An Inconvenient Truth Page #3

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There it is, right there.

There are two others.

But compared to what's going on now,

there's just no comparison.

So if you look at 1,000 years'

worth of temperature

and compare it to 1,000 years of CO2,

you can see how closely

they fit together.

Now, 1,000 years of CO2

in the mountain glaciers,

that's one thing.

But in Antarctica,

they can go back 650,000 years.

This incidentally is the first time

anybody outside of a small group

of scientists has seen this image.

This is the present day era,

and that's the last ice age.

Then it goes up. We're going back

in time now 650,000 years.

That's the period of warming

between the last two ice ages.

That's the second

and third ice age back.

Fourth, fifth, sixth

and seventh ice age back.

Now, an important point.

In all of this time, 650,000 years,

the CO2 level has never gone above

Now, as I said,

they can also measure temperature.

Here's what the temperature

has been on our Earth.

Now, one thing that kind of jumps out

at you is...

Well, let me put it this way.

If my classmate from the sixth grade

that talked about Africa

and South America were here,

he would say,

"Did they ever fit together?"

"Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

But they did, of course.

And the relationship is

actually very complicated.

But there is one relationship

that is far more powerful

than all the others and it is this.

When there is more carbon dioxide,

the temperature gets warmer

because it traps more heat

from the sun inside.

In the parts of the United States

that contain the modern cities

of Cleveland, Detroit, New York,

in the northern tier,

this is the difference between a nice day

and having a mile of ice over your head.

Keep that in mind

when you look at this fact.

Carbon dioxide,

having never gone above

here is where CO2 is now.

Way above where it's ever been

as far back as this record will measure.

Now, if you'll bear with me,

I wanna really emphasize this point.

The crew here

has tried to teach me

how to use this contraption here.

So, if I don't kill myself, I'II...

It's already right here.

Look how far above

the natural cycle this is,

and we've done that.

But, ladies and gentlemen,

in the next 50 years,

really, in less than 50 years,

it's gonna continue to go up.

When some of these children

who are here are my age,

here is what it's going to be

in less than 50 years.

You've heard of off the charts.

Within less than 50 years, it'll be here.

There's not a single fact

or date or number

that's been used to make this up

that's in any controversy.

The so-called skeptics look at this

and they say,

"So? That seems perfectly okay."

"So? That seems perfectly okay."

Well,

again, if on the temperature side,

if this much on the cold side is

a mile of ice over our heads,

what would that much

on the warm side be?

Ultimately this is really not

a political issue

so much as a moral issue.

If we allow that to happen,

it is deeply unethical.

I had such faith

in our democratic system,

our self-government.

I actually thought and believed

that the story would be compelling

enough to cause a real sea change

in the way the Congress reacted

to that issue.

I thought they would be startled, too.

And they weren't.

The struggles,

the victories that aren't really victories,

the defeats that aren't really defeats.

They can serve to magnify

the significance

of some trivial step forward,

exaggerate the seeming importance

of some massive setback.

April 3, 1989.

My son pulled loose from my hand

and chased his friend across the street.

He was six years old.

The machine was breathing for him.

We were possibly going to lose him.

He finally took a breath.

We stayed in the hospital for a month.

It was almost as if

you could look at that calendar

and just go...

And everything just flew off.

Seemed trivial, insignificant.

He was so brave. He was such...

He was such a brave guy.

It just turned my whole world

upside down

and then shook it

until everything fell out.

My way of being in the world,

it just changed everything for me.

How should I spend my time

on this Earth?

I really dug in,

trying to learn about it

much more deeply.

I went to Antarctica.

Went to the South Pole, the North Pole,

the Amazon.

Went to places where scientists

could help me understand

parts of the issue that

I didn't really understand in depth.

The possibility of losing

what was most precious to me.

I gained an ability

that maybe I didn't have before.

But when I felt it,

I felt that we could really lose it,

that what we take for granted

might not be here for our children.

These are actual measurements

of atmospheric temperatures

since our Civil War.

In any given year,

it might look like it's going down,

but the overall trend is extremely clear.

And in recent years,

it's uninterrupted and it is intensifying.

In fact, if you look at the 10 hottest

years ever measured

in this atmospheric record,

they've all occurred in the last 14 years.

And the hottest of all was 2005.

We have already seen

some of the heat waves

that are similar

to what scientists are saying

are gonna be a lot more common.

Couple of years ago in Europe

they had that massive heat wave

that killed 35,000 people.

India didn't get as much attention,

but the same year

the temperature there went

to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

This past summer

in the American West,

there were a lot of cities that broke

all-time records for high temperatures

and number of consecutive days

with a 100-degree temperature or more.

Two hundred cities and towns

in the west set all-time records.

And in the east there were a lot of cities

that did the same thing.

Including, incidentally, New Orleans.

So the temperature increases are

taking place all over the world,

including in the oceans.

This is the natural range of variability

for temperature in the oceans.

You know, people say,

"Oh, it's just natural.

"It goes up and down,

so don't worry about it."

This is the range that would be

expected over the last 60 years,

but the scientists who specialize in

global warming have computer models

that long ago predicted

this range of temperature increase.

Now I'm gonna show you,

recently released,

the actual ocean temperatures.

And, of course, when the oceans get

warmer, that causes stronger storms.

We have seen

in the last couple of years

a lot of big hurricanes.

Hurricane Jeanne and Frances

and Ivan were among them.

And the same year that we had

that string of big hurricanes,

we also set an all-time record

for tornadoes in the United States.

Japan again didn't get

as much attention in our news media,

but they set an all-time record

for typhoons.

Previous record was seven.

Here are all 10 of the ones

they had in 2004.

The science textbooks have had

to be rewritten

because they say that it's impossible to

have a hurricane in the South Atlantic.

But the same year the first one ever

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