40 Fun Facts About An Inconvenient Truth

Which animated series supplied the cartoon clip Al Gore uses in An Inconvenient Truth to explain the greenhouse effect?

Futurama lent the clip from an episode in which Gore himself guest-starred as a head in a jar. His daughter Kristin was a writer on the show.

The producer who proposed An Inconvenient Truth was married at the time to which comedian?

Larry David was married until 2007 to Laurie David, who saw a ten-minute version of the slide show at a 2004 town hall and set out to get it filmed.

Which Arctic animal does An Inconvenient Truth say has been found drowned after long swims in search of sea ice?

Polar bear drownings became one of the film's best-known claims. The study behind it described four bears found dead in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska.

Footage of which 2005 Atlantic hurricane in An Inconvenient Truth did one meteorologist call unnecessary?

Katrina images drew criticism because the link between hurricanes and warming was then contested science. Gore cited five recent studies to support his view.

Which international honour did Al Gore share in 2007 with a UN climate science panel, after An Inconvenient Truth?

Nobel Peace Prize judges split the award in two equal parts, citing efforts to build up and spread knowledge about man-made climate change.

In an animated fable in An Inconvenient Truth, which animal sits in slowly heating water without sensing the danger?

Frog in a pot is an old parable about ignoring gradual threats, and the film softens it. Its animal is rescued before it comes to harm.

A New York town hall tied to which disaster movie's premiere set An Inconvenient Truth in motion?

The Day After Tomorrow prompted a panel on global warming, where a producer watched a short version of Gore's talk and resolved to show it to everyone she knew.

Which US president, asked if he would watch An Inconvenient Truth, said he doubted it and praised new technologies?

George W. Bush, who had beaten Gore in the 2000 election, said the focus should be on technology rather than on whether people or nature caused greenhouse gases.

Which rock singer wrote the end-credits theme for An Inconvenient Truth after watching Al Gore's slide show?

Melissa Etheridge won the Best Original Song Oscar for the track, the first time a documentary had ever taken that award.

Which mountain's vanishing snows does Al Gore show in before-and-after photographs in An Inconvenient Truth?

Kilimanjaro later became one of nine points a judge queried, finding it could not be established that its retreating snows were mainly down to human-induced warming.

At which American film festival did An Inconvenient Truth premiere in 2006, earning three standing ovations?

Sundance launched the film months before its cinema run began on just four screens, where it set a per-theatre record for a documentary.

In which US state is the Gore family farm near Carthage that Al Gore revisits in An Inconvenient Truth?

Tennessee is where Gore spent boyhood summers working the family farm. The film's director shot those scenes himself on grainy 8mm film.

In An Inconvenient Truth, meltwater from which island's ice sheet could halt the currents that warm northern Europe?

Greenland meltwater is less salty than seawater, which is why the film warns it could stall the circulation and bring sudden local cooling.

Ice cores drilled in which frozen region give Al Gore the 650,000-year carbon dioxide record in An Inconvenient Truth?

Antarctica yielded the cores through a European drilling project, and they showed carbon dioxide higher than at any time in that span.

Which film critic said An Inconvenient Truth was the first film he ever told readers they owed it to themselves to see?

Roger Ebert wrote it after 39 years of reviewing, and he and Richard Roeper gave the documentary two thumbs up on their television show.

Which 1997 treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions did Al Gore help broker, years before An Inconvenient Truth?

Kyoto Protocol backing was a Gore cause as vice president, but the US never ratified it after the Senate voted 95 to 0 against such a treaty.

At which university did Al Gore take the climate class that An Inconvenient Truth credits with sparking his concern?

Harvard is where Gore, in his senior year, studied under an oceanographer who was among the first to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The 2017 follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth builds toward the signing of which international climate accord?

Paris Agreement talks give the sequel its climax, and the filmmakers said they would re-edit it before release after the United States announced its withdrawal.

Which relative's death from lung cancer does Al Gore link to the family tobacco crop in An Inconvenient Truth?

His sister Nancy died of lung cancer in 1984, and tobacco was a Gore family crop. Gore tells the story to show how slowly people act on a known danger.

Which Bruce Springsteen album shared its name with a title the makers of An Inconvenient Truth nearly chose?

The Rising appealed for its layered meaning, climbing seas and people standing up, and Gore even wondered about phoning Springsteen.

