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<\/a>Eight years ago. Al Gore released \u201cAn Inconvenient Truth,\u201d<\/em> the book and documentary film that laid out the scientific consensus connecting the burning of fossil fuels to climate change. At the time, the former vice-president challenged the fossil-fuel industry and all of us who depend upon its dirty output to face up to what may be the most difficult economic, scientific, and moral challenge the global community will ever face.<\/p>\nGore\u2019s articulation of the long-term, developing climate catastrophe was a shocking prediction that\u2019s proved to be all too true. But there\u2019s some good news, too.<\/p>\n
The bad news<\/strong><\/p>\n Since throwing out those first frightening and potentially life-altering salvos, Gore has been an easy target for climate-change deniers. Their response to Gore\u2019s brilliant cataloguing of the case for human activity and climate change was swift and ugly. Some clever right-wing wordsmith coined the word \u201cschlockumentary\u201d to mock and vilify the movie and the man. The book was dismissed as science fiction by congressional conservatives and lobbyists for the oil, gas, and coal industries. The immediate, vociferous response to Gore\u2019s science lesson demonstrated the truth of the old maxim that blaming the bearer of bad news is always easier than confronting the bad news itself.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the bad news has only gotten worse. Since 1988, when the world passed the upper safety limit for atmospheric CO2\u2014350 ppm (parts per million)\u2014the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been steadily rising. This past June, CO2 measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory reached 401.30 ppm, a level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is the highest CO2 concentration in human history.<\/p>\n And if you want to lose some sleep at night, cogitate on this: The present measurements of CO2 levels are higher than they\u2019ve been for any time during the past 800,000 years. (And that number is a conservative estimate. Some scientists put the number of years in the millions.)<\/p>\n The effects of those increased levels of CO2 in our fragile atmosphere are becoming ever more dramatic, more visible, and more difficult to dismiss. May 2014 was the warmest May in more than 130 years of recorded global temperatures. Rising global temperatures are speeding the melting of glaciers and ice caps. The polar ice cap is melting at a rate of 9% per decade. The thickness of Arctic ice has decreased 40% since the 1960s, and it\u2019s estimated that, if the current rate of global warming continues, the Arctic could be ice-free by 2040. Over the last three decades more than one million square miles of perennial sea ice have disappeared, and the pace of sea level rise is accelerating. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with all that ice melt sea levels could rise 10 to 23 inches by 2100.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the weather itself. There\u2019s growing evidence that global warming is causing hurricanes that are more intense; dangerous heat waves; heavier rainfall and more frequent flooding; and increased conditions, such as more severe and longer-lasting droughts, that threaten our food supply and make wildfires more frequent and severe.<\/p>\n While the data continue to confirm the reality of the climate threat, Gore has been traveling the globe trying to educate and convince a reluctant, disbelieving world of the necessity to wean away from carbon fuels and to switch to clean, renewable energy sources. Gore and climate scientists across the globe desperately want us to understand that only a large-scale switch to renewables will give the world a fighting change to stabilize the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n