12

An Inconvenient Truth: a social

representation of scientific expertise
Warren Pearce, Brigitte Nerlich

On 30 June 2006 An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) (Guggenheim, 2006),

a climate-change documentary presented and written by leading US
Democrat politician Al Gore, was released. The film contains a heady
mix of expert scientific evidence, personal stories and normative
political statements. An ‘oral history’, based on interviews with those
involved in the creation of the film and celebrating this anniversary,
proclaimed: ‘Somehow, a film starring a failed presidential candidate
and his traveling slideshow triggered a seismic shift in public under-
standing of climate change’ (Armstrong et al., 2016).
It is likely that AIT has contributed as much as anything or anyone
to making climate-change expertise public. In particular, it brought
climate-science expertise, which had steadily accumulated in the
preceding decades, into the public realm in a new way: combining
scientific data with personal stories and calls for political action. In
combining these elements, AIT made climate change public by offering
a particular social representation of climate change. While primarily
appealing to a public that was already interested in, and attentive to,
climate change, AIT also helped to broaden that audience. The film’s
intended audience was what one may call its ‘convenient’ public. On
the other hand, the film’s very success in speaking to such a public also
triggered contestation from what one may call an ‘inconvenient’ public;
that is, from an audience that disputed the film’s social representation of
climate-change expertise – in some cases the film and/or its producer
were framed as ‘monstrous’. The film thus became a successful meme
and what some saw as a dangerous monster at the same time.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 213

In this chapter we discuss AIT as an example of taking climate-change

expertise out of the pages of science journals and into the public sphere.
We draw on the ideas of John Dewey (1938, 1989) and their elucidation
by Mark Brown (2009, and see chapter 9) to show how the notion of
expertise is the key to understanding the film’s motivation, successes
and critics. While the purpose of the documentary was to persuade its
audience of the consensual truth imparted by climate-science experts,
its effect was to become a lightning rod for disagreeing with, criticising
and debating with that expertise. Overall, AIT created a dominant
representation of climate change, based on expertise that became a
touchstone for consent and dissent, action and reaction. This position
was enhanced by the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace prize to
Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In the following we shall first provide some background to the
film’s emergence, highlighting its echoes of Dewey’s argument that
expert knowledge should be integrated in society (Brown, 2009: 150).
We use the concept of social representation (Moscovici, 1988) to show
how Gore combined scientific content with a personal and political
context in order to provide a meaningful representation of climate-
change expertise. We highlight how AIT sought to create its own
public for scientific expertise, returning climate-science expertise to
society as one of the many tools with which citizens make sense of
the world and solve problems (Brown, 2009: 160–161). We then show
how the very elements that helped AIT to establish a dominant social
representation of climate change also contributed to the creation of
a counter-representation and counterpublic that questioned how AIT
represented climate-science expertise. With AIT’s success in bringing
social context to scientific content came inevitable contestation. We
conclude with some tentative lessons for science communicators from
the AIT story.

Background
AIT had a huge cultural and political impact following its release in
2006, winning a host of awards, including the 2007 Academy Award
for Best Documentary (IMDb, 2015), helping Gore win a share of a
Nobel Peace prize with the IPCC and providing an anchor for intense,
prolonged debates about climate change.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
214 Science and the politics of openness

The documentary was timely, which helped it to embed itself in

global culture and shape both dominant or hegemonic and counter-
hegemonic polemical social representations of climate change. A
dominant or hegemonic social representation is one that is a coercive
and widely shared construction of climate change, while a polemic
one is defined as ‘one which is generated in the course of social conflict,
and characterised by antagonistic relations between groups’ (Jaspal
et al., 2014). In 2007 the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report,
which marked a step change in the public visibility of climate science.
These events represented a political and cultural reinforcement of the
emerging scientific consensus and were significant in establishing for
the first time a dominant, hegemonic representation of climate change
that called for significant personal and political action to address the
challenge. AIT did not disappear from cultural consciousness after
2007. Gore made sure that future campaigns such as Climate Reality
built on its success, seeking to train volunteers as ‘Climate Reality
Leaders … spreading the word about the truth of climate change and
the solutions we have today in over 100 countries, making a global
challenge a personal issue for citizens on every continent’ (Climate
Reality, n.d.; emphasis added).
This suggests that AIT was a highly successful project, both as a
cultural event in itself and as a way of bringing meaning to climate
change and momentum to climate-change mitigation. AIT’s combina-
tion of scientific ideas with personal stories and political activism
echoes Dewey’s call for ‘bare ideas’ to have ‘imaginative content and
emotional appeal’ in order to be effective (Dewey, 1989: 115). AIT
also takes seriously Dewey’s notion that scientific expertise is a social
product rather than the result of individual scientific brilliance and
that science communication marks the return of knowledge to its
rightful owners: the public (Brown, 2009: 150). Indeed, AIT takes this
one step further by seeking to empower its audience to gain the expertise
to go out and disseminate locally. Yet, while Dewey points to the seeds
of AIT’s success, he also shows how the successful communication of
scientific knowledge and its social consequences brings more public
scrutiny to bear on expertise (Brown, 2009: 159).
A decade later, AIT remains an important representation of climate-
change expertise. Gore’s name continues to be synonymous with public
discussions of climate change (Grundmann and Scott, 2014) and AIT

