An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power brings Al Gore’s message of the urgency of addressing climate change to film audiences. Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, produced by Participant Media, with music composed by Jeff Beal, the film will be distributed by Paramount Pictures—they hope to wide audiences. The film interweaves efforts to address climate change since Vice President Gore’s defeat sixteen years ago with strikingly beautiful and disconcerting images of the collapse of the polar ice caps and drought-stricken areas across the globe. People interested in philosophy should see this film not only for what it says about the environment and politics but also for what it says about truth and how to present it.

The story begins and ends with the challenges of climate deniers. As Gore is defeated for the presidency, a satellite with instruments to measure effects of climate change is mothballed. When I wrote this post on the first full day of the Trump Presidency, the White Housewebsite不再提及气候变化，而是以“能源独立”和“消除有害和不必要的政策，如气候行动计划和美国水域规则”为主题。Breitbart引用“天气频道创始人”的话说这部电影是“另一个科学怪物”。作为对否定者的一个激动人心的回应，影片描述了戈尔为气候活动人士所做的所有培训(超过1万名学员)，以及去年在巴黎促成气候协议的努力。戈尔的工作包括说服一家美国太阳能公司向印度提供其知识产权，以帮助满足印度对廉价能源需求的合理担忧。(《巴黎协定》签订时，印度估计有3亿户家庭没有电力供应，印度计划新建400座燃煤发电厂。)

这部电影的副标题是“权力的真相”。这是一个多层次的双关语，指的是告诉政治领导人和与能源行业有关的富裕政治捐助者人类对气候影响的真相。它也是对传统能源的直接对抗，描述了风能、太阳能等可再生能源的增长和经济效率。这是对贵格会口号“对权力说真话”的重复。但这只是对后者的一个重复，因为它省略了对口语的引用。

Climate science is not always easy to understand. It employs inferences from statistics (given that sixteen of the last seventeen years were the hottest yearson record, how likely is it that the explanation is a random shift in the weather rather than human-caused emissions?) and complex modeling (under different assumptions, what are thelikely rises in sea levels以及它们对迈阿密或加尔各答等沿海城市的影响?)这里也有一些棘手的科学哲学问题，比如关于模型地位的问题。但《不便的续集》使用了视觉图像来产生多层面的吸引力。观众将看到像炸弹一样爆炸的冰川，20年前还只是冰山的格陵兰岛的线条，冰川融化后的洪流在残留的冰层下流动，加速冰川运动。他们还将看到阿尔·戈尔(Al Gore)爬上12英尺高的摇摇晃晃的梯子，进入瑞士的一间小屋，以测量格陵兰冰川的变化。小屋曾经直接坐落在冰面上，但现在坐落在露出水面的塔上，这些塔被深深钻了进去，为它提供支撑。观众还将看到1972年从太空拍摄的地球照片，在所有岛屿的脆弱中——这是继去年拍摄的一张新照片之后的最后一张这样的照片。戈尔训练气候活动家的一个前提——也是这部电影的一个前提——是视觉图像不仅能说服而且能证明真理。尽管我很喜欢这部电影，但最后一部是对哲学的特别挑战;毕竟，反堕胎主义者多年来一直使用胎儿在子宫中的视觉图像来证明他们的观点。 There’s a way to distinguish these: the anti-abortionists are trying to convince people of a normative inference (because the fetus looks like a baby it should be treated like one) and the film is presenting evidence of a scientific hypothesis. Nonetheless, the reasoning here is complex.

After the screening, Gore appeared foran audience Q & A.He emphasized that the film’s hopefulness about the grown of alternative energy is continuing. India has geometrically increased its development of solar power in the last year and is no longer planning to build coal-fired plants. Gore stressed the need for continuing activism, as much on the local as on the national level. One of the featured developments in the film are cities, even in conservative areas of the country, achieving energy independence. And he noted that our political system was designed for a time when print media was the primary mode of communication. Print, unlike television, is a medium with low entry barriers; television ushered in an era of big money in politics. Social media is destabilizing this situation and Gore hopes he will too.