An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming: Teen Edition

by Al Gore

Children's Literature

This book is a young person's version of an adult book that accompanied a documentary by the same name in 2006.

Former Vice President Al Gore's New York Times #1 bestselling book is a daring call to action, exposing the shocking reality of how humankind has aided in the destruction of our planet and the future we face if we do not take action to stop global warming. Now, Viking has adapted this book for the most important audience of all: today's youth, who have no choice but to confront this climate crisis head-on.

Dramatic full-color photos, illustrations, and graphs combine with Gore's effective and clear writing to explain global warming in very real terms: what it is, what causes it, and what will happen if we continue to ignore it. An Inconvenient Truth will change the way young people understand global warming and hopefully inspire them to help change the course of history.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Environment, Climate Change, Ecology, Audiobook, 21st Century

192 pages, Hardcover

First published April 10, 2007

About the author

Albert Gore, Junior, known as Al, served earlier as a United States senator from Tennessee from 1985 to 1993 and as vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under William Jefferson Clinton and shared the Nobel Prize of 2007 for peace for his efforts to raise awareness about global warming.

This forty-fifth vice president also served in the House of Representatives of the United States from 1977 to 1985. Gore, the Democratic nominee for president in the election of 2000, ultimately lost to the Republican candidate George Walker Bush in spite of winning the popular vote. The Supreme Court eventually settled a legal controversy over the election recount of Florida in favor of Bush.

People awarded this prominent environmental activist together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

He also starred in the Academy Award–winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, on the topic of global warming. Gore helped to organize the Live Earth benefit concert for global warming on 7 July 2007.

Gore is currently chairman of the Emmy Award–winning American television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., an unofficial advisor to Google's senior management, chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection, and a partner in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, heading that firm's climate change solutions group.

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty sure that Al Gore's books are on a 'soon-to-be-banned' list in a drawer somewhere in 37v2's malfeasant gumment:

Climate scientists preempt possible suppression from White House

Read all you can before this happens.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for young people about the urgent problem of global warming. Educating them about this crisis is critical going forward.

[Phuongpham · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Inconvenient Truth: the Crisis of Global Warming by Al Gore
Pg 1 to Pg 187
Question 10:
As i read today, many things supprised me that our global is threatened very seriously. I really supprised by how much Co2 you are emitting each year. We release CO2 in the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels_oil, natureal gas, and coal used in cars, homes, factories, and power plants. Also the book talks about the rainstorms in India, the droughts in Asia and America. It is so dangerous for our Earth. After i read the book i feel very up set and worry. i think that the Earth is belong to human so we need to protect. The climate crisis is seem to be happening slowly but it is actually happening very quickly.
Question 14:
the Author wrote this book becase he wanted each person need to realize that we have to have a responsibility with our Earth by doing something to protect. we are human, we have the Knowledge and ability to solve this crisis. We need to out a stop to global warming. i know that the author is really love and really care about the Earth. to write the book, i think he did a lot of researches and interview people to get ideas. he did very hard for this book. the message that he is tryng to share us are we need to learn and read a lot to get knowledge. from that we will know how to protect our Earth with our knowledge.

[Colin Price · Rating 2 out of 5]

An accessible text for younger readers, relying far more on pictures and text feature than actual words (cumbersome words, who needs them anyway). I'm sure for anyone who has been living in a cave and doesn't know even the basics of the climate crisis, this would be an okay primer, but it stops short of having any real teeth to motivate change ("Okay Mr. Gore, I won't stand with the refrigerator door open so I can conserve energy. Now let me get back to listening to my iPod while playing Xbox Live."). Overall, there are probably better ways to engage teens in the fight against climate change (and, you know, that pesky human extinction thing).

[Kristi Krumnow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read. Lots of pictures and large, big-ass, full-page maps and graphs of years and decades of flooding, storms, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, rises in temperatures, heat fires, and volcanic eruptions. This is Gore's book edited for young people. I'm convinced by his thesis.

Thank you, Al. Your claim was not the most popular post-Clinton. But you were right all along. I'm sorry that you were met with negativity. I voted for you.

[Marie Ash-Evans · Rating 1 out of 5]

An very unscientific 'scientific' book! I only recommend this book as an exercise in wish-fulfillment! A wish to be a scientist can be fulfilled without the discipline of a scientific education or experience if you have enough money. I think he wrote his 'facts' they way he wished them to be and certainly in no way proved his thesis.

[Karly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting and eye-opening read. Especially since it was published in 2006 and Al Gore makes many (scary) predictions for the next 10-15 years...which is now. I’d like to read a follow up to this book to see where we landed with those predictions. Thankfully the last chapter was dedicated to how was can act on climate change and make changes in our lives to help save the planet.

