Rented the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth last night, PVR'd it, and watched it today. Overall its a well done movie showing Gore's myth-busting presentation on the environment, interspersed with a candid interview with him on the subject.

First, I think everyone in the industrialized world should be required to watch this movie once.

Now since Gore was at one time the Vice President of the United States, and by some counts should have been President in 2000, there is obviously some reference to politics in the movie. He of course has to point out the fact that Bush at one time appointed a former oil-lobbyist to head the Environmental Protection Agency. And when that man was caught hand-editing a press release before it was sent out, removing a lot of the scariest facts from it... he was forced to resign and went right back working for the oil industry the next day.

But the political aspects can be easily ignored whatever your political stripe. The meatiest parts of this movie involve startling facts that lead the viewer to an unarguable conclusion --- we need to reduce our CO2 emissions dramatically. We must - the consequences of inaction would be disasterous.

Perhaps you think that is not the type of movie for you. You'd rather see some great action movie, or a light-hearted comedy. I urge you to see it regardless. My wife started watching it with me, and got really into it as well. This movie is that riveting.

Gore has given this presentation "well over 1000 times" he says. So the presentation itself is extremely well polished. The graphs, pictures, film clips and animations all do an excellent job at getting the point across. A short clip on green house gases done by the folks from Futurama was funny yet disturbing. I cannot say enough good things about this movie - rent it. Buy it. However you can get it, get it and watch it.

The hardest hitting part for me, was when he showed 750,000 years of CO2 levels and Earth temperatures. The graph was cyclical, going up and down, sometimes straight up in a dramatic fashion. Over 750,000 years though, the highs and the lows were mostly uniform. I was all ready to shout at the TV screen - "You see, we're just in another period of Earth warming! It happens every 20,000 years or so!"

After showing the graph and describing its history, Gore added the 2005 numbers to it. Whoa! The CO2 number was double the previous high. The 2005 number hit the top of the projection screen. And then Gore said, here's what the number will probably be in 2055, 50 years from now. He picked the "low number", not even the medium or high. And oh. my. god. it was double still! He used a self-operated crane to lift himself to way above the projection screen. That for me hit the point home solid. There is no debating now. Humans are destroying the planet with reckless CO2 use.

This is a similar graph, with today's figure on it. 50 years from now, the number is expected to be in the 700 range.