Hot air: an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's new documentary about global warming, is intriguing, but fails to convince in the end.(Movie review)

Former vice presidents of the United States usually follow one of two paths upon leaving office: run for the office of the presidency and, achieving that post, move on to create their own presidential legacy, or fade into obscurity (also considered to be "Plan B" for those who fail at option one). Most vice presidents end up in obscurity. How many people today think about Spiro Agnew or Walter Mondale?

Al Gore chose to run for the presidency. But after failing to defeat George W. Bush, he has refused to follow "Plan B." Instead, he has gotten into the business of documentary filmmaking, and his first effort, An Inconvenient Truth, has been playing at theaters over the summer months. The film is intended to warn Americans of the dangers of global warming.

It's not exactly a summer blockbuster, but because it was both made by and features Gore, it exudes a certain novelty. It is unusual, perhaps even unprecedented, to see a former vice president give a presentation on the big screen. It is a humanizing experience. Under the glare of the media, all vice presidents, while in office, are reduced to simple, wooden caricatures of men. They become the sidekicks to the presidential superheroes and the stigma of that caricature is hard to shake. Gore, though, does shake it, revealing himself over the course of An Inconvenient Truth as a thoughtful and intelligent, and sometimes engaging, speaker. For all that, though, the film still fails.

The Fragile Atmosphere

Gore begins his presentation with a simple argument. The Earth itself is huge and resilient. It resists man's puny efforts to change and modify the environment. But this is not true of the atmosphere. Gore points out that the atmosphere is really quite thin and that, in contrast to the rest of the Earth, it is therefore relatively fragile. The implication is that human activity can have a drastic effect on the condition of the atmosphere. Naturally, Gore thinks we are having that effect and that in the near future, we will pay for our profligacy through runaway global warming.

The engine of this warming, according to the global-warming hypothesis, is carbon dioxide. Gore points out that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing and that this will lead to rising temperatures worldwide. But will it? There are scientists who disagree with this assessment. Among them is Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist at Canada's Carleton University. In testimony to Canada's Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, Patterson explained that there is evidence that high carbon dioxide levels do not necessarily lead to high temperatures. "In fact," Patterson testified, "when C[O.sub.2] levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years."

There is no place for inconvenient alternate views in An Inconvenient Truth. There is, however, plenty of room for rhetoric. Gore's presentation is peppered with charts and graphs, but these are usually devoid of numbers. When talking about C[O.sub.2], for instance, Gore displays a chart showing a steep rise in C[O.sub.2] levels, but there are no numbers on the chart to put the data displayed into perspective. Moreover, there are scientists who disagree that C[O.sub.2] increases drive warming, arguing instead that such increases followed temperature increases (see article on page 10). It is a controversial point, but it casts great doubt on the entire anthropogenic (human-caused) warming theory. Gore does not reference this work.