Former Vice President Al Gore is expanding his global climate change message beyond the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by training 1,000 lecturers to carry the message across the nation.

The training is going on now. Five Hawai'i residents have already taken it and are available to speak to community groups statewide.

The first Hawai'i graduate of the three-day training program, which is overseen by Gore personally, was local professor Stuart Scott, who teaches math, statistics and critical thinking at TransPacific Hawai'i College and markets solar equipment.

"We were selected from amongst tens of thousands of applicants worldwide to take this training. It is both an honor, and a serious commitment and responsibility. We paid our own flights and hotels," Scott said. The training took place in Nashville, Tenn.

He said the other graduates are Sierra Club director Jeff Mikulina, Nadine Newlight of Maui, University of Hawai'i professor Josh Cooper and Ko'olau News publisher Shannon Wood.

"We are the 'Paul Reveres' here in the Islands for a crisis which is beginning to make itself more and more felt around the world, with record storms, record rainfalls, snowfalls, heat waves, extinctions — the bleaching of the coral reefs is related — and so much more," Scott said.

Scott said that Gore tries to keep politics out of the equation when discussing the global climate situation.

"This is not a political issue, debate or presentation. It is strictly a scientific, education and humanitarian matter," Scott said.

Newlight said that global warming has sometimes been described as something future generations will have to worry about. The message from Gore's presentation is that the issues are already here or around the corner.

"We've lost pieces of Antarctica the size of New Hampshire. It's happening now," she said.

There is a great deal about the climate change issue that is frightening, and "the imminence of the danger was most shocking to me," Scott said. But the goal is to convince people that there is hope, that there is time to do something about the problem.

"You need to inspire people to action, but not to despair," he said.

To find a lecturer, contact Scott at 732-0380 or stuart.scott@yahoo.com. The program is on the Web at www.theclimateproject.org; learn about Gore's film at climatecrisis.org.

If you have a question or concern about the Hawaiian environment, drop a note to Jan TenBruggencate at P.O. Box 524, Lihu'e, HI 96766 or jant@honoluluadvertiser.com. Or call him at (808) 245-3074.