[Julie Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up during speed dating with a book event that I was running with eighth graders. All of the kids were reading silently so I started reading this one and wanted to bring it home. I’ve never seen the documentary or read the adult version of this book, and it seems like something I should definitely have read. I do know about it…


I would give the straightforward,, concise and effective explanation of Global Warming Five stars if it weren’t so old. I would love an updated version!

[Shilo Quetchenbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredibly well-written and impactful book for young people. Kiddo (4th grade) really enjoyed it. It conveys a lot of information clearly and concisely, a difficult thing to do. It also uses photographs taken over time and many different kinds of graphs to underscore the point that human-caused climate change is real and happening right now. I appreciated that it wasn't entirely doom and gloom, however, and offered several things that can be done to help.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book had lots of information on the level that kids could understand. Not much else to say about it though. It only had a few pages devoted to talking about what we should do to fix the problems. It was published in 2006 and the information was up to 2005. There should be an updated version since it's now 2019.

[Rafael Botelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um bom livro para para os mais jovens perceberem este urgente problema (já o era em 2006).

[Kyra Conroy · Rating 1 out of 5]

maybe it’s just dated but this was so elementary, had no through line, and also misassigns blame to individuals ?

[Clifford · Rating 1 out of 5]

A typical book written by a politician. Gore does not refute opposing opinions to his claims, but instead portrays them as misguided or bought and paid for by big oil. If this is the best argument that those who support anthropogenic climate change, then it is no wonder that people are starting to jump ship and abandon the religious fervor of man-made global warming. To support such a theory, you must embrace the detractors and demonstrate with evidence why their argument is wrong. Gore presents his claims and uses typical political rhetoric to support them instead of refuting them with solid facts. He does nothing to separate a natural global climate change from human influenced climate change and jumps to all climate change must be man-caused. Overall, he lacks a strong supporting argument to support his claim and uses anecdotal evidence. As of this date, many of the predicted results of global warming he claims will be evident are not even close to reality.

[Hyunwoo Oh · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Inconvenient Truth Review

Before I read this book, I have learned about global warming and climate crisis from many different documentaries, lessons and visiting places like museums. Hence global warming and climate crisis have been an inconvenient truth inside my mind even before I read this book. However, I was convinced that I can contribute nothing to really stop the crisis. Moreover I have never thought about the crisis deeply - except the day (and sometimes the next day) after I leaned about some shocking news or crisis related to global warming.

When I first saw this book cover upon receiving the book, I thought it was just a normal book which contains numerous facts about global warming and explaining the dangers of its aftermath. Hence I thought I would not learn many things from this book because I had made a quick assumption that I had already learned many important facts and background information related to global warming.

Consequently the book was not entirely what I thought it would be. It contained numerous valuable facts but they were not merely about global warming but about the beauty of the Earth and about the people and animals which are in danger and endanger because of global warming and climate crisis. Nevertheless this makes me wonder about how things will get worse from this present moment if the negative effects of global warming continues. I have always known about the urgency af this crisis and now I believe I have learned more truthfulness on all of the possible future threats from this book.

As for me, the most shocking chapter of the book was the chapter about the Larsen-B ice shelf and the chapter about the naysayers and the denial of global warming. Even though I already knew about global warming was melting the sea ice, a 700feet×30mile×150mile ice shelf just gone in a few months was still very shocking to me. In addition, how some people encourage other peope to deny about global warming and claiming that it is a natural phenomenon was also very surprising too.

Last but not least, I have learned not only about climate crisis but also the beauties of the planet Earth from this book - it motivates me to contribute back to improving nurtureing, and protecting our precious environment.

[Ellen Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Inconvenient Truth Book Review

There is an old saying that goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. By the time I finished reading this book, I was very passionate interested and had a strong opinion to solve this horrible happening as I cannot believe it. The climate challenge is a huge challenge that we had to face. Our earth is constantly changing because of humans’ irresponsibility in protecting it from harm.

Before I go to sleep I used to ask my mother these kinds of questions.“Mom, when our earth loses its balance what will happen?” However, she always replied by “Let's talk about it later.” Thankfully, this book solved my question as I mostly know the basic causes of climate change. Thus, I ventured into the introduction with great confidence. “OH MY GOD!'' When I reached in chapter 3, it flipped my mind. There were many reasons that made my mouth open. Firstly, the book showed a variety of maps and pictures. According to Al Gore from pages 36 to 37, he showed the phenomenon of majestic mountains that were covered with snow and magnificent glaciers, and in sharp contrast, there were also many recent pictures. They were all gone. What a destructive disaster! I hope I was just reading “fake news” but it wasn’t as I can feel an intangible air of sadness about it. What is more, I would like to talk about the author Al Gore, he was an American politician and environmentalist. He served as the 45th Vice President from 1993 to 2001. The most interesting fact of him was sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I watched some of his speeches, for example, the UN climate change opening speech. He is an incredible author and an amazing speaker at the same time. I would like to give his performance of delivery give it 5 out of 5 because it has not made me feeling bored or ignite my attention in wander.

