After noting that he did not recall Gore making specific predictions in his first film and that if he did "any such predictions are posed as risks," he pointed out that man-made climate change costs billions of dollars in damage each year that "glaciers are melting worldwide and the snow season is a lot shorter" and that " heat waves have indeed increased and caused huge losses." Trenberth also echoed many of Caldeira's observations before closing by stating that " Al Gore’s warnings hold true today every bit as much as before." National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), made similar observations to Salon. Kevin Trenberth, of the Climate Analysis Section at the U.S.
"'An Inconvenient Truth' did not predict that global warming would predict an ice age." "They are apparently watching 'The Day After Tomorrow' and confusing it for 'An Inconvenient Truth,'" Caldeira wrote. There has been a significant ice retreat on Mount Kilimanjaro over the past century, despite right-wing claims to the contrary Arctic sea ice has plummeted since 1979, again despite conservative attempts to spin that fact and although Bastasch insists there has been a global warming "hiatus," in fact " the last 3 years were the hottest 3 years on record, and the 15 years of the 'hiatus' were the warmest 15 years on record."Īnd, of course, there is that timeworn claim that Gore and the scientific community are predicting an ice age. "It might take us a little longer to get there than he suggested, but we will end up in the same place if we don't do something about our greenhouse gas emissions."Īs Caldeira also explained earlier in his email to Salon, the various points cited by conservatives as discrediting Gore's earlier film actually reinforce his point about global warming. "Everything is heading in the direction of what Gore pointed out in 'An Inconvenient Truth,'" said Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science. Pundits like The Daily Caller's Michael Bastasch have been claiming that the global warming observations and predictions from "An Inconvenient Truth" ultimately "never came true" and have used that claim to smear Gore's new documentary about man-made climate change.Īs has long been the case with the anthropogenic global warming deniers, however, their argument depends on disregarding the expertise of top scientists. Of course, this isn't what the purveyors of pseudo-science would have you believe. And that, more than anything else, is the chief failing of the film. These were much more optimistic conclusions than the previous study had allowed, and they remind us of the power of strong informative and emotional messages on explicit attitude change and social cognition generally.As I prepared to see "An Inconvenient Sequel," my friends Jon and Chris and girlfriend Fran joked about Al Gore's numerous appearances in pop culture, from direct cameos ("Futurama," "30 Rock") to satirical jabs ("South Park," "Saturday Night Live").Īfter the movie was over, the four of us were still discussing Gore's pop culture appearances. Our study found that the clips did affect emotion, and in particular, they decreased the happiness and calmness levels of our participants, but they also felt more motivated to do something about climate change, more able to do something about climate change and, in addition, they were significantly less likely to think that they had no control over the whole climate change process. For this reason, in our study we used an experimental approach - highly informative (and emotional) clips from An Inconvenient Truth were played to sets of participants and their mood states were measured as well as their explicit social attitudes/social cognitions on five critical scales (message acceptance/motivation to do something about climate change/empowerment/shifting responsibility for climate change/fatalism). This earlier study was, however, correlational in design and did not allow for firm conclusions regarding the direction of causality.
One study found that more informed respondents felt less personally responsible for global warming and also showed less concern for the problem as a whole. Previous research has claimed that providing people with information about global warming may have a negative (and unanticipated) effect on their explicit attitudes towards climate change.