An Inconvenient Truth (2006 Awareness of Climate Change and Threat Vary by Region Between 2007 and 2008, Gallup conducted the first comprehensive survey of global opinions about climate change, posing two questions to respondents in 128 countries: 1) How much do you know about global warming or climate change? and 2) How serious of a threat is global warming to you and your family? The following is excerpted from "A Heated Debate: Global Attitudes Toward Climate Change," which appears in the Fall issue of Harvard International Review on newsstands now. Gallup finds that a majority of the world's adult population is aware of the climate change issue, but a substantial minority is not aware. Regionally, people in Europe and the Americas (which includes North, South, and Central America) are the most likely to be aware of climate change. Lower awareness is evident in the Middle East/North Africa, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa regions. Perceived Threat Relatively Low in Most Vulnerable Regions Sign up for Gallup e-mail alerts or RSS feeds Survey Methods
An Inconvenient Truth An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 Academy Award winning documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate made in the film, he has given more than a thousand times. The idea to document his efforts came from producer Laurie David who saw his presentation at a town-hall meeting on global warming which coincided with the opening of The Day After Tomorrow. Laurie David was so inspired by Gore's slide show that she, with producer Lawrence Bender, met with Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film. Since the film's release, An Inconvenient Truth has been credited for raising international public awareness of climate change and reenergizing the environmental movement. Synopsis [edit] 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
Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" Movie: Fact or Hype? Updated May 25, 2006 The message in An Inconvenient Truth, the new movie starring former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, is clear: Humans are causing global warming, and the effects are devastating. Most scientists agree that the Earth is heating up, due primarily to an atmospheric increase in carbon dioxide caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum. But how accurate are some of the scientific claims made in the documentary? In an attemp to clear the air, National Geographic News checked in with Eric Steig, an earth scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, who saw An Inconvenient Truth at a preview screening. He says the documentary handles the science well. "I was looking for errors," he said. "But nothing much struck me as overblown or wrong." Claim: According to the film, the number of Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last year. "This is true," Steig said. (Read "Is Global Warming Making Hurricanes Worse?")
An Inconvenient Truth All Critics (167) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (147) | Rotten (11) | DVD (28) It grabs you like a thriller with an ending that will haunt your dreams. November 24, 2006 Just because truths are inconvenient is no reason to suppose they are not real. It is utterly convincing, it's emotionally powerful and it makes Gore look more charming than he ever did as a presidential candidate. The film succeeds powerfully, even though it's short on practical solutions, makes some questionable statements of fact and, given Gore's current ambiguous position in public life, requires a tighter focus on the message than on the messenger. Frightening and timely, the smartly organized documentary is an urgent plea for responsibility and action as well as an impassioned call to heed the ominous warnings of science. A film that invests hard science with impassioned moral drive. Those attacking Al Gore as a misinformed prophet or political crybaby likely never watched the film. December 31, 2006
Persuasion and Influence: An Inconvenient Truth In 2006, Al Gore released a documentary film, called 'An Inconvenient Truth,' in which he outlined the dangers of global warning, aiming to educate the public about the climate crisis and the potential consequences of our behaviour. It was considered to be a very influential documentary and throughout his presentation he used many persuasive techniques to change the opinions of his audience. One way in which he does this, is by arousing a feeling of fear into the public. With the use of shocking images that are believed to have exaggerated the extent of the problem, he makes his audience believe the situation is far worse and more real than anyone imagined. The use of ‘fear appeal’ is argued to be successful in changing attitudes when the plea invokes fear and outlines a plausible way to overcome this fear by changing behaviour; in this instance, by doing something as simple as recycling (Pratkanis, 2007). Dahl, D.
How “An Inconvenient Truth” Contributed to Partisan Polarization on Climate Joe Romm of Climate Progress misrepresented polling data in his critique of our recent New York Times op-ed when he claimed Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth did not contribute to partisan polarization of public attitudes toward global warming. Gallup and Pew both find that partisan polarization increased significantly over the two years following the release of An Inconvenient Truth across a range of measures. Between 2006 and 2008, the split between Democrats and Republicans reporting that they personally worry a great deal or a fair amount about global warming rose from 24 percent to 35 percent and on the question of whether the rise in temperatures was primarily due to human activities or natural causes, the split went from 36 percent to 41 percent. Beyond Pew and Gallup, many scholars have concluded that Gore’s movie did in fact drive increasing polarization. "We actually studied this: What was the impact of An Inconvenient Truth? But that’s not actually the chart that Romm posted.
