An Inconvenient Truth focuses on Al Gore and his travels in support of his efforts to educate the

public about the severity of the climate crisis. Gore says, "I've been trying to tell this story for a long
time and I feel as if I've failed to get the message across.” The film documents a Keynote
presentation (dubbed the slide show) that Gore has presented throughout the world. It intersperses
Gore's exploration of data and predictions regarding climate change and its potential for disaster with
his own life story.

The former vice president opens the film by greeting an audience with a joke: "I am Al Gore; I used
to be the next President of the United States." Gore then begins his slide show on climate change; a
comprehensive presentation replete with detailed graphs, flow charts and stark visuals. Gore shows
off several majestic photographs of the Earth taken from multiple space missions, Earthrise and The
Blue Marble. Gore notes that these photos dramatically transformed the way we see the Earth,
helping spark modern environmentalism.

Here is Gore’s text that is superimposed on the photograph of Earth Rise—the earth rising over the
horizontal lunar horizon.

• This is the first picture most of us ever saw of the earth from space. It was taken on
Christmas Eve, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission, the first of the Apollo missions
that left the confines of near-Earth orbit and circled the Moon scouting for landing sites
before Apollo 11 touched down the following summer.
• The vessel went around the far side of the Moon and lost radio contact, as expected.
Inevitably, even though everyone understood the reason for the protracted silence, it
was a time of great suspense. Then, as radio contact was reestablished, the crew looked
up and saw this spectacular sight.
• While the crew watched the Earth emerging from the dark void of space, the mission
commander, Frank Borman, read from the book of Genesis: “In the beginning God
created the Heavens and the Earth.”

Here is how Gore directs the scene:

• This is the last picture of our planet taken by a human being from space. It was taken in
December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission—the last Apollo mission—from a point
halfway between the Earth and the Moon.
• What makes this image so extraordinary is that it’s the only photo that we have of the Earth
from space taken when the Sun was directly behind the spacecraft.
• Just as eclipses of the Sun occur only on those rare occasions when the Earth and the Sun and
the Moon are positioned along a straight line, this was the only time during the four-year
series of Apollo missions when the sun was lined up almost directly behind the Moon while
the spacecraft was making its journey. So the Earth, instead of being partly shrouded in
darkness, appears fully illuminated.
• For this reason, this image has become the most commonly published photograph in all of
history. No other image comes close. In fact, 99 times out of 100, when you see a picture of
Earth, this is the picture you are seeing.
Since when is this “the last picture of our planet taken by a human being from space”? Hundreds of
people that have gone into space since the last Apollo mission, including 6 more that are scheduled
to leave on the next Shuttle mission in a few weeks. Between them, they have taken thousands of
photos. And what about Gore’s contention that “What makes this image so extraordinary is that it’s
the only photo that we have of the Earth from space taken when the Sun was directly behind the
spacecraft.” The only one? For another, taken 5 years earlier from NASA satellite ATS-III, see here.
And for one taken less than 1 hour ago, go here. If it is not full illuminated, just wait until about 3pm
EST and refresh the page—these full-disk GOES images are taken every hour and have been
produced for more than 30