Truth Claims in Climate Change: An Inconvenient Truth as Philosophy of Communication.

Popular discourse about environmental crisis is implicated in numerous philosophical issues about truth, its verification, and its communication to different audiences. These divergent positions on truth generate practical consequences regarding how we issue, evaluate and respond to forewarnings of urgent threat. This paper identifies four popular positions on truth telling and forewarning in global climate change - the positivist, the propagandist, the constructivist, and consensus - to clarify how these different views on truth underpin rhetorical strategies, situate various representational devices, and position those making claims to the truth. Taking An Inconvenient Truth as a point of departure, this paper looks at a number of these strategies and devices in their role of forwarding or contesting truth claims about climate change. Situating this film within the last 15-20 years of climate change disputation in the United State, the limitation of certain philosophical view of truth for "speaking" truth become evident. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]