070709nielsen-celeb-report.pdf The Flat Earth Society Our new website includes the Flat Earth Society forums (a thriving online community since 2004) as well as a number of new features including: The Flat Earth Society Library - This online library contains a growing selection of Flat Earth resources. We have interviews, newspaper and magazine articles as well as the largest collection of Flat Earth Society newsletters in the world (online or otherwise!). The Flat Earth Society Library also includes hard-to-find writings from members of the 19th and early-20th Century Flat Earth movement and Universal Zetetic Society. The Flat Earth Wiki- This extensive Wiki is based on a FAQ originally compiled by forums user cheesejoff. About the Society - A short history of the Flat Earth Society from its roots in the 1800s through its incarnation under Charles K. Official Membership - After much planning, we are now ready to officially accept new members to the Society.
The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers – by David Kirtley This is a guest post by David Kirtley. David originally posted this as a Google Doc, and I’m reproducing his work here with his permission. Just the other day I was speaking to a climate change skeptic who made mention of an old Time or Newsweek (he was not sure) article that talked about fears of a coming ice age. There were in fact a number of articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem, and I’m not sure what my friend was referring to. The 1970s Ice Age Myth and Time Magazine Covers - by David Kirtley A few days ago a facebook friend of mine posted the following image: From the 1977 cover we can see that apparently a new ice age was supposed to arrive. As you can see, the cover title has nothing to do with an imminent ice age, it’s about global warming, as we might expect from a 2007 Time magazine. The faked image illustrates one of the fake-skeptics’ favorite myths: The 1970s Ice Age Scare. But why fake the 1977 cover? To learn more see:
A review (and a preview) of the documentary The Great Warming The Great Warming aims to do what other climate-change books, TV shows, and films haven’t. In lieu of purely scientific or data-based persuasion, it appeals to viewers’ sense of spiritual and moral responsibility. On that level, it succeeds. Debuting in American theaters on Nov. 3 but already making the rounds in the country’s churches, the film takes regular folks and lets them talk about climate change, attempting to appeal to the emotions of, well, regular folks. There’s Danny Duet down in Louisiana talking about the changes he’s seen on the bayou, the rising waters and receding dry land. The documentary (see a preview below) starts out with an eerie child’s voice singing the familiar “It’s raining, it’s pouring,” with the haunting addition of “the temperature is soaring,” over equally eerie images of said child. The Great Warming shows a child in Peru who lost her brothers to cholera after El Niño floodwaters contaminated the water supply. Watch a scene from The Great Warming:
It's a natural cycle A natural cycle requires a forcing, and no known forcing exists that fits the fingerprint s of observed warming - except anthropogenic greenhouse gas es. "What if global warming is just a natural cycle?" This argument is, perhaps, one of the most common raised by the average person, rather than someone who makes a career out of denying climate change . Cyclical variations in climate are well-known to the public; we all studied the ice age s in school. A common misunderstanding of the climate system characterizes it like a pendulum. For this reason, "it's just a natural cycle" is a bit of a cop-out argument. Of course, it's always possible that some natural cycle exists, unknown to scientists and their instruments, that is currently causing the planet to warm. Firstly, the hypothetical natural cycle would have to explain the observed " fingerprint s" of greenhouse gas -induced warming . A natural cycle that fits all these fingerprint s is nearly unfathomable.
les_reperes_admical_6_mecenat_et_contreparties.pdf After An Inconvenient Truth: the evolution of the 'climate change film' | Film As we have begun to see the effects of climate change more severely, more frequently and closer to home, so too have film-makers been spurred to address the consequences of an irrevocably damaged environment in new ways. In both fiction and non-fiction, climate change is no longer depicted as the eventual cause of future calamity, but a reality affecting everyday life. On the heels of documentaries that hoped to raise awareness by laying out the facts about climate change have come new ones showing the consequences of our behavior through spectacular images of an increasingly inhospitable environment. An Inconvenient Truth, that PowerPoint presentation of a documentary from 2006, stands as a prototype of activist filmmaking, the kind of movie that caused Roger Ebert to write, apparently for the first time in his career, “you owe it to yourself to see this film.” Beyond eliciting understanding, they’re clearly produced to inspire awe.