April 10, 2008
Inconvenient truths about Al Gore’s gift of the gab
Ever since his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has been viewed as one of the world’s most persuasive public speakers. So when his new climate change lecture was premiered on Ted, a website dedicated to “inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers”, earlier this week, I decided to pick it apart to see how it worked.
Like many people, I was impressed by An Inconvenient Truth. I’d even stood in line to hear Mr Gore speak in New York last May (this was deeply hypocritical, given that I had jetted in from Paris for an emission-heavy long weekend in Manhattan - unless getting him to sign a DVD counted as a carbon offset).
It was my hope that a close analysis of his new slideshow might be useful to public speakers in the business world. Having viewed it three times - and watched An Inconvenient Truth yet again for context - I think I have been able to identify four key elements to the performance. But after studying his verbal and visual tricks in detail, I’m not sure I’d queue to see him again.
1. Jokey self-deprecation
Mr Gore gets an audience on his side by gently mocking himself. He did this at the start of An Inconvenient Truth by declaring: “I used to be the next president of the United States.” He also does it during the Ted talk, describing how one woman had told him that he’d look like Al Gore if he dyed his hair black.
A couple of years ago, this self-deprecation was disarming. Post-Nobel peace prize, it sounds a touch insincere. Telling a story about a woman who thinks he looks like Al Gore only underlines how famous Al Gore is. It would have been genuine self-deprecation if she had mistaken him for Walter Mondale.
2. Inspired comparisons
Parables and analogies are Al Gore’s most powerful verbal weapons. His trick is to link things he doesn’t like to things that are almost universally repugnant. Want to convey how oil addiction will disgust subsequent generations? Explain how cigarette smoking was once mainstream.
The same dynamic is at work in the new Ted talk when he dismisses oil-bearing tar sands and shale rock as ”subprime carbon assets”, adding that ”junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and their legs collapse”. Both powerful images.
3. Slippery slides
Mr Gore uses slides like bludgeons. Forget nuance: it seems that a graph is only allowed to appear on the screen behind him if it has a gradient of more than 45 degrees. He is also fond of broad-brush graphics that show things disappearing, declining or changing colour without being clouded by context.
There was a textbook example in the Ted talk: a map showing the over-fishing of international waters between 1950 and 2000. Stage by stage, the waters went from blue to pink but it wasn’t clear what statistical change this was supposed to signify.
That is not to say he is misleading his audience, it is just that his slides derive a lot of their force from visual impact - look, the sea has turned pink! must be bad! - rather than the reasoned analysis he otherwise advocates.
4. Road-testing
At the start of the Ted talk, Mr Gore declares that he had delivered his old climate change slide-show about 2,000 times, warning people that they shouldn’t expect too much from the new presentation he was about to deliver for the first time. It turns out that this wasn’t false modesty: it does feel like a work in progress. But this only emphasises how his old, ultra-slick routine had benefited from being honed night after night.
At the very least, one can only hope that he will refine his new speech’s clunky closing exhortation: “We are the generation about which 1,000 years from now philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future. Let’s do that.”
Mr Gore’s 20-minute talk, followed by a Q&A session, can be viewed here.
SATURDAY MORNING UPDATE: I’ve had to disable comments after realising that a conspiracy theory website had linked to this post and was now driving most of the traffic. I’d also just like to repeat that the post was not in any way an attempt to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change. All I was trying to do was look at Al Gore’s public speaking style and see what lessons other public speakers could take away from it. Perhaps it was a mistake to analyse the delivery outside the context of the problem.
Dear Sir
Posted by: Esther Phillips | April 11th, 2008 at 10:40 am | Report this commentFrankly I don’t mind which technique Al Gore uses to get the message through as long as he does and that is the important thing. What has Marketing given the world - lack of restraint and wide-spread discontentment? As for reflection? - Nobody has time for such a useless pastime. Why are we constantly being sold the idea that increasing wealth is the key to happiness? Frankly I see brokers as dysfunctional junkies not as anything to be admired, and business leaders as blackmailers. As soon as things don’t go their way they throw the dummy out of the pram and threaten to leave the country. As for bankers in 1929 they had the decency to throw themselves out of windows now they have the blooming cheek to speak out against regulation. Politicians? Well I shall not even go there.
Economists should know that finite resources cannot be divided by exponentially growing numbers but solutions such as GM foods and bio-fuels look to me to be the environmental equivalent of CDOs. I don’t suppose this will get published but I hope they will pass my note on to you. Who am I? Just somebody who has plenty of common sense and hence didn’t “make it big”. But you obviously are in touch with public speakers all around the world, so it would be nice if you could get them to iterate something intelligent for once - Like what is truly important in life? How do we achieve happier societies, shouldn’t we look at world population? starting of course with population in the countries where footprints are the largest - instead of how do we sell more of the same?
