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Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025

Do errors in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ disprove climate change?

Sue Bin Park, Skeptical Science
no

While Gore’s 2006 documentary proved incorrect about the extent and timeline of some predictions, it does not negate the reality, confirmed by decades of peer-reviewed evidence, that humans are warming the planet.

One erroneous claim is that Kilimanjaro’s ice loss was driven mainly by warming. Research now indicates sublimation and local dryness as dominant causes. 

Another is that sea levels could rise by 20 feet in the near future as ice sheets face imminent collapse – outcomes scientists expect over longer timescales than the documentary stated.

These errors do not change the general facts: glaciers worldwide are melting and seas are rising due to human-emitted heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

A 2007 U.K. court review found the film “substantially founded upon scientific research and fact” but required schoolteachers to clarify speculative or exaggerated points for students. 

Inaccuracies in Gore’s presentation do not disprove the broad, robust scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.

See a full discussion of this at Skeptical Science

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Skeptical Science is a non-profit science education organization. Our goal is to remove a roadblock to climate action by building public resilience against climate misinformation. We achieve this by publishing debunking of climate myths as well as providing resources for educators, communicators, scientists, and the general public. Skeptical Science was founded and is led by John Cook, a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.

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