An Inconvenient Truth Page #4

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hit Brazil.

Summer of 2005 has been

one for the books.

The first one was Emily

that socked into Yucatn.

Then Hurricane Dennis came along

and it did a lot of damage,

including to the oil industry.

This is the largest oil platform

in the world after Dennis went through.

This one was driven into the bridge

at Mobile.

And then, of course, came Katrina.

It's worth remembering that when

it hit Florida, it was a Category One.

But it killed a lot of people and caused

billions of dollars' worth of damage.

And then what happened?

Before it hit New Orleans,

it went over warmer waters.

As the water temperature increases,

the wind velocity increases

and the moisture content increases.

And you'll see Hurricane Katrina

form over Florida.

And then as it comes into the gulf

over that warm water,

it picks up that energy and gets

stronger and stronger and stronger.

Look at that hurricane's eye.

And, of course,

the consequences were so horrendous,

there are no words to describe it.

Yeah, we're getting reports and calls

that are just breaking my heart.

From people saying, "I've been

in my attic. I can't take it anymore.

"The water is up to my neck.

I don't think I can hold out."

And that's happening as we speak.

We told everybody the importance

of the 17th Street Canal issue.

We said,

"Please, please, take care of this.

"We don't care what you do.

Figure it out."

Something new for America.

But how in God's name

could that happen here?

There had been warnings

that hurricanes would get stronger.

There were warnings

that this hurricane,

days before it hit,

would breach the levees,

would cause the kind of damage

that it ultimately did cause.

And one question

we as a people need to decide

is how we react when we hear warnings

from the leading scientists in the world.

There was another storm in the 1930s

of a different kind.

A horrible, unprecedented storm

in continental Europe,

and Winston Churchill warned

the people of England

that it was different from anything

that had ever happened before

and they had to get ready for it.

And a lot of people did not want

to believe it.

And he got real impatient

with all the dithering.

And he said this,

Making mistakes in generations

and centuries past

would have consequences

that we could overcome.

We don't have that luxury anymore.

We didn't ask for it,

but here it is.

Al Gore is the winner

of the national popular vote.

But the state of Florida, whomever

wins there wins the White House.

We call Florida, in the Al Gore column...

Bulletin:
Florida pulled back

into the undecided column.

George Bush is the president elect

of the United States. He is...

Florida goes Bush.

The presidency is Bush. That's it.

And at 2:
18 this morning, we project...

All right, we're officially saying

that Florida is too close to call.

While I strongly disagree

with the court's decision,

I accept it.

I accept the finality of this outcome.

... do solemnly swear...

I, George Walker Bush,

do solemnly swear...

... that I will faithfully execute

the Office of President...

Well, that was a hard blow, but...

What do you do? You...

You make the best of it.

It brought into clear focus

the mission that I had been pursuing

for all these years, and

I started giving the slide show again.

One often unnoticed effect

of global warming

is it causes more precipitation,

but more of it coming

in one-time big storm events.

Because the evaporation off the oceans

puts all the moisture up there,

when storm conditions trigger

the downpour, more of it falls down.

The insurance industry has

actually noticed this.

Their recovered losses are going up.

You see the damage

from these severe weather events?

And 2005 is not even on this yet.

When it does, it'll be off that chart.

Europe has just had a year very similar

to the one we've had

where they say

nature's been going crazy.

All kinds of unusual catastrophes,

like a nature hike

through the Book of Revelations.

Flooding in Asia.

Mumbai, India this past July.

Thirty-seven inches of rain in 24 hours.

By far, the largest downpour

that any city in India has ever received.

Lot of flooding in China, also.

Global warming, paradoxically,

causes not only more flooding,

but also more drought.

This neighboring province

right next door

had a severe drought at the same time

these areas were flooding.

One of the reasons for this

has to do with the fact

that global warming not only increases

precipitation worldwide,

but it also relocates the precipitation.

And focus most of all

on this part of Africa

just on the edge of the Sahara.

Unbelievable tragedies have been

unfolding there,

and there are a lot of reasons for it.

But Darfur and Niger are

among those tragedies.

And one of the factors

that has been compounding them

is the lack of rainfall

and the increasing drought.

This is Lake Chad, once one

of the largest lakes in the world.

It has dried up over the last

few decades to almost nothing,

vastly complicating the other problems

that they also have.

The second reason

why this is a paradox.

Global warming creates

more evaporation off the oceans

to seed the clouds,

but it sucks moisture out of the soil.

Soil evaporation increases dramatically

with higher temperatures.

And that has consequences

for us in the United States, as well.

So this is the Carthage exit.

When I was 14 years old,

I totaled the family car

right there.

Went off that shoulder, turned it over.

And see this Black Angus bull?

We raised Black Angus.

My father was named

Breeder of the Month.

He grew up on a farm.

All through his career in the Senate

he continued to come back here

and raise cattle.

Learning it from your dad on the land,

that's really something special.

My childhood upbringing was

a little unusual in the sense that

I spent eight months of each year

in Washington DC

in a small little hotel apartment.

And then the other four months were

spent here on this big, beautiful farm.

I had a dog here.

I had a pony here.

I could shoot my rifle here.

I could go swimming in the river here.

Go out and lay down in the grass.

As a kid, it took me a while

to learn the difference

between fun and work.

The places where people live

were chosen

because of the climate pattern

that has been pretty much the same

on Earth

since the end of the last ice age

Here, on this farm,

the patterns are changing.

And it seems gradual

in the course of a human lifetime

but in the course of time,

as defined by this river,

it's happening very, very quickly.

Two canaries in the coal mine.

First one is in the Arctic.

This, of course, is the Arctic Ocean,

the floating ice cap.

Greenland, on its side there.

I say canary in the coal mine

because the Arctic is

one of the two regions of the world

that is experiencing faster impacts

from global warming.

This is the largest ice shelf

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