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 215

continues to act as a salient reference point for climate-change critics

(e.g. Booker, 2015; Daily Mail Comment, 2015; Turnbull, 2011). In
the next section we describe the key elements of this representation.

Representing climate-change expertise

Climate science is an example of the scientific representation of nature
that responds to a problematic situation. Communicating this expert
knowledge is important as the problematic situation is bound up
with social conditions (Brown, 2009: 160). Yet Dewey understands
that if this expert knowledge is to gain purchase within societies, it
must be communicated aesthetically and imaginatively (Brown, 2009:
150). As discussed above, this provides a rationale for AIT but it also
shows that AIT is a social representation of a scientific representation
of nature (namely, the abstract concept of climate change). Hence,
concepts from social-representations theory help to show how AIT
represented climate-science expertise by objectifying climate change
through humans (personification) and non-humans (ontologisation)
(Jaspal et al., 2014). This constituted an attempt to establish a coher-
ent, hegemonic social representation of climate-science expertise
that would gain purchase with the AIT audience, inspiring them to
take various actions on climate change or to contest such actions
(Hollin and Pearce, 2015; Jacobsen, 2011; Jaspal et al., 2014; Nolan,
2010).
According to social-representations theory, a social representation
is ‘a system of values, ideas and practices’ about a given social object
(Moscovici, 1973: xiii), as well as ‘the elaborating of a social object
by the community for the purpose of behaving and communicat-
ing’ (Moscovici, 1963: 251). Such a representation provides a social
group with a shared social reality and common consciousness of a
particular social object. The primary function of a social representation
is to allow a social group to incorporate ‘something unfamiliar and
possibly troubling into their own network of categories (Moscovici,
1981: 193). Hegemonic social representations are shared by members
of a group; they are coercive and uniform. Polemic representations
are generated in the course of social conflict and are characterised
by antagonistic relations between groups (Jaspal and Nerlich, 2014:
124–125; Moscovici, 2000: 28).

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
216 Science and the politics of openness

Objectification is the process whereby unfamiliar and abstract objects

are transformed into concrete and objective common-sense realities.
Moscovici and Hewstone (1983) postulate three subprocesses associated
with objectification; namely, the personification of knowledge, figuration
and ontologisation. We focus here on the first and the last. The
personification of knowledge links the abstract object to a person or
a group, providing the object with a more concrete existence through
this association. Ontologisation refers to the process whereby physical
characteristics are attributed to a non-physical entity, essentially
‘materialising’ the immaterial.
We will show that while AIT helped to elevate the cultural significance
of climate change and contributed to forging and disseminating a
hegemonic representation of climate change, it also prompted the
emergence of a strengthened polemic-representation counterpublic
that placed AIT’s representation of climate-science knowledge under
intense scrutiny. By highlighting some scientific weaknesses in the
film and Gore’s role as the face of expertise, the counterpublic sought
to establish a counter-hegemonic or polemical social representation
of climate change. Here, the monsters lurking under the public face
of climate change came to life, most notoriously in an episode of
South Park where Gore was depicted warning of an implausible, unseen
monster called ManBearPig (Parker, 2006; Delingpole, 2010). Monstrous
representations continue to this day, with a Breitbart article confusingly
describing a new sequel to the film (Cohen and Shenk, 2017) as a
‘scientific monstrosity’ while referring to climate change as ‘a non-
science beast’ (Williams, 2017).
While scientific knowledge plays an important role in the film,
Gore evidently recognised, like Dewey, that public mobilisation requires
climate change to be made meaningful, not abstract, by manipulating
both cognitions and emotions (Beattie et al., 2011) so that ‘enough
people lock into the same narrative and connect the dots and feel the
danger facing their children’ (Bates and Goodell, 2007). The emergence
of scientific knowledge about climate change has given rise to ‘an
impersonal, apolitical, and universal imaginary of climate change’
that has taken over from ‘normative imaginations of human actors
engaging directly with nature’ (Jasanoff, 2010: 235). AIT attempts to
redress this balance by personalising and ontologising climate change.
Most obviously, it positions Gore – for better or worse – as the human

