| Gore Brings
Academy-Award-Winning Documentary on Global Climate
to UCSD
Ioana Patringenaru | May 29, 2007
More than 4,000 people gave him a standing ovation. They applauded when he told them that global warming is an ethical issue. They made the bleachers rumble when he said one week of funding for the Iraq war would go a long way toward solving the global warming crisis. Ninety minutes later, they stood up and applauded again when he left the stage after urging the audience to take action.
|
Al Gore and Ellen Revelle look at an item in the Birch Aquarium's new "Feeling the Heat" exhibition.
(Photo / Bob Ross) |
|
Former Vice President Al Gore brought to UCSD last week his global warming slideshow, showcased in the Academy-Award winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” He spoke to a standing-room-only crowd May 21 at the RIMAC Arena. He also cut the ribbon for a new exhibit about global warming at the Birch Aquarium, titled “Feeling the Heat: the Climate Challenge.” He received an enthusiastic reception at both events. During his talk, Gore frequently referred to research done at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
"It was very fitting to have Vice President Al Gore visit us here at Scripps and UCSD, the home of Roger Revelle, the man he acknowledges as the inspiration for his passion and interest in climate change and the environment," said Scripps Director Tony Haymet. "It was a great compliment to our scientists and a solid testament to our 50 years of global warming research."
The former vice president tried to share his sense of urgency with the audience during his 90-minute slideshow. He paced on stage, silhouetted against his slides, which were projected on giant screens overhead. Gore argues that our civilization and our planet are essentially on a collision course. To sustain our ever-increasing numbers we are using technology that is harming the Earth, he said.
“This is not a political issue,” he said of global warming. “It’s an ethical issue, it’s a moral issue.”
“If we allow this to happen, it would be the most unforgivable and unethical act,” he added later.
Both lines got big rounds of applause from the audience. Gore's voice rose as he got more passionate or angry. But he also was funny and self-deprecating, deploring life after his 2000 presidential run. “I am Al Gore; I used to be the next president of the United States,” he said by way of introduction. He then asked his audience to sympathize. “I flew on Air Force Two for eight years,” he said. Then his face assumed a mock expression of despair. “Now I have to take off my shoes when I get on an airplane.” A drive through Tennessee with his wife, Tipper, provided a another revelation. Gore looked in the rear view mirror. “All of a sudden, it hit me: no motorcade,” he said.
By the way, Gore does a wickedly good impersonation of President Clinton. He can also tell some wickedly funny jokes. He showed a picture of an Alaskan cemetery where permafrost melted, with crosses all askance. He said he probably saw too many horror movies when he was a child. “I always thought that when the ground starts spitting coffins back up, it’s not a good thing,” he deadpanned.
Local Global Warming Scientists
|
| Gore takes an air sample for the Scripps CO2 Program, while Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and Scripps Professor Ralph Keeling look on.
(Photo / Bob Ross) |
|
Gore also injected some local flavor in his slideshow by emphasizing the role UCSD co-founder Roger Revelle and scientists at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography played in global warming research.
Revelle taught Gore at Harvard. His widow, Ellen Revelle, introduced the former vice president at RIMAC. Her late husband was always thrilled when one of his students went on to teach, she said. “Al Gore took a kernel from Roger’s ideas at Harvard and went on to teach it all over the nation and the world,” she said. She added that he should have been president, and the audience rose to their feet, clapping loudly. Gore then made his entrance. He thanked the Revelle family. Roger Revelle was an inspiration to him, he said.
“He and Dave Keeling changed the world and made it possible for all of us to understand what we’re facing here,” he said.
One of Gore’s key slides is the Keeling Curve, which shows the rise in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1958. The curve is the brain child of Scripps researcher Charles David Keeling. Gore called it one of the three most important data sets in the history of science. He nominated Keeling for a National Medal of Science, which the scientist received in 2002.
“It was very gratifying and very nice,” Ralph Keeling said of Gore’s remarks about his father. He took over his father’s project, known as the Scripps CO2 Program. Before the lecture, Keeling invited Gore to take an air sample for the program. He had made his way through a crowd of guests at the Birch Aquarium, holding two big flasks under vacuum. He wondered what Gore would make of him. But he was well received. He showed Gore how to open the flask’s tap to capture a sample. Then he watched as the former vice president took a sample himself. “I thought it was a sweet moment,” Keeling said. He also said he was impressed by the sheer amount of content in Gore’s slideshow and by the amount of new science it included. “It was a stunning performance,” he said.
The former vice president first saw the Keeling Curve as Revelle’s student at Harvard. Global warming has followed him through his political career ever since. He held hearings on the issue after he became a congressman. Revelle testified. Gore put the spotlight on global warming again when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. As vice president, he went to Japan to work on the Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
During his talk, Gore also singled out UCSD science historian Naomi Oreskes. He cited a 2004 study she published in Science magazine, which examined 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. None of the papers disagreed with the view that global warming is man-made. He praised Oreskes for fighting off her critics and called the study “air-tight” and “solid as a rock.” Other Scripps scientists whose work is featured in "An Inconvenient Truth" include Tim Barnett and Jeff Severinghaus.
Problems and Solutions
|
Gore and Audrey Geisel look at a fish tank in the Birch Aquarium's new exhibition "Feeling the Heat."
(Photo / Bob Ross) |
|
Though some of Gore’s talk outlined problems of biblical proportions, he was mindful to say that there is hope. Many technologies already exist to curb carbon emissions. Using just some of these technologies would allow the United States to cut its emissions by half from 1970s levels, Gore said.
“We don’t have a silver bullet,” he added. “We have silver buckshot.”
The last slide in his talk showed a picture of the Earth as seen from 5 billion miles in space, a mere blue speck in the cosmos. “It’s our home; it’s our only home” Gore said. “We’ll make our last stand here.”
Before the talk, he met for more than an hour with Scripps scientists and their research partners from other UC campuses. They talked about some of the questions raised by a recent United Nations report, including ocean acidity and ice sheets resting on land that might slip in the sea. They also talked about satellites as tools to gather data about planet Earth from space.
The Audience’s Reaction
Meanwhile, thousands of students, staff members, faculty and San Diego residents lined up in front of RIMAC for a chance to hear Gore. Tickets for the event, which were free, had sold out weeks before in less than an hour. Juniors Eran Agmon and Sarah Cercone said they wanted to show their support for Gore.
“I think the issue of global warming is probably the most important for our health, our future and our safety,” Cercone said.
Agmon was clutching a “Gore 2008” sign, which he got after signing a petition to draft Gore for a presidential run. After the talk, several students raved about the former vice president’s performance. “I was just really amazed at how accessible he made the issue,” said Lisa Kovacevic, a senior and environmental systems major. Rose Johns, a senior and political science and history major, said she found Gore’s message inspiring.
“There’s still hope that the world will change,” she said. “It needs to change.”
|
