Most important issue of our time?

I just finished watching the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". Put simply, this is an important film. This is an important film about perhaps the most important issue we as a society face. That issue is global warming and the consequences are catastrophic.

There are many facts and study results presented in the film, but to me one of the most interesting was this: there is no controversy among scientists about whether human beings are causing global warming. We are. A survey of all peer reviewed articles in scientific publications in recent years turned up 928 articles. How many of those articles expressed doubt that humans were causing global warming? Zero. Absolutely none. Nada. Zilch. The consensus in the scientific community is strong.

Yet in a survey of popular media articles, these are non-peer reviewed, non-scientific publications, fully 53% expressed doubts that humans were causing global warming. Those opposed to making the changes we must make to curb global warming have succeeded in manufacturing this non-existent controversy in the minds of millions of people.

One of the other really interesting slides presented in the film shows a graph of 650,000 years of CO2 levels and average temperatures. Both are known by studying drilled ice core samples and what the graph shows is an incredibly obvious and consistent correlation indicating that higher CO2 levels means higher temperatures.

Besides showing much of Al Gore's presentation on global warming, the film looks at Gore's life and how he became involved so heavily with this issue. Those parts of the film are interesting, but the real focus stays on the issue, as it should.

I think everyone should see this film and really think about the implications. If you don't like Al Gore, watch it anyway. Stop focusing on who's presenting the information. He's acting as a messenger. Focus on the facts.