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 217

face of the climate-change debate (Jaspal et al., 2014: 114). Yet it also
contains other attempts at personalisation. In a powerful early section,
Gore tells how his young son was almost killed in a car accident, and
of the painful days spent at his bedside waiting to see if he would
recover. The parallel is drawn between Gore’s son and the natural
world that we assume to be stable, showing that the things that we
take the most for granted can be taken away from us unexpectedly
(Murray and Heumann, 2007).
As well as this personalisation of climate or nature, the film seeks
to reintroduce the personal into the accumulation of scientific knowl-
edge. Knowledge is given credence not only using charts and numbers,
but by the scientists who produced them. Gore refers to palaeocli-
matologist Lonnie Thompson as ‘my friend’ when arguing that
Thompson’s research shows a striking correlation between atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. Science may achieve
its heft through abstraction (Jasanoff, 2010: 234), but Gore reminds
his audience that scientific practice is irreducibly human, through his
account of his son’s accident.
AIT also seeks to mitigate abstraction through the ontologisation
of climate change by way of various non-human forms. The film begins
with a paean to the central role of nature in Gore’s early life, which
is subsequently referenced in the story of his son’s car accident. This
‘environmental nostalgia’ makes climate change real by presenting it
as an emotional threat to our own memories of living in nature (Murray
and Heumann, 2007). Glaciers are used as another material example
of what we might lose from climate change. However, this was not
without controversy. One supportive climate scientist’s review of AIT
argued that while the general point was well made, the particular
examples used in the film were poorly chosen, as they were probably
unrelated to temperature change (Steig, 2008). AIT ties climate change
to the threat of extreme weather, traumatically felt in the USA through
Hurricane Katrina just prior to the film’s release (Nerlich and Jaspal,
2014). While Katrina is mentioned prominently in the film, the
important role of engineering failures in the devastation it caused are
overlooked; a position described by Rayner as ‘using bad arguments
for good causes’ (2006: 6).
Criticisms of some of the specific examples used in AIT highlight
a broader tension underpinning the ontologisation of climate change;

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
218 Science and the politics of openness

that is, that local examples of climate-change-related events are likely

to be less scientifically certain than global representations of climate
(Hollin and Pearce, 2015). This is not to say that AIT is entirely
unsuccessful on this front; merely that scientific representations and
social representations may often come into conflict. Evaluating how
these are resolved depends on whether Gore’s role in AIT is ‘as a
politician, a lay expert, or a spokesperson for science’ (Hulme, 2009:
81), something that remains unclear during the film.
This section has outlined the social representation of climate-science
expertise in AIT. The next section demonstrates the integral role of
the audience in this representation, as Gore returns science to the
people (Brown, 2009: 160).

Emergence of a public
Empire magazine’s five-star review of AIT begins with an inauspicious
synopsis: ‘On the face of it, this is the least appealing film in history.
A failed politico … preaching to the world about global warming
with the aid of PowerPoint’ (O’Hara, 2015).
Presentation software such as PowerPoint or Keynote1 appears
to be a questionable medium through which to persuade an audi-
ence of the seriousness of climate change. Even at the time of AIT’s
release, such software was becoming notorious for homogeneous,
ready-made slide designs resulting in boring corporate presentations
(Reynolds, 2005; Tufte, 2003). While Gore’s professionally designed
slides avoid the template trap, one might wonder why he chose to
make such a presentation the focus of the film, rather than the front
line of climate change where the physical effects are beginning to be
noticed, as subsequent films have done (Orlowski, 2012). In short, AIT
foregrounded the presentation as that was the tool with which Gore’s
message would be propagated by his helpers, supporters and acolytes.
Gore makes clear his frustration with inaction on climate policy
from the US Congress and the then Bush administration, using this
as the basis for a ‘bottom-up’ approach to spreading his message ‘city
by city, street by street, house by house’. Gore explains that he has
been ‘trying to tell this story for a long time’ and that he is focused

