Rhetorical Analysis Of Global Warming An Inconvenient Truth

As a whole, Gore’s argument in “Climate of Denial” is powerful, persuasive, and effective. The points that he communicates are easily understandable, due to his straightforward language and moderately informal tone. Even more importantly, the analogies and imagery that he employs make his argument relatable and vivid. In his goal of persuading the reader, this emotionally compelling narration is invaluable. However, despite its many strengths, Gore’s composition does contain several weaknesses. First,

In 2010, Al Gore wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times claiming that global warming is a matter our generation must concentrate on in order to halt the rapid increases of change to our planet’s climate. He creates a strong, convincing argument by addressing and exemplifying issues pertaining to global climate change.

The globe is being rocked by extreme weather and the hottest temperatures on record. As the average global temperature soars, there are floods, droughts, unusually cold winters, forest fires, and huge storms. Are all of these horrors being caused by human-induced global warming?

Global Warming is a huge problem for the environment. The earth’s temperature has risen about 1-degree Fahrenheit since 1900 the temperatures are continuing to rise setting record temperature (Biello). This image is a public service announcement to turn off lights because it is a cause to global warming. In the image a penguin is pulling on a plug to turn out a light. This image evokes an emotional response because it has a baby penguin looking scared behind its mom, while the ice they are on is melting. It also illustrates a point that leaving lights on can cause global warming because it states it in the text. The light shining on the penguins looks like it is melting the ice they are standing on. I selected this image because it caught my eye and then made me read the text, which shows that it is an effective PSA. I also think global warming is a problem and I did not know that leaving lights on made such a big impact. This image can be analyzed by looking at the six rhetorical factors: character and action, setting, point of view, use of color, special effects, and image presentation.

Gore uses a chart that shows how carbon dioxide and temperature correlate. When carbon dioxide rises, so does the temperature. At the time of the documentary, the carbon dioxide level was higher than it has ever been. He also uses a chart to show the ten hottest years in history, at that point in time, they all occurred within 14 years before. He places a higher thought of the two charts and other unmentioned, by saying that they were before unseen by the public. In addition to humor, anecdotes, expert testimony, and quantitative data to prove his point, he also throws just a few plain old facts at us. For example, Gore tells us that 200 towns and cities in the west have broken temperature records, and that science textbooks have had to be rewritten because it was before thought impossible for a hurricane to take place in the South-Atlantic, but then there was one. The hurricane was caused by warming of waters ocean wide. Al uses his variety of vehicles to present information to his advantage.

Media coverage of climate change has effects on public attitude on the issue, as it mediates scientific opinion on climate change. The media uses interactions between climate science, policy, statistical scientific texts, data, scientific language and the appearances of scientific personalities. Such as work and stories from scientists that are personally known. It is clear that science and policy shape media reporting and public understanding. Whether people believe in it or not is their

Furthermore, to support its arguments and increase the credibility of its claims, the documentary changes details of characters’ studies into some anecdotes, which makes it easier and more interesting for the audience to connect with their causes. The story of how Gore was first motivated to research global warming issues by his professor Roger Ravelle, together with the scientific studies made in Antarctica by his friends when measuring carbon dioxide levels over centuries, are only a few examples of the greatness and power of the documentary.

The problem that the pro- global warming theorists have created is that of social standing and little else. While there may be scientific backing to support some of the theory, the media presents the problem with great sensationalism. Global warming and energy conservation has thus become a trend and losses some of its validity through this. The scare tactics used by the media to “promote awareness” are just that, a linguistic ploy to gain favor. “Awareness of this global threat reinforced public concern and environmental problems and thereby provided environmental activists, scientists, and policy makers with new momentum in their efforts to promote environmental protection.” (McCright, 2000) This statement draws line to the potential benefits that would be received if the pro-global warming theorists were to draw enough attention to the issue. Driven by social empowerment and conviction to environmental protection, these activists misrepresent the actual threat and paint it as being much more

