Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth (Part I)

I was challenged a few months ago by a reader on here. At the time, I was discussing some of the articles that had come out critical of An Inconvenient Truth. Familyman, one of the regular readers on here, challenged me to see the movie and make my own decisions. I took him up on his challenge.

I want to lay out my thought process before I review Mr. Gore’s movie. It was very important for me to be as fair to this movie as I could be. If I saw An Inconvenient Truth, and thought it was a good movie, I wanted to say that here. If I saw it and didn’t like it, I wanted to be able to explain why. Because I want to take some time and explain my thoughts before I saw the movie and how I hoped to be as impartial as I could be in reviewing it.

For a full discussion of my thoughts on man-made global warming, refer to my article under the same name from a few days ago. In a nut-shell, I don’t believe man-made global warming is the greatest catastrophe facing us. I also question whether it is even an issue. I think much more research still needs to be done before this is placed in the hands of policy makers. I also question Al Gore’s motives in pushing this issue. If man-made global warming is such a crisis, why didn’t Mr. Gore do more about it while he was Vice President? Why didn’t the United States ratify Kyoto under Clinton / Gore? I hoped the movie would address this.

Based on what I had heard about An Inconvenient Truth I was expecting a documentary explaining the science and theory of global warming. I expected the movie to explain both sides of the global warming argument, but to be tilted towards one side. My understanding going into the movie is that it was suppose to make us more concerned about global warming.

In order to keep as much bias as possible out of my review, I watched it the first time without taking any notes, and simply watched the movie. I gave the movie a few days to settle in my mind, and then watched it again. The second time through, I paused the movie and made notes as I went.

When I finally got a copy of An Inconvenient Truth, I also happened to be reading the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. There is a chapter in that book that discusses the movie. I waited to read that chapter until I had seen the movie. I didn’t want it coloring my opinion any more than it already was.

Because I have done a lot of discussion on here about the science and “consensus” with global warming, I wanted to keep my criticism of the science behind the movie to a minimum. For an in depth discussion of some of the science, and the comments that has lead too, click on my global warming tag.

I will post the review itself next, but I wanted my regular readers to know how the review was developed.