1  Gore’s presentation was developed using Keynote (Reynolds, 2007).

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 219

on ‘getting people to understand’ climate change. Clearly, this is not

public education as a good in itself; the intermingling of the positive
and the normative points towards the need for the climate-change
challenge to prompt particular actions.
AIT ends on an upbeat note, claiming that we already have the
technologies available to switch from fossil fuels, and that all that is
stopping us is a shortage of political will. The film ends by fading to
black, as the text ‘Are you ready to change the way you live your life?’
appears on the screen, followed by an intermingling of the film’s credits
with a mixture of tips on reducing personal environmental impacts
(e.g. switch to a hybrid car) and bringing about political change (e.g.
ask your senators what they are doing about climate change). Viewers
were also directed to a supporting website including more details
about the film and about climate science, and suggested actions for
the audience to undertake (‘An Inconvenient Truth > take action’, 2006).
Taken together, the film, website and accompanying book (Gore, 2006)
represented a multimedia take on a very traditional linear model of
science education, with the idea that presenting members of the public
with more scientific information will prompt them to take action.
While this is a clear aim of AIT, the film also operated at a more
sophisticated metalevel.
Gore is the film’s sole cast member, but his audience – his intended
public – plays an important supporting role throughout. The first
faces to appear in the film are those of the attendees at the various
presentations of Gore’s slideshow around the USA. AIT’s main presenta-
tion is staged in a way that ensures the audience’s faces are often in
view, brightly lit and seated in a horseshoe formation. These are not
just the faces of people listening to Gore’s story, but of those who may
retell it to their peers. Soon after the film’s release, Gore led a programme
of training for people who wanted ‘to tell their friends, families and
neighbours that human activities are altering global climate and that
each person can do something about it’ (Haag, 2007). The programme
continues today through the Climate Reality Leadership Corps that
encourages peer-to-peer communication and ‘spreading the word
about the truth of climate change’ (Climate Reality, n.d.).
In this way, AIT went beyond public education to instead aim
explicitly at the creation of a climate-change public. For a while Al
Gore became known as the high priest spreading an ‘environmental

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
220 Science and the politics of openness

gospel’ (Mr Americana, 2015; Nerlich and Koteyko, 2009), a title that
also contributed to conjuring up the counterpublic that the film did
not intend to create. Overall, then, it was not just the content of the
slideshow that was important, it was also the performance of the
slideshow that is a central part of the film. The film was intended not
only to persuade but to have a much stronger performative force: to
create a public that in turn would continue the performance. In Dewey’s
terms, scientific expertise is reinstated as ‘a refinement of commonsense
inquiry’ rather than ‘a foreign way of knowing to be imposed on the
common sense of an ignorant public’ (Brown, 2009: 160). However,
this overt focus on putting scientific expertise back into the hands of
society was turned back on AIT itself, as a counterpublic questioned
the film’s representation of climate-science expertise.

Emergence of a counterpublic
The evidence presented thus far suggests that AIT was extremely
successful, not just as a film in its own right but also in establishing
a powerful social representation of climate change, an idea that had
been somewhat nebulous up to that point. AIT was also successful
in creating a public actively engaged in reproducing the representa-
tion of climate change by training individuals to give presentations
based on AIT locally. However, individuals are not merely passive
recipients of representations; they actively contribute to the construc-
tion of new representations in response (Jaspal et al., 2014: 116).
Some of these individuals assumed a much more critical view of AIT
and Gore.
Scepticism about climate science predated the film’s release as an
important part of the ‘struggles over meaning and values in US climate
science and politics’ (Lahsen, 2008: 216). While such struggles were
continuing, US climate politics pre-AIT was broadly characterised by
a lack of federal-level progress on legislation to cut greenhouse gases.
Congress’s comprehensive rejection of the Kyoto Protocol was followed
by Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election,
with the subsequent Bush presidency being noted for a stalemate on
climate policy. The success of AIT towards the end of the Bush presi-
dency provided a window for reframing the US climate debate (Fletcher,
2009: 807). It also acted as a powerful rallying point for climate critics,

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 221

both in the mainstream media and the blogosphere, who were opposed
to more stringent action on greenhouse gases.
A struggle ensued over the film’s accuracy, and as AIT gained greater
public visibility a counterpublic emerged that sought to destabilise
the apparently coherent meaning of climate change provided by AIT
and Gore’s newfound position as a public expert. This counterpublic
was mobilised through the emerging new media of blogs such as
Watts Up With That (Watts, 2006) and Climate Audit (McIntyre, 2006),
as well as syndicated columns in the mainstream media (Elsasser and
Dunlap, 2013). The movement challenged the links claimed between
climate change and material events (Hulme, 2010), and the credibility
of Gore himself (Elsasser and Dunlap, 2013).
It is unsurprising that Gore, as a prominent Democratic politician,
became a focus of much conservative commentary. A study of conserva-
tive op-eds found him to be by the far most discussed topic related
to climate change (Elsasser and Dunlap, 2013: 763). Within the sceptical
blogosphere, the three blogs found by Sharman (2014) to be the most
central – Watts Up With That, Jo Nova and Climate Audit – have all
had numerous posts on Al Gore and/or AIT. While Sharman notes
that these blogs are more likely than mainstream media op-eds to
focus on scientific issues, their criticisms of AIT and Gore were both
scientific (Edelman, 2007; McIntyre, 2007; Nova, 2009b) and personal
(McIntyre, 2008; Nova, 2009a; Watts, 2008). Crucially, these com-
mentators had a (small) number of similarly critical climate scientists
upon whose knowledge they could draw. Two of these scientists
published critiques of AIT as part of a series in GeoJournal (Legates,
2007; Spencer, 2007).
This network of critical actors was akin to a scientific counterpublic
attempting to challenge the hegemonic representation of climate change
sought by AIT. They were a relatively small number of scientists with
connections to other societal actors sharing a concern about the
interactions between science, power and politics (Hess, 2010: 631).
This is not to say that the counterpublic is any closer to the truth, or
freer from external biases, than the dominant public, only that AIT
and Gore provided important rallying points around which a coun-
terpublic could coalesce (Jaspal et al., 2014). The substance of this
counterpublic’s criticisms is already well documented in the literature
(Koteyko et al., 2013; Lahsen, 2013; Matthews, 2015).

