Methodical and passionate big screen adaptation of “the slide show” presentation Al Gore has given with his Mac in auditoriums and conference rooms six years running addresses the issue of global warming; what it is, what it’s doing to the planet, what will happen if man continues to ignore it, and finally, what the average citizen can do about it.

Prolific TV director Davis Guggenheim begins this documentary on Gore’s family farm in Tennessee - where the former vice president and senator first learned about conservation. The film balances Gore’s personal journey over the years - including the near death of his 6-year-old son - with the broader story about the fate of the planet, told with charts and photographs and recreated on a sound stage in front of an audience.

Standing in front of a 45-foot screen and employing dynamic three dimensional imagery, as well as moments of brevity, Gore vividly demonstrates how data gathered from Antarctic ice cores show carbon dioxide to be at its highest levels in 650,000 years, how this is a result of man made pollution, and how elevated CO2 levels directly correlate to a rise in temperature.

On the warmer planet we now reside on, more glaciers are melting and more lakes are evaporating, threatening the water supplies of millions in the Third World. A melting of the polar ice caps not only endangers wild life, but could lead to a rise in ocean levels along the coasts of the world, endangering stretches of Florida, Holland, Hong Kong and Manhattan to be swallowed by the sea.

An Inconvenient Truth documents how warmer weather has proliferated the bark beetle, which has devoured entire forests. Warmer waters feed stronger hurricanes, and during the production of the film, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita tore across the Gulf of Mexico, destroying New Orleans and giving a preview of what storm seasons on a warmer earth might look like.

The ten hottest years on the books have all occurred in the last 14 years. There’s no precedent for any of this. It’s not part of a natural cycle. Nor is it presented as Al Gore’s opinion, or the beliefs of a political party, but instead, a near consensus of the world’s environmental scientists. Suggestions for the average citizen include switching to higher mileage or hybrid cars, while governments must act to reduce emissions of CO2.

Gore has said he’s given this presentation a thousand times, and both his conviction and storytelling ability are really something to marvel here. I put this on at midnight and was just pulled right in. And I hate lectures, especially scientific lectures. But unlike the calculation many of us recall from Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign, there’s not a false emotional note, or a moment where the facts and figures get ahead of the audience.

Though Gore makes no secret that the administration of his “opponent” does not share the views of the world’s environmental scientists, An Inconvenient Truth is not going after anyone. It’s not Fahrenheit 9/11. I enjoyed how it balances the audience presentation with images of Gore moving through airports and hotels talking about why he continues this mission, when most retired politicians go on the lecture circuit and get rich.

I hesitate to place this into the concert film category - though Guggenheim was influenced by The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s concert film on The Band - because to say the film is performance does it an injustice. There’s simply no way you can walk away from this thinking the risks of doing something about global warming - even if you’re convinced it’s just “theory” - outweigh ignoring the possibility any longer.