An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend An Inconvenient Truth—Gore’s groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance—is being published to tie in with a documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes—and a leading expert—brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the… Product details and pricing info |
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324 Customer Reviews Posted
- Hyperventilation
- Hyperventilation over a non problem. Not a scholarly or unbiased look at the issue. Fails to provide any evidence of how global warming may prevent cold weather related deaths and improve agricultural production. This book describes a sham scary scenario as a pretext for controlling our lives.
- 2008-09-30, 1 of 7 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- This is a book that every American should read!
- Although i was well aware of global warming, the scientific evidence and the real statistics of the global warming from this book definitely raised my awareness even more. I mainly bought this book because i am very interested from saving the earth from the global warming. This book is informative and contains many pictures that reveal impact of the global warming in the world. This book is worth of every penny and worth of time to read it.
- 2008-07-28, 2 of 3 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- An emotion-driven, picture book, with no footnotes
- As close to everyone knows, this is Al Gore's book which allegedly proves that, because of mankind's increased carbon emissions, therefore the global climate is warming and therefore we will suffer from a wide variety of catastrophic problems unless we act to reverse the situation. Gore actually argues in this book that, unless we radically decrease CO2 emissions, the oceans will rise 20 feet, most of Florida and New York City will be drowned -- he provides very real looking computer-generated maps of these predictions -- there will be many more hurricanes and, in general, the world as we know it will come to an end.
It is possible that Gore's basic thesis is correct. Our climate might be warming from CO2 emissions. There is no way to assess the value of his thesis from this book, however. This is a beautifully illustrated picture book. It is filled with gorgeous photographs. It has very little text. On the few occasions when Gore actually puts more than 50 words in a row it is generally to tell some heart-wrenching anecdote such as why the near-death of his son made him passionate about global warming. The book has no footnotes, and no connected argument. It is, to be blunt about, a coffee-table book, not a scientific book.
I appreciate that Gore's defenders will disagree. After all, the pictures show facts don't they? We can see, from the pictures, that there is less ice on Mt. Kilamanjero. We can see that many glaciers have retreated in the last century. We can even see the photos showing how much of Florida would be submerged, if the sea rose 20 feet, which it would, if all of the ice in Greenland melted.
Yes, the pictures give isolated facts. But science is not done with pictures, because one can always take a few facts out of context to prove anything. You do not do science with a few photos. You do science with hard data, taken from as many sources as possible. You do science by looking at the whole picture, or as much as you can. You also do science by seriously addressing critics and alternative theories. I am sorry, Al, but this book is much closer to a rock video than it is to a scientific argument. It relies on pictures, emotions and wild claims. That does not prove that it is wrong. You can not , however, rationally assess the truth or falsity of the statements with Gore's presentation.
Al thinks we are stupid. He does not think we will read through serious science. He thinks we need lots of pictures or we just won't get it. - 2008-07-15, 2 of 7 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Eco Fraud
- 31,000 U.S. scientests have signed a petition refuting the claims that mankind is causing global warming and many scientests are now saying we are about to enter a period of global cooling due to changes in our sun. A British court found over 30 of Gore's claims in his movie to be false. Al Gore's home uses more energy in one month than the average home owner uses in one year and the zinc mine that was on his property was once listed by an environmental group as the most toxic mine site in America and Gore wants to reopen it. Are these the actions of a man truely concerned about the environment? Do a little searching to find out about Gore's financial interests in promoting global warming, other than his film and books, and you will find what I believe to be his true motivation.
While we do need to be better stewards of our planet the rush to stop climate change is harming millions around the world and will harm hundreds of millions more if we continue on this course. Gore and his followers say warmer temperatures will produce crop failures that will lead to starvation for millions but in our rush to develop cleaner burning bio fuels we are currently leaving millions of people around the world without enough food to eat. The move to develop bio fuels is also causing a huge price increase in foods which will harm the poorest among us. The amount of corn required to produce 25 gallons of ethanol is enough food to feed an adult for one year and that is one years worth of food someone will have to go without. When you rush into something based on emotion instead of facts you often take the wrong course and that is what I see happening with the issue of global warming.
True science has shown us the earth has been warming for thousands of years, the earth has been much warmer in the past then it is currently, and the only thing normal about climate change is it's always changing. As once scientest has said, a never changing climate would be abnormal. - 2008-05-21, 9 of 19 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Interesting but not complete
- I purchased this book despite my skepticism on human caused global warming. I figure i need to know both sides of the argument before I formulate an opinion.
There were some great points made in the book and despite my belief that global warming is not entirely human caused, there are a lot of things where I said "ya, why not? Wouldn't hurt to reduce this or that."
I did have a problem with Al's failure to show both sides of the coin when he pointed out statistics and used charts. One chart he used pointed out recent increases of this or that, but didn't comment on the historical increases that were shown on the same chart.
I also felt like the charts and graphs were misleading in many ways. Often they used visual tips and tricks to draw the eye to the points they wanted to make while 'hiding' the counter arguments. Although I was probably especially sensitive to this as I just read a book on the visual presentation of data.
If you are interested in global warming, even if you are a conservative that is against it, I believe you need to read this book. It would be naive to argue against it if you haven't read it. - 2008-05-21, 3 of 3 people found this review helpful, Rated:
