36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good introduction to a complex issue, 8 Sep 2006
Being from an environmental research background, I strongly recommend "An Inconvenient Truth" as a good opener to the area of climate change. As a previous reviewer said, it's an easy and well-illustrated read and achieves the aim of putting across the most significant points in a way that should appeal to a wide audience. I also found the brief tangents regarding Al Gore's life and family set his whole passion for the subject in context and made it a more human piece of work rather than a didactic text. In addition, I don't believe it sets out to offer one solution to climate change. I agree it's a way more complex issue than can be solved by local action alone. However, what I see as this books objective is rather to prove to as many as possible that climate change IS happening and that there are ways we could be ameliorating the effects to the benefit of our and other species. We need many more people agreeing that this IS an area where we need to be acting and acting now before the big stuff that WILL make a difference (policy change etc.) will happen. A good, concise, well-written and interesting introduction to the topic.
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34 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding work., 2 Aug 2006
Al Gore's book will, I have no doubt, become the standard environmental work of reference for many years to come. It details in an easily accessible, non technical and heavily illustrated way the present environmental problems that humanity faces. In this publication a picture is really worth a thousand words and the words are all relevant. I have no hesitation whatsoever in highly recommending this book.
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34 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book = check out those graphics!, 16 Oct 2006
If you consider yourself to be an 'expert' or 'near expert' on the issues of climate change then this books is not really for you.
It does however explain all the causes of environment change and how it will effect our planet.
The photographs are amazing - and show the changes that we can see in our environment over time. The graphs are clear and fasniating in themselves.
The book is (I am guessing) very much like the slide show he has gone around the world showing. It does often have only a few paragraphs on each page, but includes stunning pictures and graphics. For the reason, I managed to read the whole book in about four hours and I am quite a slow reader. That is why I say it is not for experts as the book doesn't really go into complex detail or go into length about the science of climate change.
However, for me it was a superb book. I am not a scientist. I don't want to read a peer reviewed book that someone has worked on for their PHd - I just wanted to know the facts in enough detail to be interesting without so much detail that it would be boring.
Average mere mortals like me - will love this book.
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