To summarize, I would consider this book as a very essential book for students or educators. While reading the book, all the surreal sadness of all the pictures, photos and graphs made me feel guilty. In particular, chapter 15 showed two meanings of the crisis in China. It indicated that a crisis can be an opportunity. Do we still have a chance to resolve our disaster? Sadly, I am still wondering.

[Sally Ahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In June 2017, U.S. President Trump announced his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement signed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Many countries have criticized the decision, which America had high range in greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is a person in the U.S. who tried to push the Paris Agreement--Al Gore, the author of this book.

Al Gore served as the 45th vice president of the United States and has been active as an environmental activist, focusing on global warming since his retirement. In 2007, he also won the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to resolving the global warming issue. (Source from Wikipedia)

Al Gore is talking about global warming based on his own experiences and scientific Evidence. The photos show the problems caused by global warming all over the world. Later, I read that there were many photos taken by the photographer, but also many of them were taken by Al Gore himself. It must have been very hard to travel all over the world to take all the photos. Actually, I wasn't really interested in environmental issues. I just tried to save water, don't use lot of shampoo, recycle well, and turn off the lights when I’m not using. I know everyone can do this, and this may help the earth. But after seeing the missing glaciers in the Swiss mountains and the melting Arctic ice made me feel sorry for this. I’m living in the earth but if I’m not helping the earth, I think it is not the right thing to do.

Al Gore said people think ‘not thinking’ is the easiest thing. It is more dangerous because people does not take the global warming issue seriously. For an example, when a frog is put in a hot boiling water, it jumps out immediately, but if the temperature gets slowly higher, the frog recognizes the danger after the water boils, but eventually it dies. I thought people could think more wisely than a frog, but people seemed to be a bit obtuse. And because I didn't know about global warming, I felt sorry to the earth.

I really enjoyed reading this book, and I would like to recommend this book to people living on earth, especially students, who will live in the earth in the future.

[Celine Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first saw this book, I thought that this book would be slightly boring, because it is about science. But soon after I started to read this book, I realized that l was wrong. Even though there were some sections of the book were somewhat difficult to understand, it was interesting and impressive overall.

Especially When it comes to raising the issue the changes of the glaciers between the past and the present with photos was impressive, it led me to ponder more seriously on various environmental issues surrounding global warming.

What is more l enjoy reading what the author stated in the introduction and the last chapter of this book that “crisis” in Chinese is made up of two words, the first word means “danger,” but the second character means “opportunity.” since this Chinese expression signifies, there is still hope that we can stop this massive disaster.

All things considered,I have learned many valuable information on global warming from this book. Most specifically, when it comes to the damages due to global warming, like the increase of ocean temperature causing strong hurricanes and global warming spreads disease carrying species, I finally realized these damages are getting more serious.

Overall speaking, this book had a huge impact on me as I am afraid about facing the horrendous consequences resulted from global warming. Since considering that this book was written in 2005 and it has already described many damages of global warming, l cannot even fathom how much those damages became worse in present days. Also it led me decide to try my best to stop global warming.

In the end, global warming is getting worse, so I believe people all around the world should read this book as this will help them realize how serious global warming is.

[Hanzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the world temperature rise, glaciers will melt and the world sea level will rise. If Greenland melt or break, the world sea level will rise 18~20 feet (550~600 centimeters). Then Amsterdam, Tokyo, New York, and Florida will vanish and Korea will also face danger. But this can be true in the future, according to Al Gore’s information.

Al Gore gave many information about global warming. I enjoyed this book because it was an easy read with many pictures, although it seemed like a powerpoint presentation. Especially, photographs were great. The photographs help understand global warming easily. Al Gore explains a lot about “before and after”. He shows photographs of glaciers in the past, covered with snow. Then he shows the same place today. And I was shocked looking at the photo of a glacier which melted and became a giant icicle. These photographs were very effective.

But I think there should be more solutions. There are many things what governments and companies can do. But there are not many things we can do easily in our daily life. The information about the solutions should be specific, like the information about dangers of global warming.

Overall, an easy read. Four stars.

[Julia lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Today, our mother earth is getting hotter and hotter. Natural disasters like hurricanes,tornadoes and droughts injured massive amount of people. In Arctic, animals have lost their place of life because of the global warming. Al Gore, who is the author of this book "An Inconvenient Truth" is making great amount of effort for people to be alert about climate changing.

After I read the book and saw the documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," I was deeply impressed in the men's courage to indicate the problem that most of s did not think about. At That time when he wrote this book in 2005, we did not know that global warming is happening and we're polluting the nature. However, he discovered the problem and try to make us know that it is really a serious problem and it needs to be fixed urgently.

