Former Vice President Al Gore has become a star of the stage and screen in recent years with his Keynote presentation and movie An Inconvenient Truth. Now following in the path The Producers and The Lion King, the tale is being blended with music in An Inconvenient Truth: The Opera. Thanks to our friends at Australian TV show The Mansion, we can now get a sneak peak at this remarkable new production. From the preview, it appears that in preparing the original stage show, Mr. Gore encountered the inconvenient truth of Microsoft Office's Mr. Clippy before making the switch to Keynote. If tenor polar bears singing about loosing their families on melting ice can't pull tears from you, you clearly have no heart. Check out the video after the jump.

Al Gore had the opportunity to address the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference again and he gave them a slide show which was recorded that we can now bring to you. This one differed from "An Inconvenient Truth" somewhat. Sure, there were images showing the awesome amount of changes happening on our planet but, with a confident and highly optimistic tone, there were also some solutions presented beyond changing light bulbs and driving a hybrid. Concentrating solar renewable energy plants in developing nations to supply Europe with power was one interesting example.

Al's performance was exceptional and even more than that, with statements like, "How many generations in all of human history have had the opportunity to rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts?", very inspirational. We think the twenty-seven minutes spent watching this video (after the jump) may well be your best spent time all day.

I'm sure that by now, all of us are familiar with Al Gore and his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth". You probably also know that automakers, scientists and politicians are busy in Washington making decisions on what steps, if any, to take to combat global warming and the greenhouse gases that are emitted from our exhaust pipes, factories and the like. While reading over some of the statements and testimony in the hearings, something really caught my eye. According to Ralph Hall, a Republican from Texas, the suggested cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases amount to an "all-out assault on all forms of fossil fuels" that could eliminate jobs and hurt the economy. That sounds pretty serious, and I was wondering if any of our readers would like to comment on that. I have some opinions of my own, and perhaps I will write an editorial about it in the next few days if you readers are interested. Let me know, and let us all know what you personally think.

[Source: The New York Times]

The National Science Teachers Association was offered 50,000 free copies of the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth for classroom use. The group however decided to decline the offer because they didn't want to upset Exxon\Mobil. The oil company is a major financial supporter of the organization and decided it wasn't worth the risk of upsetting a contributor. The NSTA said they didn't want to offer any political endorsement of the film and saw little benefit to the group or it's members in accepting the DVDs. In their rejection letter to producer Laurie David, they said that accepting the DVDs would place, "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters is the ExxonMobil Corp." Clearly, the group cares more about keeping the flow of oil money going than they do in providing kids exposure to a viewpoint contrary to that of the oil companies.

[Source: BoingBoing]

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" advanced to the next round of Oscar consideration, but "Who Killed the Electric Car?" was left at the charging station. Just over 80 movies qualified for the Documentary Feature category and 15 moved on to the next round. Members of the Documentary Branch will select five nominees from the shortlist, and one will eventually win the Academy Award. The Iraq war apparently touched a nerve with the judges as other well-reviewed documentaries such as "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" and "Sketches of Frank Gehry" failed to make the cut.

[Source: Mark Olsen, LA Times]

In case you just happened by AutoblogGreen, but don’t really know much about green automobile technology and are curious about why people are so concerned about making their cars run cleaner, here’s a movie trailer worth watching. The film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, appears to be a dramatic documentary detailing the causes and effects of global warming. The film stars Al Gore, who says in the trailer that he “used to be the next President of the United States.”
I’m not one to usually accept fear-mongering or cries of the sky is falling, but last year’s insane hurricane season and the continued shrinking of the Artic ice tells me that our planet is going through some changes. Just look at the shots in the trailer of the glacier from 70 years ago and then today and tell me global warming is just hype. We may not be able to stop climate change when we use green car technology, but we can do a little to slow it down because we’re not participating as regularly in the rush to output greenhouse gasses.