Wildlife Conservation

I must admit that at first I was very hesitant to watch An Inconvenient Truth because of the bias that I was told clearly existed in the documentary.  After seeing the film I definitely still see the bias but still saw it as a piece of risk communication.

Al Gore definitely did a wonderful job in his presentation of the issue of global warming.  His facts seemed accurate and well researched and his clarity during the presentation created an attitude that wasn’t preachy or speaking above the listener.  He seemed to genuinely have a passion for this topic and wanted to relate it to the audience as effectively as possible.  One of the best parts, I felt, was that he tried to show how global warming can be prevented  by doing everyday things that any individual can try to do to help.  He was looking more at a step by step process of little things that related to the bigger issue.

I had two main problems, however, with this film.  The first was the amount of the movie that seemed to stray from the central topic of global warming.  There were too many scenes that cut out to focus on Gore’s presidential election and politics that didn’t relate to the issue at hand.  It almost seemed like he was trying to promote himself through the documentary which made him much less likable and less credible as a risk communicator.  It seemed that he was trying too hard to plug his own political agenda within the film.  The other main issue I had with the film was the lack of presenting both sides of an issue.  While Gore briefly mentioned the other side of the global warming issue and stated that the earth doesn’t just go through phases of warming and cooling but that we are contributing to it, I felt that he passed over this too briefly.  This seemed to make his argument much more focused to the people who already agree with global warming and would be unsuccessful in converting nonbelievers to believers.

I am extremely glad that I decided to watch this film.  Gore, in general did do a very effective presentation of the facts and issues of global warming and did an excellent job relating his topic to the lives of people today and ways in which they, as individuals, can help.  There were also some things that Gore did that I definitely felt I would improve upon as a risk communicator.  This is an excellent piece of risk communication and when viewed as such, is extremely helpful.

There are a few great visual media representations that Gore uses in An Inconvenient Truth.  By far, I feel that the most memorable, therefore most effective piece of visual media was the chart that he used and then had to go up on a scissor lift to finish showing the height of it.  Now this chart could easily have been shrunk down to size to fit the screen but the effect of actually having to be raised up to view the top of the chart really stood out as a dramatic effect.  This visual was memorable.  One of the other great things about Gore’s presentation was his use of white space.  White space can be very effective.  None of his presentation felt cluttered or distracting but it formed well together on the individual screen.  It made the audience focus exactly on what the intended message was.  A third visual media that was very prevalent in Gore’s presentation was the cartoon that was shown focusing on Global Warming.  In this cartoon, a “dumbed down” version of Gore’s presentation was completely developed.  Basically, the cartoon explained what exactly global warming is.  This cartoon had very mixed reviews in the class discussion and for me personally, it was very unneeded.  I felt that Gore’s serious presentation of the issue gave the audience a full understanding of the issue.  While the cartoon may have been a nice distraction from the longer presentation aspect, it seemed very redundant and silly in a topic that Gore is asking us to take very seriously.  I feel that this was not the best choice to represent the issue in a “funny” way.