The scientific facts which support his opinion and the clear illustrations help me to understand his explanation of the impact of global warming with crystal-clear level of clarity. The photographs comparing glaciers now and before make me ponder about the seriousness of the global warming.

If you have curiosity in the global warming, I recommend you to read it and get more in-depth knowledge about the global natural phenomenon.

[Bryson Hough · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book by Al Gore, it explains global warming. It explains how it began and ways we can stop it. This book does a good job of figuring out why we have major problems with our atmosphere. While he explains the problems he in geniusly explains ways that we can stop or slow down the production of greenhouse gasses. As he explains the ways he also explains how he learned to make it different and more able to relate and make your experiences with it.

I think that the person that would like this book is either someone who is trying to understand what Global warming is and how it started or people who are even very deep into the subject already. I believe this because as the book goes on it brings up some very good points that no one would have thought about while reading about this topic. Overall this is a good book for someone who doesn't want to learn through the textbook but someone who wants to learn from a certain viewpoint.

[SEAL · Rating 4 out of 5]

If we say that I erased the part of the front page that said ' the crisis of global warming ' , can you guess what the inconvenient truth mean? I couldn't guess with out the subtitle. After reading this book, I got to think about global warming more. But before reading this book, I still thought about global warming but it was not much as now. I think I know why this book is so popular and this book taught me and now I know that global warming is very serious and dangerous. Also, My mom says this book is also good and the reason is it has graphs (Not just any graphs. Scientific detailed graphs). So my mom says this book shows us how graphs used for and how it is important to me. This book includes details and it talks about his story. I enjoyed reading this book and once again this book taught me well. Sometimes it was hard to understand but I understood the basics he talks about. So I gave this book four stars.

[Steve Kingsbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Living in 2022 it is interesting to read what former Vice President Al Gore wrote in 2005 regarding global warming. He and the scientific community were and continue to be absolutely correct, we are at a crossroad were we must act responsibly. Simply glancing through this book a potential reader could arrive at an inaccurate conclusion regarding the depth of knowledge presented. The reality is that this book concisely presents the facts at a high level of understanding so that the reader can easily see the cause and effect of man on our environment.

In 2005 Mr Gore didn't provide much in the way of solutions, a lot has changed in the past nearly two decades. Now there are many solutions that have been developed and a number have been successfully implemented. We have a long way to go still and not a lot of time to succeed in saving our planet.

[Meredith Ritchie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this book on my high school's shelf while doing inventory and I am impressed by how approachable it is! It is written for kids/teens. The text is minimal; there are lots of charts and pictures. He references many outside resources. Although I had a basic understanding of climate change (and yes, I did already believe in climate change before reading the book), this books clarified some questions. It is a quick read- I could have probably read it in just a couple hours. Overall, I would recommend!

[Claire Cho · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting(and some part shocking) how the Earth changed since the start of human history. It made me look in a different view after reading this book - how much we're in trouble than we think of, and how we're not taking care of our own planet, where we live on, and where we rely on. I wish many people notice the crisis of the Global Warming we're making, and act different for our future.

[Suthakhar Ponnambalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a starter for anyone looking to understand how global warming has impacted us and continue to do so. It is written in a simple language that even kids can understand. It also has a lot of images that can give a visual representation of the effects of global warming. The only downside I would say is there is a lack of text. But that does not bring down the message it tries to convey. CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL AND ITS HAPPENING NOW.

[Lisa DB · Rating 3 out of 5]

È una lettura molto interessante, che tratta cause e conseguenze del surriscaldamento globale con numerose immagini e semplici grafici a supporto, citando inoltre diversi avvenimenti accaduti nel corso dell'ultimo secolo. Bisogna comunque tener conto che si tratta di una lettura per ragazzi, e quindi affronta questi argomenti in modo molto superficiale. In questo senso la consiglio se si vuole avere un'infarinatura generale sul tema.

[Gatto · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very accessible version of Al Gore's writing on climate change. The pictures and diagrams are vibrant. The information is bite size and never more than half a page at a time. It is easily digestible.

This can be useful for a classroom for research. Students can use it to start discussions about responsibility. What should be done? Should we consider anyone/everyone responsible?

[Chris Meads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is geared more for the younger people but it tells a concise and truthful reality of global warming. It is easy to read and the chapters are short. It does show what the US and the rest of other world is and is not doing to prevent any more damage to global warming. It is real and we all need to do something about it.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this in light of the upcoming COP26 after spotting it on a shelf. It is fine, and definitely suitable for a younger audience, but a little on the basic side and I didn't learn anything new from reading it.
Still, a worthwhile reminder that the effects of climate change are many, varied and often impact the poorest most.

[Connie T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written overview of the global warming crisis. As others have mentioned this is not a text-heavy tome but I feel that works to the book's advantage. An abundance of photos, graphs, and diagrams, along with brief explanations, bring home the scary message that climate change is real.