Which 2007 worldwide benefit concerts did producer Kevin Wall conceive after An Inconvenient Truth inspired him?

Live Earth put more than 150 acts on stages in eleven locations on a single July day, with Gore as a partner in the venture.

Which photograph taken from lunar orbit by Apollo 8's William Anders does Al Gore show early in An Inconvenient Truth?

Earthrise was taken on Christmas Eve 1968, and Gore says such images changed how people see the planet and helped spark modern environmentalism.

Jeff Skoll, who helped finance An Inconvenient Truth, was the first president of which internet company?

eBay made Skoll a billionaire, and his media company Participant co-financed the documentary and bought carbon offsets for its production.

NASA's James Hansen said An Inconvenient Truth might do for global warming what which 1962 book did for pesticides?

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's study of DDT, led to a nationwide ban on the chemical in farming. Hansen predicted Gore would be attacked for his film too.

What nearly killed Al Gore's six-year-old son in 1989, an event Gore recounts in An Inconvenient Truth?

A car accident threw Albert 30 feet as the family left a baseball game. Gore counts the ordeal among the events that sharpened his concern for the future.

Al Gore's slide show in An Inconvenient Truth ran on which presentation software also used by Steve Jobs?

Keynote was the first choice of the design firm Gore hired in 2004 to condense his talk and add video and animation.

The audiobook of An Inconvenient Truth, read by Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood, won which honour?

A Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album went to the recording in 2009, a music-industry trophy to set beside the film's two Oscars.

In which country did a High Court judge rule that schools showing An Inconvenient Truth must explain nine points?

England had copies sent to every secondary school. The judge called the film broadly accurate but said nine of its claims needed context for pupils.

Which 1992 bestseller on the environment did Al Gore write, fourteen years before An Inconvenient Truth?

Earth in the Balance was the first book by a sitting US senator to make the New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.

On which Hawaiian volcano stands the observatory whose carbon dioxide record Al Gore charts in An Inconvenient Truth?

Mauna Loa Observatory sits about 3,400 metres up the volcano's northern flank and has logged the gas continuously since 1958.

Which filmmaker, once a director on HBO's Deadwood, directed An Inconvenient Truth after first doubting the idea?

Davis Guggenheim was sceptical until he watched the talk for himself, then left convinced that global warming was the most important issue of all.

Which carbon dioxide graph, named after the scientist who began it in 1958, appears in An Inconvenient Truth?

Keeling Curve readings wobble by about 6 parts per million each year, as Northern Hemisphere plants absorb the gas in summer and release it in winter.

The theme song of An Inconvenient Truth won its Oscar against three nominated songs from which 2006 musical film?

Dreamgirls supplied three of the five nominees, yet the documentary's anthem won. The remaining nominee came from Pixar's Cars.

Which producer of An Inconvenient Truth was already known for Quentin Tarantino films such as Pulp Fiction?

Lawrence Bender commissioned a 70-foot digital screen for the lecture and pushed for a personal way into the story through long interviews with Gore.

An opera based on An Inconvenient Truth, titled CO2, premiered in 2015 at which famous Italian opera house?

La Scala staged Giorgio Battistelli's opera in Milan, and early plans made Gore himself one of its characters.

Which African lake, once among the world's largest, does An Inconvenient Truth show shrinking dramatically?

Chad is the lake a NASA study examined in 2001, concluding that irrigation demands as well as climate change were draining it.

When Al Gore first gave the climate talk behind An Inconvenient Truth in 1989, which low-tech visual aid did he use?

Flip charts carried the earliest version. By the time of filming, Gore reckoned he had given the talk more than a thousand times.

Which science historian's survey of 928 peer-reviewed climate papers does Al Gore cite in An Inconvenient Truth?

Naomi Oreskes found that none of the papers directly dissented from the view that humans are changing the climate, a result published in the journal Science.

Which Australian prime minister refused to meet Al Gore when he visited Sydney to promote An Inconvenient Truth?

John Howard said he did not take policy advice from films. His successor ratified the main climate treaty in his first week in office.

Which studio label released An Inconvenient Truth and pledged five percent of its US takings to a climate group?

Paramount Classics committed that share to the newly formed Alliance for Climate Protection, and Gore pledged his own profits to the same campaign.