Climate change has been a subject of discussion in the media for many years, supported with the use of arguments against oil polluting the environment and extreme scare tactics of Polar ice caps flooding civilians backyards. The issue has been ignored by the majority of lay people as seeming too complicated, and with all the conflicting information in the media in the past, who can blame them? However, scientifically, climate change and what perpetrates it is fairly simple to understand and society as a whole is beginning to come to a clear consensus on climate change. Thanks in part to more readily available forms of media and information, people have become cognizant of the fact that climate change is a legitimate problem which requires immediate amelioration. While this may seem melodramatic, society is realizing that climate change is an issue which can no longer be denied if the human race wishes to continue.

Through his research, McCright proves that that there is sizable political divide between liberals/Democrats and conservatives/Republicans on the issue of global warming, which consequently has caused the divide between the public. The constant flow of political messages and media coverage of political debates, especially those concerning climate change, highly contribute to the growing divide between the public. Americans’ political orientations, moderate educational attainment and self-reported understanding are completely consistent with the predictions of the politicians’ hypothesis and information-processing theory. Given the bifurcated flow of conflicting information on climate change from the politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, ideological and partisan camps in the general public receive completely different information on climate change, which reinforces their existing political differences. This provides strong evidence of both ideological and political polarization on climate change beliefs and concern over the past decade. It demonstrates that since political ideologies so heavily influence people’s opinions and

A technique that Gore used to get his message across to the readers was that the tone of the story was both motivational and disgusted. Throughout the story Gore tone was disgusted in that he was baffled on how we could have let global warming start in the first place. Another thing that Gore did was that he used real life examples of the catastrophic events that happened in our world such as hurricane Katrina that was a category 5 hurricane that killed a lot of people. Another thing Gore did was that he did not just talk about catastrophic events that happened in the United States he talked about events that were happening across the world such as record rainfall that happened in India that killed more than one thousand people. Gore did this to not only captivate America but help captivate the world because as a whole we can help stop Global Warming.

Throughout history climates have drastically changed. There have been shifts from warm climates to the Ice Ages (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009, p.204). Evidence suggests there have been at least a dozen abrupt climate changes throughout the history of the earth. There are a few suspected reasons for these past climate changes. One reason may be that asteroids hitting the earth and volcanic eruptions caused some of them. A further assumption is that 22-year solar magnetic cycles and 11-year sunspot cycles played a part in the changes. A further possibility is that a regular shifting in the angle of the moon orbiting earth causing changing tides and atmospheric circulation affects the global climate (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009,

Over 35 years ago, climatologist Wally Broecker coined the term global warming in a paper outlining the trends that he was noticing with temperature and C02 levels (Stefan). Ever since then, the debate has heated up on the controversy of global warming. Politicians have even used the issue to boost their campaigns. Some question whether the earth’s temperature is rising at an unusual rate. Scientists perform experiments from glacial ice to observe the correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Scientists have changed the debate over the years from debating whether global warming was actually happening to the current debate about what is causing global warming. Therefore, the term global warming in this paper refers to

As human beings, we need to respect the environment in which we live. This is important to greater our future and that of others to follow. Very few people realize that their daily behaviors have a direct impact on the environment, the atmosphere in particular. By emitting harmful gasses into the air on a daily basis is one of the main reasons of such climate changes. People notice such changes and yet don't do anything to help the situation. Wee don't realize the risks that such changes in temperature pose. Rather than trying to conserve gas or taking cold showers, we still go on through our daily activities reluctant to change that will in time benefit the earth. By conserving gas

The main limitation of the article is that the author's name was not listed on the page. Also, even though the information in the article was very accurate and could be corroborated with other sites, the article website is not considered extremely reputable. The majority of the text is objective and factual although the author also included various opinions in the introduction. This was done to make the global warming issue more riveting, urgent and consequential so readers would be influenced to help avert the major effects of global warming. Nevertheless, the article is considered very accurate, well explained and the information is