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
222 Science and the politics of openness

One particular characteristic of these criticisms is focused on

here; the way in which critics sought to disassociate the notion of
climate-science expertise from the representation provided in AIT.
Jaspal et al. describe this as the challenging of science ‘by appealing to
its norms’ (2013: 383). They highlight a reader comment on climate-
change articles on the Daily Mail website that ‘distances Al Gore from
“science”, which is interesting in itself, as he is not actually a scientist’
(Jaspal et al., 2013: 395). Of course, Gore does not overtly claim to be
a scientist; however, as the linchpin of AIT Gore became a cornerstone
for the social representation of climate-science expertise. The reader
comment claims that ‘Gore stood to gain hundreds of millions of dollars’
if legislation were passed lowering carbon emissions (Jaspal et al.,
2013: 395).
It is indeed the case that two years before AIT Gore co-founded
an investment management partnership focused on sustainability
issues (Generation Investment Management, n.d.), and that one
newspaper report claimed that his ‘green-tech’ investments boosted
his net worth from $2 million to $100 million between 2002 and 2012
(Leonnig, 2012). Whether or not these figures are entirely accurate,
they highlight the importance of the social context that is given to
Dewey’s ‘bare ideas’, and in particular the contested boundary between
content and context (Brown, 2009: 159).
Brown (2009: 160) notes that the ‘social conflicts associated with
genetic engineering do not invalidate the theory of the double helix’.
Similarly, the financial interests of Al Gore highlighted in the Daily
Mail comment do not invalidate the fundamentals of atmospheric
physics. However, the comment highlights the fuzzy boundary between
content and context in the public sphere, and how a questionable
context can bring the content into question and destabilise representa-
tions of expertise. Citizens’ willingness to accept or challenge climate-
science expertise is to some degree dependent on their core values
(Kahan et al., 2011). One can’t please all the people all the time.
However, even assuming that Gore’s intentions in making AIT were
of the best, his financial interest in sustainability investments was not
necessarily a firm foundation for his emerging public status as a
climate-change expert.
While helping to raise the profile of climate change, AIT seems
also to have contributed to polarisation and strengthened the voices

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 223

of what some may call an ‘inconvenient public’ keen on publicising

‘inconvenient knowledge’ related to Gore’s presentation of climate
science and his own role as the public face of climate change. The use
of the film to increase ‘public understanding’ of climate change was
thus at one and the same time a success and a failure, a miracle and
a monster.

Conclusion
In this chapter we have outlined the role of AIT in creating a strength-
ened social representation of climate change; making the impersonal
personal and the invisible visible. By many measures AIT was hugely
successful, winning numerous awards, earning Al Gore a share of the
Nobel Peace Prize and providing a springboard for a global campaign
of public education and activism. Drawing on the work of Brown, we
have shown how AIT’s focus on creating new audiences for climate-
science expertise echoes Dewey’s original call for science to be returned
to the people as ‘a refinement of commonsense inquiry’ and not to
remain an entirely unfamiliar way of knowing (Brown, 2009: 160).
The film also echoes Dewey in providing an aesthetic, emotional
communication of expertise, going beyond the persistent deficit model
in climate-change communications that assumes that the absence of
concern about climate change is the result of a lack of knowledge
(Nerlich et al., 2010; Pearce et al., 2015). In many ways AIT provides
a model for bringing scientific expertise into the public sphere.
However, mistakes were made. In particular, errors on scientific
content should have been avoided. As Hulme noted in his study of
Gore’s questionable comments on Mount Kilimanjaro’s glaciers,
returning scientific knowledge to the people ‘may destabilise knowledge
as much as it may legitimise it’ and public trust in provisions for
quality assurance in evidence are key (Hulme, 2010: 322). This goes
for social representations of climate-change expertise as much as it
does for scientific representations of nature appearing in the peer-
reviewed literature. Whether these mistakes had a significant bearing
on public attitudes towards AIT is beyond the scope of this chapter.
However, what we have shown is how social representations of expertise
inevitably bring context to content, and a boundary between the two
that is contested. In the case of AIT, Gore’s position as a Democrat