Sir,
Regardless of your point of view, effective public communication is dependent on spin. Like gamesmanship in sport, or enlightened use of body language in a job interview, the true honesty to which you alude in your article doesn’t exist in real life.
It would be great if humankind was able to gather and analyse facts to arrive at sensible conclusions on their own. Unfortunately, as a century of consumerism has shown, our modern society consists largely of sheep who need to be spoon fed. Al Gore is just employing the same marketing philosophy championed and honed by those very corporations who are the vanguard of our high carbon economy. Integrity and truth are noble ideals, but have very little place in today’s marketing and communications departments. Why should environmentalists accept the handicap of unbridled honesty?
The simple axiom is that if the the delivery is ineffective, the message is irrelevant.
Yours sincerely,
Rory Galvin
Posted by: rory galvin | April 11th, 2008 at 12:04 pm | Report this commentSometime i wonder how we got to this point as a race, whenever any one try to do smething good for the society,we always find a way to shoot him down, Al Gore stood up for what he belief in, the truth(although it is not convinient for the corporate world and some of us).He went to present his belief (supported by scientific proof) to us, the people the corporate world included, in the manner we would best understand this finding, how this has constitute a breach of the truth i do not know.Wake up citizen of the world, listen to the message and not how the message is delivered.To get a clearer picture on how important Al Gore message will be to human existence in the coming years read a book called HIGH NOON by J.F Rischard formerly of the World bank
Posted by: osu akande LONDON | April 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm | Report this commentAnother common term for these techniques is demagogery.
And as H.L. Mencken said: the urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
Posted by: Andre Bijkerk | April 11th, 2008 at 2:44 pm | Report this commentI can’t understand the reason of writing an article criticizing Al Gore’s lecturing skills. Does this as any relevance with the issue? For sure no, thus, why write it?
Posted by: Karla, from Sweden | April 11th, 2008 at 2:50 pm | Report this commentI’m not sure Gore’s techniques are irrelevant. Let’s just say for example that he manipulated figures - say conveniently avoiding the issues that might challenge some of his points, then I think it would be clearly relevant to ask questions.
Similarly, some of the ways of the UN climate change body (can’t remember the exact name) is using to get its message across amounts to little more than bullying tactics and brainwashing. (i only have a second hand view, but it seems several scientists have complained that their work had been edited)
Whether the cause is just (or right), I don’t think it means anything can go.
On climate change specifically, I’m not denying it, the scientific evidence etc… I just think history is full of example when the world was so convinced it was right that it burnt or killed others who thought differently. (the world is flat, Copernicus etc…) Isn’t sensible to keep the research going on the subject, to let scientists do their job properly, and if there is evidence that points against the (now) commonly held view on climate change to research that further instead of brushing it under the carpet.
Yes we definitely need to take some actions on it, but equally things in life are rarely black and white.
As for this post, why do some have an issue with it? surely it is right for someone to express their opinion on Mr Gore’s presentation techniques.
Posted by: Anon | April 11th, 2008 at 3:14 pm | Report this commentThe environmental issues are very sensitive, let me remind us Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London approach to congestion charges to get traffic under control in London. The same is true about All Gores efforts to promote the Inconvenient truth globally. I am confident that all these initiatives can be understood and must be supported without any doubts, but the adaptation of these initiatives has to be conducted through the education of people rather than the forceful enforcement.
Posted by: Viktor O. Ledenyov | April 11th, 2008 at 3:23 pm | Report this commentAfter admitting to a bit of hero worship, that Gore’s facts all seemed to be in order, that he had no disagreement with them and most importantly that our environment is in fact under attack by our own consumerism, Mr Jones proceeds to analyze his presentation in great detail as though that were important somehow. Almost as though the ‘method’ and refinement of details somehow changed the importance of the issue - or maybe Gore’s ethics, sincerity or dedication to principle.
Posted by: blurider | April 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm | Report this commentLacking for something constructive to offer to the argument - perhaps even something to occupy his hands and mind, Jones might have tried the study of the fiddle or to avoid the iconic image… perhaps tatting?
Broad-brush graphics out-of-context, though wrong, is not only the sin of Al Gore, but also almost all high-level managers everywhere. Their subordinates rigourously check the data and understand all the nuances in the trends etc., then the manager comes along and over-simplifies it, for himself or herself, and for their high-level meetings.
Posted by: Jeffrey Lam | April 11th, 2008 at 6:33 pm | Report this commentWe must remember: he is not addressing only scientists and other techically-minded people. Though clearly having a scientific background, he is not a scientist by profession. He needs to explain it science to all his listeners, regardless of their scientific ability or education. And he needs to do it without putting them to sleep or losing them in the technical data.
