This past Sunday, everyone went crazy when Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for Best Actor after six nominations.

It was the most tweeted minute of an Oscars show — and highly anticipated amongst many — but some are criticizing DiCaprio for his acceptance speech.

He went through the normal thanks and appreciation for his co-workers, friends and family, but he also brought up his perceived reality of climate change.

He attempted to tie in climate change with his experiences starring in The Revenant by saying that the “production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now.”

While there is no doubt in my mind that climate change is real, DiCaprio inaccurately claims that the reason they had to move locations is due to global climate change. 

Even if “2015 [was] the hottest year in recorded history” as he claims in his speech, there are other environmental reasons that validate the argument for climate change such as the weather patterns in Alberta.

According to CBCNews, what happened in Alberta was a phenomenon known as a “chinook.”

This chinook frequently happens during the winter where warm winds come through southern Alberta and bring summer conditions. It is not something new to the area and it is unrelated to climate change.

While I do commend DiCaprio for talking about climate change in his speech, I do think that he should have taken the time to actually learn about what was going on in Alberta before he claimed that it was climate change that caused the summer conditions.

Millions of people were watching the speech live and many more have watched it since, and the fact that he has a false premise about climate change in his speech does not bode well for those advocating for climate change.

The reason that the movement to protect the earth is slow to progress is because many people do not believe in climate change.

If people keep going out there and saying inaccurate claims while advocating for climate change, they are not setting the movement forward; they are holding it back.

DiCaprio was attempting to take his precious time on air to help a cause that he thinks “is the most urgent threat facing our entire species,” but it is also coming back to bite him.

Many people are taking what he said and just focusing on the detail about Alberta. He did talk about more than just that, but when one wrong claim comes to light, none of the right ones are heard.

When we talk about climate change and the effects of it, we need to be certain that what we are saying is true. Otherwise, else we are not helping the movement; we are hurting it.