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
224 Science and the politics of openness

politician formed part of the film, perhaps making Republican-

supporting viewers less receptive to the film’s message. Counterpublics
may seek to bring in other contexts as a means of contesting social
representations. In the example above we show how Gore’s financial
interests were used as a means of discrediting the scientific content.
For scientists, this may seem anathema, but is the kind of issue that
requires attention when returning scientific expertise from academia
to the broader society.
In its mix of the scientific, personal and political, AIT is perhaps
best thought of as an ambitious, if flawed, experiment in science
communication and in making climate change meaningful. It did so,
whether consciously or not, by politicising climate change and
reintroducing the human into previously apolitical representations
of climate change (Jasanoff, 2010). While agreeing with the need for
politics, not science, to bear the load of dealing with climate change,
we note that one effect of AIT was to turn climate science into ‘Al
Gore’s science’, closely tied to a narrow range of policy options that
were anathema to US conservatives (Sarewitz, 2011). We also note
that if future engagement on climate change is to improve on the
experience of AIT, those taking part must be open to engaging with
publics that might be regarded as inconvenient just as much as with
invited and convenient ones. Such engagement can be rewarding or
frustrating to various degrees (Hawkins et al., 2014), something we
have both personally experienced with diverse publics on the Making
Science Public blog that we have edited throughout the duration of
the research programme. However, such engagement should continue
if there is to be any hope of social representations of scientific expertise
becoming a source of moderation rather than polarisation. We cannot,
and should not, seek to vanquish the monsters lurking under the
public face of science, but we might be able to do a better job of
taming them.

References
An Inconvenient Truth > take action (2006). Climatecrisis.net, 6 July. Retrieved
7 January 2016 from: https://web.archive.org/web/20060706041140/www.
climatecrisis.net/takeaction/.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 225

Armstrong, J. K., Urry, A., Andrews, E., and Cronin, M. (2016). An oral
history of An Inconvenient Truth. Grist. Retrieved 28 July 2016 from: http://
grist.org/feature/an-inconvenient-truth-oral-history/.
Bates, E., and Goodell, J. (2007). Al Gore: ‘The revolution is beginning’. Rolling
Stone, 28 June. Retrieved 1 February 2016 from: www.rollingstone.com/
politics/news/al-gore-the-revolution-is-beginning-20070628.
Beattie, G., Sale, L., and Mcguire, L. (2011). An Inconvenient Truth? Can a
film really affect psychological mood and our explicit attitudes towards
climate change? Semiotica, 2011(187), 105–125.
Booker, C. (2015). The real ‘deniers’ in the climate change debate are
the warmists. Telegraph, 1 August. Retrieved 5 January 2016 from:
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11778376/The-real-deniers-in-the-climate-
change-debate-are-the-warmists.html.
Brown, M. B. (2009). Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and
Representation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Climate Reality (n.d.). [How you can help solve climate change.] Retrieved 7
January 2016 from: www.climaterealityproject.org/training.
Cohen, B., and Shenk, J. (2017). An Inconvenient Sequel. Los Angeles: Paramount
Pictures.
Daily Mail Comment (2015). Daily Mail comment: Climate change and an
inconvenient truth. Mail Online, 24 July. Retrieved 5 January 2016 from:
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3170198/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-
Climate-change-inconvenient-truth.html.
Delingpole, J. (2010). South Park: The most dangerous show on television?
Telegraph, 3 May. Retrieved 31 March 2017 from: www.telegraph.co.uk/
culture/tvandradio/7671750/South-Park-The-most-dangerous-show-on-
television.html.
Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston.
Dewey, J. (1989). Freedom and Culture. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Edelman, B. (2007). Detailed comments on An Inconvenient Truth. Watts Up
with That [blog], 4 October. Retrieved February 25 2016 from: http://
wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/04/detailed-comments-on-an-inconvenient-
truth/.
Elsasser, S. W., and Dunlap, R. E. (2013). Leading voices in the denier choir:
Conservative columnists’ dismissal of global warming and denigration of
climate science. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6), 754–776.
Fletcher, A. L. (2009). Clearing the air: The contribution of frame analysis to
understanding climate policy in the United States. Environmental Politics,
18(5), 800–816.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
226 Science and the politics of openness

