I’ve been thinking about writing something about Al Gore’s new book, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It.A book such as this naturally controversial, but from at least two points of view. Firstly, its a scientific book written by a “recovering” politician (a term Gore used to describe himself). The controvery is not whether politicians understand science, but whether they let their experience as a politician jade their views, and jump to conclusions. At this point, I haven’t studied Gore’s book is evaluate this point, but my experience with Gore’s previous book was positive, and a careful glance at this new book is encouraging. Secondly, the topic of global warming is controversial, simply by itself. In fact, politics seems to influence the public perception of efficacy of global warming, not the scientific facts that surround and give meaning to global warming. Because Gore’s book has in its subtitle “what can we do about it” it suggests social action, and that by its nature has to involve politics. So my prediction is that this is a book that weaves science and politics, and will give us an opportunity to do something about the warming of earth.

For many years I worked with teachers, scientists, and teenagers on global environmental problems throught the Global Thinking Project. In that project we involved teenagers in carrying out collaborative research projects in which they looked at various environmental problems such as ground-level ozone, global warming, solid waste, and other issues. As Gore points out, the deliberate collection of data over a long period of time (of say temperature, or CO2 in the atmosphere) is important in establishing base levels, and then subsequent changes that occur in these environmental conditions. Making use of core samples(from ice) enables us to compare present environmental changes with changes in the past. One finding in making measurements of say CO2 for past 40 years is that when compared with CO2 in the atmosphere say 650,000 we find that present levels are “way ahead of anything back then.”

Helping people understand how measurements are made, and then looking at trends in the data—as we did with teenages in more than 15 countries—enables citizens to make decisions based on logical thinking.

Gore’s book reminds me of books designed and written by Bob Samples, an educator who has impacted science education, especially during the 60s and 70s. An Inconvenient Truth is a welcome piece of work that would be a powerful tool for science educators and politicians alike.