Global Warming Effects

Al Gore Global Warming

When I hear the words 'Al Gore Global Warming', the first thing that comes to my mind is the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth'. This movie has really increased the public awareness of humanity's biggest challenge ever. The movie Inconvenient Truth describes in details the problem of global warming, and presents some interesting scenery and video footage, that should be convincing enough for just about every one of us. The main point of Al Gore in this movie is to tell the American people that we have the power and ability to change our climate, but the direction of that change also depends on us. We can continue on our self-destructive path or take a U-turn. But this is a very strong moral issue involved here, as the people who are making those decisions now, influence the life of our children.

In this movie, Al Gore really does get the science right. Everything pointed out in the movie is actual fact, and should be taken as such. A very striking global warming fact presented by Al Gore in his "Inconvenient Truth' movie is the way levels of CO2 can be measured by going back in time with the ice bubbles.

The importance of present-day changes in the carbon cycle, and the potential implications for climate change became much more apparent when people began to get results from studies of gas bubbles trapped in glacial ice. The bubbles are effectively samples of ancient atmospheres, and we can measure the concentration of CO2 and other trace gases like methane in these bubbles, and then by counting the annual layers preserved in glacial ice, we can date these atmospheric samples, providing a record of how CO2 changed over time in the past.

In addition to providing a record of the past concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the ice cores also give us a temperature record. By studying the ratios of stable isotopes of oxygen that make up the glacial ice, we can estimate the temperature (in the region of the ice) at the time the snow fell (glacial ice is formed by the compression of snow as it gets buried to greater and greater depths). To find atmospheric CO2 levels equivalent to the present, we have to go back millions of years. This means that, to the extent that the state of the carbon cycle is closely linked to the condition of the global climate, we are pushing the system toward a climate that has not occurred anytime within the last several - million years - not something to be taken lightly.