Project 4 Arguement Essay

In the movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore explains the long lasting effects that global warming is having on the world, and the lasting effects it will have on the world. Al Gore does a great job in explaining his points and views and is very inspirational when he is talking. In this movie gore’s main point is to make his viewers aware of what global warming was doing to the Earth. Most of Gore’s life he has been interested in this topic. He even ran for president to help this issue. When he ran for president he did not do a very good job hence why he is not president. It was a close race but Bush pulled through in the end. Melinda Henneberger says, “Actually, I'm guessing we'll still be arguing about how he did as a political candidate when the last glacier melts into a sno-cone.” In my opinion this is absolutely true, and I don’t think this is a reason for people to not watch or understand his movie. He is a very intelligent man who knows a lot about global warming. This movie has been a great way to get his words out and let millions of people hear what Gore has to say about global warming.

In the movie Gore brings up many main points about how our Earth is warming, and it is mainly from the human activity going on in the world. According to the report there is more than a ninety percent chance humans are the cause (Bailey). The activity that is leading to this warming is the abundance of greenhouse gases being let into the world. Some of these gases are car emissions, power plants emitting smoke, and various other things that are killing the ozone and hurting multiple other things on this earth. In my opinion he is completely right.

On this earth people do not know how to live green or even in a way that will save this beautiful place. People need to learn how to save the ozone and stop global warming. In the movie one of Gore’s main points is climate change. If you’ve realized it or not climate change is becoming a major issue due to global warming. Not only is the world significantly warming, but it is in some cases getting to extreme colds. Not a lot of people know that global warming is not only about the warming but it is also about the cooling in some cases. In my opinion, Al Gore’s argument is very successful. It is an extremely long movie with a lot of facts, statistics, and opinions. This helps his cause because it makes his movie much more creditable and people will actually take time to watch it. I say this because people are more likely to watch it when it is not low budget and has someone as important as Al Gore. Gore’s argument thru out the movie is that we need to watch what we do in order to control the warming that is going on in the world. One specific point where Gore was extremely influential to the audience was when he showed us the slides of the glaciers being melted in Greenland, and the ice shelves disappearing in Antarctica. This was extremely prominent in my mind because he showed us actual footage of what was happening because of the global warming. The most interesting part was when he showed us the before and after pictures of the places around the world that were affected by the warming. Roger Ebert explains, “If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a "tipping point" and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the other species on this planet.” Gore did a great job in expelling this

Spengler 3

information to us as if it were the biggest problem in the word to day. This was very commendable of him and made me on his side for this movie more than ever.

For the aftermath of the film there are many people hating on Gore and the movie itself. One author, Dan Schneider, explains his hatred by saying, “Overall, An Inconvenient Truth has important ideas, but is a bad film precisely because those ideas are made secondary to the ego of Al Gore. That is not Gore’s fault, but Guggenheim’s, yet is precisely why An Inconvenient Truth is a bad film, and not even remotely a ‘documentary.’” This film is very much so a documentary, and is in no way primarily about Al Gore’s ego. The definition of a documentary is: Consisting of, concerning, or based on documents, and there is no way that this film is not a documentary. Other people bash Gore as a person, not just the movie. Kevin Carr explains his views by saying, “An Inconvenient Truth” is Al Gore’s 100-minute campaign commercial, testing the waters for him to take another stab at the Presidency in 2008. (Oh, sure, he says he won’t do it, but when was the last time you heard a politician tell the truth?)” This is a false statement all around. It is in no way a campaign commercial because Gore has been looking into this subject throughout his life, not just after his presidency. Also, he knows he already lost the election why would he still be worried about trying to get peoples votes? Just because Gore decided to make a movie over global warming after his presidency doesn’t mean he was still trying to get elected.

Al Gore did not only explain his information very well, but he explained them with emotion. The points when Gore would go into his personal life and how the warming was effected him was a tremendous way to suppress his guest, and viewers, into

Spengler 4

thinking the same way he was. One of the most important personal quotes in the movie was when he was talking about his son and how after his son’s serious accident. “My son had suffered a concussion, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a compound fracture of the thigh bone, and massive internal injuries as well as a bruised lung & pancreas & a fractured kidney.“ His way of setting the mood in the audience was amazing because not only were his words compelling, but the music and all aspects of the lights and sounds were basically speaking for themselves in the movie. This movie was very influential and did a great job in explaining to the world how big of an issue global warming was.

At the beginning of the movie I was not too keen on Al Gore as a man, or political figure. After watching this movie I realized that I have an abundance of respect for the man. After Gore ran for president, he decided to devote his life to the educating side of one of the biggest world issues, global warming. He has traveled around the world and studied many adverse effects of global warming, and has done studies on what might happen if something in the world does not change. He needs to be commended for his work and this movie has definitely made me come to realize Al Gore is a decent man, that knows the facts.

Project 2

Coty Spengler
October 1, 2010
Rhetorical Defense
The audience for my promotional piece would have to be towards incoming freshman that have not yet explored the library. I say this because it is very informative and easy to understand. Also, the audience could be someone who likes to think out of the box. This is true because there is an audio tour, which is a very cool aspect of my project. It helps the audience actually visualize the library in its fullest, even though there is not much going on in the library.
The reason I did a audio tour/power point was because it was the easiest way I could show the history, and what the library is all about. I figured if I did only and audio tour it would not be very informative at all. I like how this power point turned out because it holds a lot of information without being too long, or too confusing. I was going to get a couple interviews with librarians, but this fell through with our uncompromising schedules. I wish I would have had an opportunity to interview a librarian because this would have gave the students a supreme description of the opportunities in the library that most don’t find out about until they have been here for a while. I think I did a fairly good job showing all the important information about the library. It is a great place to study and everything else you can think of, and I want everyone to know this.
I chose to make each slide with an animation because this makes the project a lot more interesting instead of feeling like you were taking notes. I used bright colors in my power point because it caters to my audience the best college kids do not want to look at a bunch of black and white. This power point being colorful helps keep my audience interested instead of being bored out of their minds while reading my project. I made it so you had to click on the audio clip, rather than playing the clip automatically when the slide came on, because this makes it so the viewer focuses on the clip rather than just hearing it while they are reading the information. This way they can do one at a time and get the full effect of the audio tour.
I chose The Vernon R. Alden library because I am there all the time. I use the library almost 5 times a week and I wanted everyone else to know what the entire library has to offer. Also, the library had the most information on it so it made the project easy to educate everyone on everything I wanted to mention. The genre of my promotion piece would be an informative/ creative piece. I say this because it has a lot of information, but it has an artistic side to it.