Generation Investment Management (n.d.). AlGore.com. Retrieved 27 July

2016 from: www.algore.com/project/generation-investment-management.
Gore, A. (2006). An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global
Warming and What We Can Do About It. London: Bloomsbury.
Grundmann, R., and Scott, M. (2014). Disputed climate science in the media:
Do countries matter? Public Understanding of Science, 23(2), 220–235.
Guggenheim, D. (2006). An Inconvenient Truth. Los Angeles: Paramount
Classics.
Haag, A. (2007). Climate change 2007: Al’s army. Nature, 446(7137),
723–724.
Hawkins, E., Edwards, T., and McNeall, D. (2014). Pause for thought. Nature
Climate Change, 4(3), 154–156.
Hess, D. J. (2010). To tell the truth: On scientific counterpublics. Public
Understanding of Science, 20(5), 627–641.
Hollin, G. J. S., and Pearce, W. (2015). Tension between scientific certainty
and meaning complicates communication of IPCC reports. Nature Climate
Change, 5(8), 753–756.
Hulme, M. (2009). Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding
Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hulme, M. (2010). Claiming and adjudicating on Mt Kilimanjaro’s shrinking
glaciers: Guy Callendar, Al Gore and extended peer communities. Science
as Culture, 19(3), 303–326.
IMDb (2015). An Inconvenient Truth: Awards. IMDb. Retrieved 16 December
2015 from: www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/awards.
IPCC (2007). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution
of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change. S. Solomon, D. Qin, M. Manning, Z.
Chen, M. Marquis, M. Averyt, M Tignor, et al. (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Jacobsen, G. D. (2011). The Al Gore effect: An Inconvenient Truth and voluntary
carbon offsets. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 61(1),
67–78.
Jasanoff, S. (2010). A new climate for society. Theory, Culture and Society,
27(2–3), 233–253.
Jaspal, R., and Nerlich, B. (2014). When climate science became climate
politics: British media representations of climate change in 1988. Public
Understanding of Science, 23(2), 122–141.
Jaspal, R., Nerlich, B., and Cinnirella, M. (2014). Human responses to climate
change: Social representation, identity and socio-psychological action.
Environmental Communication, 8(1), 110–130.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 227

Jaspal, R., Nerlich, B., and Koteyko, N. (2013). Contesting science by appealing
to its norms: Readers discuss climate science in the Daily Mail. Science
Communication, 35(3), 383–410.
Kahan, D. M., Jenkins-Smith, H., and Braman, D. (2011). Cultural cognition
of scientific consensus. Journal of Risk Research, 14(2), 147–174.
Koteyko, N., Jaspal, R., and Nerlich, B. (2013). Climate change and ‘climategate’
in online reader comments: A mixed methods study. Geographical Journal,
179(1), 74–86.
Lahsen, M. (2008). Experiences of modernity in the greenhouse: A cultural
analysis of a physicist ‘trio’ supporting the backlash against global warming.
Global Environmental Change, 18(1), 204–219.
Lahsen, M. (2013). Anatomy of dissent: A cultural analysis of climate skepticism.
American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6), 732–753, doi: 10.1177/0002764212469799.
Legates, D. R. (2007). An Inconvenient Truth: A focus on its portrayal of the
hydrologic cycle. GeoJournal, 70(1), 15–19.
Leonnig, C. D. (2012). Al Gore has thrived as green-tech investor. Washington
Post, 10 October. Retrieved 27 July 2016 from: www.washingtonpost.com/
politics/decision2012/al-gore-has-thrived-as-green-tech-investor/2012/10/10/
1dfaa5b0-0b11-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html.
McIntyre, S. (2006). Day four: Al Gore. Climate Audit [blog], 14 December.
Retrieved 16 December 2015 from: http://climateaudit.org/2006/12/14/
day-four-al-gore/.
McIntyre, S. (2007). Dasuopu versions. Climate Audit [blog], 12 January.
Retrieved 25 February 2016 from: http://climateaudit.org/2007/01/12/
dasuopu-versions/.
McIntyre, S. (2008). How Al Gore saved Christmas. Climate Audit [blog], 25
December. Retrieved 25 February 2016 from: http://climateaudit.org/2008/
12/25/al-gore-saves-christmas/.
Matthews, P. (2015). Why are people skeptical about climate change? Some
insights from blog comments. Environmental Communication, 9(2), 153–168.
Moscovici, S. (1963). Attitudes and opinions. Annual Review of Psychology,
14(1), 231–260.
Moscovici, S. (1973). Foreword. In C. Herzlich (ed.), Health and Illness: A
Social Psychological Analysis (pp. ix–xiv). London: Academic Press.
Moscovici, S. (1981). On social representations. In J. P. Forgas (ed.), Social
Cognition: Perspectives on Everyday Understanding (pp. 181–209). London:
Academic Press.
Moscovici, S. (1988). Notes towards a description of social representations.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 18(3), 211–250.
Moscovici, S. (2000). Social Representations: Explorations in Social Psychology.
Cambridge: Polity Press.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
228 Science and the politics of openness

