Unpalatable self-centredness

Yawn.

My wife and I have just done our level best to sit through Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth".

Not what I expected at all. We had some preconceived ideas, and those were simply that this would be moving, impressive stuff. Everyone had raved about it.

What did I know of Al Gore before watching the movie? Only that he was beaten by Bush to the presidency. Precious little else so I definitely wasn't prejudiced.

What is our impression? Well, we weren't able to finish it. We just got sick and tired of what appeared to be Al Gore being more obsessed with getting his own picture on the camera, revelling in his own showmanship and presenting pseudo-science in what he supposed was a moving manner.

Look, we're hardly rabid environmentalists, but we're certainly not evil capitalist exploiters-at-all-costs either and have our own major problems with the Bush administration's policies on the environment.

But this was just too much baloney. Human induced global warming may well be true but I will not be moved by some guy that wants to squeeze into his film a teary moment when he was beaten to the presidency. Earlier on he was telling us about life changing events after his son's accident which changed his perspective on things; and then suddenly he seems to be trying to dig at Bush as if he never got over the election thing. GET OVER IT, Al! You yourself are telling us your life has changed and there are more important things than petty political squabbles.

What's more, you'd think after watching this that Al Gore was the guy that had introduced the world to the concept of global warming. We found the whole film amazingly self-centred. Pictures of Al musing about how he could save the planet are liberally interspersed among the badly presented "facts".

He shows a clip of some glacier calving and the commentry implies that we are witnessing glaciers retreating! Glaciers have always and will always calve where they enter the sea whether they're retreating or advancing. This is gross misrepresentation. Look, I'm not trying to say that the world's glaciers aren't retreating... I believe they are... but that doesn't justify misleading people by implying that what was shown in that clip is evidence of it. What it means is that either
a) Al Gore doesn't know about glaciers calving OR
b) He is deliberately misleading the audience.

Either of the above possibilities is equally damning and scary. And if there's one "fact" like this in the movie you can hardly trust the rest of the hastily drawn conclusions.

I can't comment on whatever the final conclusion was because I bailed somewhere during Al's reminiscences of life on the farm in his younger days.

Poor job, Mr Gore. Next time forget the pictures of yourself and try to get the facts down accurately and objectively with a little less bitterness about your political misfortunes.