I daresay it is difficult to get the balance right: between being thorough, rigourous and as accurate as possible, and being interesting and down-to-earth enough to get the message across. I concede that he probably got the balance wrong by erring on the side of getting the message across. But public speaking is not an exact science.
in the scene when he show the huge graph (CO2 and temperature in the last million years) he hints at how they ‘almost’ match… if you look at the same graph (same data Gore used - reading from the ice-cores) on a scale of 1000 years, you would see that CO2 follows(!) temperature for about 700 years - that is you see an increase of temperature and 700 years later CO2 increases. that’s the opposite of what he hints at.
he’s just another politician after power - being in control of global CO2 taxation, capping emissions in developing nations… giving us the idea that we are the culprits - you and me, the simple people. big corporations are not mentioned once. are we the ones that make those corporations trash the environment? are we allowing them to do so? who allowed them up to now? who allowed the crisis (supposed there is one) to happen in the first place?
there is also lot of data suggesting they are already manipulating the weater, spraying aerosols into our skys, daily since they ‘90. what about global dimming? also never mentioned.
he’s suggesting we, the common people, should pay for the mess they did/are doing.
Posted by: Joseph F. Higgs | April 12th, 2008 at 12:46 am | Report this commentHello
Why oh why doesn’t people like al gore emphasise OVERPOPULATION as the greatest threat to all life on this fragile planet.
Posted by: Matt Lee | April 12th, 2008 at 1:08 am | Report this commentWe HAVE to REDUCE the number of people on this earth to the extent that it is in harmony with nature.
Many evils stem from OVERPOPULATION including crime and environmental degradation.
Earth’s resources are finite and so is it’s capacity to sustain life.
According to a very good source, we need to make law a world wide birth rate check and have 7 year birth cycle with the 1st year, only those surnames starting with A,B,C,D are allowed to give birth and so on the following year.
The irrational and very destructive advice given by politicians, the pope and business leaders that we need to increase the number of people is done so for economic reasons but THINK if you sink the titanic, what would be the point of straightening out the deck chairs.
Al Gore and those alike him, please for the sake of this earth let’s humanely decrease our world population and not through wars and get this word out.
Thank you
I have only one bone to pick with Al Gore. He never mentions an inescapable chemical fact about hydrocarbons. That fact is that when a molecule of methane(the simplest hydrocarbon) burns (combines with oxygen), the products are TWO molecules of water and ONE molecule of carbon dioxide. We are adding water to the atmosphere at twice the rate we are increasing carbon dioxide concentration. Yes ,of course plants take up carbon dioxide and water and make simple sugars which in turn make cellulose for plant structure but it seems to me that if Al Gore is going to warn us about increased CO2, why not warn us about decreased O2 (twice the rate) and increased H2O (also twice the rate)?That is right folks. That’s less O2 for you to breath and more water in the atmosphere.
Posted by: Anthony Gonzalez | April 12th, 2008 at 1:45 am | Report this commentSome of you may think that is okay. I don’t think it’s okay because it is cherry picking and that isn’t science.
Finally, atmospheric science has just made an earth shaking discovery that hasn’t made the news; A genetically modified organism (Pseoudomonas Syringea bacterium) is causing drought. This bacterium lives in the atmosphere all over the world. They even found samples in the air in Antartica. What’s the big deal? Well, back in 1988 Monsanto engineered this bacterium to be frost free to lengthen the strawberry plant growing season. You see, they had found that the bacteria increased crystalliztion of frost on plants. So they fixed that! The problem is that it turns out that this humble bacterium is the world’s atmospheric engine to condense water and cause rain rather than dust particles as scientists had recently believed. As this GMO frost free version supplants the one God made, we end up with less and less rain everywhere. Monsanto would disappear as a corporation if this got out. This was the FIRST GMO turned loose in the wild. The RAMIFICATIONS ARE INCALCULABLE SO MONSANTO IS TRYING TO HIDE IT. AL GORE SAYS HE CARES ABOUT THE WORLD. WHY DOESN’T HE GO AFTER MONSANTO? OR IS THIS ALL ABOUT BEING A WHORE FOR THE NUCLEAR POWER LOBBY?
I don’t don’t care about what anybody says either way. My reasoning for going with the global warming band wagon is that I don’t want their statements to be painfully evident as truth in an overheated world thats going to hell in a hand basket even faster than it is now. I’d rather just have wasted a bit, than have screwed the world over. I guess waste is too harsh a term, at the very least we would get cleaner air and I don’t see anybody advocating breathing in pollution.
Posted by: Flem | April 12th, 2008 at 8:09 am | Report this comment