Moscovici, S., and Hewstone, M. (1983). Social representations and social

explanations: From the ‘naive’ to the ‘amateur’ scientist. In M. Hewstone
(ed.), Attribution Theory: Social and Functional Extensions (pp. 98–125).
Oxford: Blackwell.
Mr Americana (2015). High priest of global warming cult, Al Gore, training
missionaries of climate change. Overpasses for America, 30 September.
Retrieved 29 February 2016 from: http://overpassesforamerica.com/?p=16885.
Murray, R., and Heumann, J. (2007). Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and
its skeptics: A case of environmental nostalgia. Jump Cut, 49. Retrieved 4
November 2015 from: www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/inconvenTruth/
text.html.
Nerlich, B., and Jaspal, R. (2014). Images of extreme weather: Symbolising
human responses to climate change. Science as Culture, 23(2), 253–276.
Nerlich, B., and Koteyko, N. (2009). Compounds, creativity and complexity
in climate change communication: The case of ‘carbon indulgences’. Global
Environmental Change, 19(3), 345–353.
Nerlich, B., Koteyko, N., and Brown, B. (2010). Theory and language of climate
change communication. Climate Change, 1(1), 97–110.
Nolan, J. M. (2010). An Inconvenient Truth increases knowledge, concern,
and willingness to reduce greenhouse gases. Environment and Behavior,
42(5), 643–658.
Nova, J. (2009a). Climate money: Monopoly science. JoNova [blog], 31 July.
Retrieved 25 February 2016 from: http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/
climate-money/.
Nova, J. (2009b). Carbon rises 800 years after temperatures. JoNova [blog],
14 December. Retrieved 25 February 2016 from:http://joannenova.com.au/
2009/12/carbon-rises-800-years-after-temperatures/.
O’Hara, H. (2015). An Inconvenient Truth review. Empire. Updated 1 January
2000. Retrieved 29 January 2016 from: www.empireonline.com/movies/
inconvenient-truth/review/.
Orlowski, J. (2012). Chasing Ice. New York: Submarine Pictures.
Parker, T. (2006). ManBearPig. South Park, season 10, episode 6, 26 April.
Comedy Central. Retrieved 26 February 2016 from www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4oNfEI06YkY.
Pearce, W., Brown, B., Nerlich, B., and Koteyko, N. (2015). Communicating
climate change: Conduits, content, and consensus. Climate Change, 6(6),
613–626.
Rayner, S. (2006). What drives environmental policy? Global Environmental
Change, 16(1), 4–6.
Reynolds, G. (2005). Presentation Zen: Beginnings. Presentation Zen [blog],
18 January. Retrieved 29 January 2016 from: www.presentationzen.com/
presentationzen/2005/01/the_blog_begins.html.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access
An Inconvenient Truth 229

Reynolds, G. (2007). Al Gore: From ‘showing slides’ to winning an Oscar.

Presentation Zen [blog], 28 February. Retrieved 29 January 2016 from:
www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2007/02/al_gores_inconv.html.
Sarewitz, D. (2011). Does climate change knowledge really matter? Climate
Change, 2(4), 475–481.
Sharman, A. (2014). Mapping the climate sceptical blogosphere. Global
Environmental Change, 26, 159–170.
Spencer, R. W. (2007). An Inconvenient Truth: Blurring the lines between
science and science fiction. GeoJournal, 70(1), 11–14.
Steig, E. J. (2008). Another look at An Inconvenient Truth. GeoJournal, 70(1),
5–9.
Tufte, E. R. (2003). The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Cheshire, CT: Graphics
Press.
Turnbull, A. (2011). The really inconvenient truth or ‘it ain’t necessarily so’.
Briefing paper no. 1. London: Global Warming Policy Foundation. Retrieved
3 October 2012 from: http://50.116.89.150/globalwarming/wp-content/
uploads/2012/08/Happer-The_Truth_About_Greenhouse_Gases.pdf.
[Now available at: www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/lord-
turnbull.pdf.]
Watts, A. (2006). Global warming on Mars? Watts Up with That [blog], 20
December. Retrieved 16 December 2015 from: http://wattsupwiththat.com/
2006/12/20/global-warming-on-mars/.
Watts, A. (2008). Gore to press: Stay out! Watts Up with That [blog], 13 April.
Retrieved 25 February 2016 from: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/04/13/
gore-to-press-stay-out/.
Williams, T. D. (2017). Weather channel founder: Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Sequel’
another ‘scientific monstrosity’. Breitbart, 20 January. Retrieved 31 March
2017 from: www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/20/weather-channel-
founder-gores-inconvenient-sequel-another-scientific-monstrosity/.

Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley, Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith - 9781526106476
Downloaded from manchesteropenhive.com at 08/21/2018 01:59:44AM
via free access