of the images are stark, illuminating and powerful.

I can't think of another movie in which the display of a graph elicited gasps of horror, but when the red lines showing the increasing rates of carbon-dioxide emissions and the corresponding rise in temperatures come on screen, the effect is jolting and chilling. Photographs of receding ice fields and glaciers — consequences of climate change that have already taken place — are as disturbing as speculative maps of submerged coastlines. The news of increased hurricane activity and warming oceans is all the more alarming for being delivered in Mr. Gore's matter-of-fact, scholarly tone.

He speaks of the need to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions as a "moral imperative," and most people who see this movie will do so out of a sense of duty, which seems to me entirely appropriate. Luckily, it happens to be a well-made documentary, edited crisply enough to keep it from feeling like 90 minutes of C-Span and shaped to give Mr. Gore's argument a real sense of drama. As unsettling as it can be, it is also intellectually exhilarating, and, like any good piece of pedagogy, whets the appetite for further study.

Well, that last sentence in particular is why the right-wing wouldn't want you to see it.

No, they'd rather have you stay home and watch Sterling Burnett's head expand at an alarming rate.