Hurricane Katrina was a walk on the beach, in The World According To Al Gore.

Within our lifetime, cartographers will redraw the maps of the world erasing large chunks of Manhattan, the Florida Peninsula and the San Francisco Bay Area along with miles of coastal real estate world wide.

Seaside homes and other shelter miles inland will vanish beneath oceans rising 20 feet or more.

Precursors to this global calamity -- America's worst hurricane season on record, shrinking glaciers, increasing drought and the spread of disease-carrying insects -- already make the Four Horses of the Apocalypse look like a pony ride.

Global warming has upset Earth's climate-based ecosystem and if you aren't shaking in your boots hard enough to rattle the roof rafters by now, you should be.

The planet is in a state of emergency.

Left to run its course, global warming will spawn a historic exodus of as many as 100 million people fleeing coastlines and weathered regions worldwide looking for safety and shelter when there will be little available.

The evidence is clear.

The suspense is killing.

We've got less than 50 years to clean up our act.

"An Inconvenient Truth", now in movie theaters and bookstores everywhere, is a steeped-in-science-based documentary (Paramount Classics) and an eye-popping treatise (Rodale Books, $24.95) hosted and written by former Vice President, and "former next president of the United States," Al Gore.

He didn't invent the Internet, but he just might save the planet.

The documentary follows Gore on his "traveling global warming show," taking the message to small groups, individuals and nations around the globe, to hammer home facts we know are true but don't want to believe.

With the cadence of a well-trained forward army, the documentary marches out undeniable, overpowering evidence to lay waste to misconceptions and myth. Gore's narration and on screen appearance adds a passionate, inspirational spin to his personal crusade to halt global warming in its tracks.

Planetary warming is a good thing, within reason.

Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere to keep Mother Earth loving and habitable.

However, by burning too much fossil fuel -- coal, gas and oil -- and by clearing forests, humans are trashing the planet, triggering unhealthy levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere and turning up the global thermostat.

America, among developed nations, is among the worst culprits. The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it's already happening and it is not just a natural occurrence that will pass.

In fact, damage already done is largely irreversible. Glaciers don't refreeze. Oceans don't drain. Technology is available to turn down the heat, but it can't turn back the clock.

The documentary says global warming examples are everywhere.

• Skin cancer is on the rise.

• The record 2005 hurricane season was global warming generated.

• The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.

• The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade, warming the ocean and leaving them ripe for storm forming.

• Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level because retreating snow cover allows mosquitoes to fly higher.

• It's not just the Polar Bears, but another 278 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, by moving closer to the poles.

Putting the brakes on still greater harm to Planet Home is possible.

The problem is removing the political football-status and giving it moral status -- we have a responsibility to save the universe's only known home that can sustain us.

Global warming deserves as much, if not more, attention than terrorism, economic prosperity and other front-burner issues in the world.

Just as certain as the next hurricane season, global warming is a disaster of epic proportions preparing to happen.

Without action consequences include:

• Deaths from global warming will double in 25 years, to 300,000 people a year.

• Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of the heat reflective shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica.

• The Arctic Ocean, that's the North Pole, could be ice free by 2050. No more Santa Claus.

• Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.

• Droughts and wildfires will become more and more common.

• More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.

Anyone who calls Earth home has a moral obligation to help save it.

What can you do?

Make a pledge to see Al Gore's documentary.

After witnessing the horror, but before settling on defeat, step back and make a choice.

Take action.

Published: June 6, 2006

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.