These people act as authorities as well. If the alternative is to appeal to another authority, then it seems like choosing not to change opinions is a reasonable course of action for somebody who is already convinced on the basis of authority. The public case for concern about climate change has been marred with incessant exaggeration (for example, lady liberty was supposed to be semi-submerged by now, and the north pole was supposed to be completely free of ice by 2013). The source of many Americans' (and Canadians') skepticism of climate predictions is a continuous outpouring of exaggeration and fabrication, especially on the part of Al Gore (whose film was shown to a significant proportion of Canadian school children [and I imagine, American school children as well] in the oughts).
Citation needed
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/
I trust Snopes here since they are desperately attempting to cast Gore's statements in a positive light. They choose to address whether Gore "predicted" this event, rather than whether he disseminated the prediction. If the question is whether he confidently disseminated this prediction, the answer is a resounding yes.
The IPCC publish estimates generally between 2035 (on the very low end) and 2100+ (generally "possibly before the end of the 21st century", i.e. possibly later) for the arctic ice cap to melt almost completely.
Where is they citation of Al Gore claiming the arctic will be ice free? Everything in that source is prefaced with terms like "could Be" and "as soon as", which you seem to be interpreting as a complete certainty. If I said I had cancer and could die as early 2018 then I wouldn't be wrong on New Years day 2019.
Where's the citation of the Statue of Liberty being underwater? Even with an ice free arctic this wouldn't happen.
> Where's the citation of the Statue of Liberty being underwater?
The Statue of Liberty thing I actually don't remember the source of. I remember it as a clip in a climate documentary where the statue of liberty is visualized as being about a quarter submerged (note I said "semi-submerged", not "underwater", funny how the broken telephone works even when you can presumably see everything on screen at once).
As the questions are political, you need rhetoric. As unfortunately as it may be, it should be obvious by now to everyone following politics that being "polite" is not a winning recipe in the game.