With all the sobering projections about the Earth's climate, former Vice President Al Gore probably wishes he could clone himself a thousand times to present slide shows about warming temperatures and rising greenhouse gases, such as the lectures documented in his award-winning 2006 film, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Instead, Gore has achieved the next best thing by personally training 1,000 volunteers -- including two Cornellians and a researcher and an educator affiliated with Cornell -- to give at least 10 presentations within a year. The training sessions, dubbed The Climate Project, were held in Nashville, Tenn., for an assorted group that included teachers and workers in industry, local and federal government. There was also a beauty pageant contestant and a starting linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles.

"It was like being in a university class with Al Gore as the professor," said Caren Cooper, a research associate in the Lab of Ornithology's Bird Population Studies and Citizen Science program, whose trip to the workshops was funded by the lab. "He went over slide by slide and explained the science behind each one and discussed where there was consensus and where there was doubt."

Both Cooper and Katherine McEachern '09, a design and environmental analysis major who also attended the training session, April 9-11, said Gore was very involved in the whole process. He gave a presentation the first day, walked everyone through the entire process the second day and then joined everyone for dinner that night.

In addition, a public-speaking coach and consultant lectured on how to communicate effectively to a large audience. During the sessions, the trainees also fielded technical science-based questions as well as off-the-wall questions based on misinformation.

"They [the trainers] really knew the commonly asked questions," said McEachern. Each trainee also was given a copy of Gore's slide presentation from the film (with some additional slides), but they agreed not to use the material for profit, share it or use it for training purposes.

Trainees were chosen from applications made through the Climate Project's Web site that included questions about prior experiences with presenting, organizing and outreach.

Cooper, who recently made climate-change presentations at the Kendal at Ithaca retirement community and Corning Community College, plans to give the presentation to church groups and at a science cabaret during the summer.

McEachern, who is involved with the Cornell chapter of Kyoto Now!, said she will give her first presentation to her mother's seventh-grade class. "They will be the toughest audience to keep engaged," she said.

"Scientists have told us we have 10 years to change the trajectory we are on," said McEachern. She added that scientists estimate that to reverse warming trends, atmospheric carbon dioxide must be reduced by 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050, which can be reached with 2 percent reductions per year. "It's a lifelong commitment for me," she said.

Three simple ways people can help reduce global climate change, she said, are driving less, eating local foods and buying only compact fluorescent bulbs, which use less than half the energy of conventional bulbs and last seven times longer.

Maiken Winter, a visiting fellow at Cornell, and Rob Ross, the Paleontological Research Institution's director of education, also were trained at the Climate Project.