Higher temperatures.
Disappearing ice caps.
Rising ocean levels.
Diseases spread worldwide via invasive species.
These are the images and implications used to market the documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," the poster for which warns, "By far the most terrifying movie you will ever see."
The film, directed by Davis Guggenheim and starring former Vice President Al Gore, is intended to be a red flag flying in the face of the American public. As Gore explains in the film, it is the country's moral duty to curb the potential effects of global warming.
In a 155-page report released Thursday, the National Academy of Sciences stated the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia," and the scientists told Congress that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."
The issues of global warming and climate change and their causes remain hotly contested, even in spite of the evidence presented by people like Gore and Tom Dietz, director of the Environmental Science & Policy program at MSU.
"I think climate change is irrefutably taking place," Dietz said. "There's no plausible explanation for that except that it's being driven by human action."
Though he hasn't seen "An Inconvenient Truth," Dietz echoed many of the ideas — crumbling ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, accelerated climate change, shifting ocean circulation — projected in the film.
"We've locked into a certain amount of climate change," he said. "How much (change) is one of the things people are actively doing research on.
"But the question is: How bad will it get?" he said. "Will we move over to the point where it's just not getting warmer, but where we're massively changing major systems? We don't know that's going to happen; we know from the science that it's possible for those things to happen — they've happened in the past."
The evidence
While he admitted to some uncertainties, Dietz said research conducted in the last two to three years has revealed that complications from changing climates forecasted for the end of this century could instead become problems within the next few decades.
Jeff Andresen, climatologist and associate professor of geography, has studied climate change in the Great Lakes region. Though he found temperatures in the region have increased in the decades since the 1930s, they have remained within the range of temperatures observed within the last 110-120 years.
According to Andresen, winter temperatures rising and less ice covering the Great Lakes is leading to an increase in lake-effect snow.
"When ice covers the Great Lakes, it effectively shuts off the source of moisture for lake-effect snow," he said.
Increased water evaporation could have a significant impact on the lakes' water levels, as well, meaning lower or more varied levels, which Andresen views as negative.
"An increase in variability usually is not a good thing," he said.
Andresen has not seen "An Inconvenient Truth" either but is excited for its educational potential.
"Anything we can do to educate the general public on the issue I think is positive because ultimately, people are going to be asked by politicians to try to come to some kind of consensus on this issue," he said. "We have to be educated; the public has to have some background."
Nonetheless, Andresen pointed out that the research hasn't uncovered everything about climate change.
"The climate-change science has improved dramatically in the last few decades. Our understanding about how the system works has made great strides; however, there are still major pieces of that system that aren't completely understood — think about the last time you had a bad weather forecast," he said. "There are still wrinkles in that, and some of the people who are skeptical about climate change lift these up right away."
The politics
Gore may play the morality card to sell global warming prevention, but this is an issue that plays heavily in the political realm, as well.
"What are the consequences of trying to control global warming?" said MSU Department of Political Science Chairperson Richard Hula. "For example, you're putting restrictions on automobiles; you're putting restrictions on manufacturing — these are big-time political issues.
"You try to take away Americans' cars, and a lot of people are going to be annoyed."
Hula went on to say restrictions could take jobs from an already injured manufacturing sector. Restrictions could also be enforced on power plants, he said, which could call into question the most effective way of providing electricity.
"At a minimum, you're going to raise prices; it's going to be more expensive to heat your house or turn your lights on," Hula said. "Americans aren't real pleased with that prospect either."
In Michigan, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has taken steps to aid the environment while also minding the economy.
"One of the ways we can protect the environment and grow the economy is by focusing on the right business climate for renewable and alternative energy technology," said Granholm's spokeswoman Liz Boyd. "Michigan can and should be the nation's hub for these technologies, and the state that once and for all makes the U.S. independent of foreign oil."
The White House is not convinced that global warming poses a significant threat and fears additional pollution controls would cost Americans jobs. The Bush administration has maintained that the effects of global warming are not extreme enough to enact new pollution controls.
But in red-and-blue America, the global warming/climate change issue runs along partisan lines. Hula said the mere fact that it stars former Democratic presidential nominee Gore may turn some moviegoers off to "An Inconvenient Truth."
"The difficulty is that Gore has so many things attached to him that lots of folks out there would say, 'If Al Gore says it, it can't be true,' so it almost has a negative impact," Hula said.
One of those skeptics is history senior and president of the MSU College Republicans Jeff Wiggins, who doesn't think global warming is an important issue facing Americans.
"Don't you think everyone would know a lot more about it if it was that big of an issue?" he said. "Newscasters would be talking about it nearly every single day if it was as big of an issue as some of these global warming activists are portraying it."
Wiggins said Gore is probably going to portray global warming as a more important issue than it really is.
Climatologist Andresen maintained that the doubts of Wiggins and others are necessary to keep global warming theories in check.
"Skepticism is healthy," Andresen said. "In any scientific community you have to have skeptics to remind us that you need proof or you need strong evidence."
