An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth
File:Aninconvenienttruth.jpg Promotional poster for An Inconvenient Truth
Directed by	Davis Guggenheim
Written by	Al Gore (teleplay)
Produced by	Lawrence Bender Scott Z. Burns Laurie David Co-Producer & Line Producer: Lesley Chilcott Executive Producer: Jeffrey D. Ivers Jeff Skoll Ricky Strauss Diane Weyermann
Starring	Al Gore
Cinematography	Davis Guggenheim Bob Richman
Edited by	Jay Cassidy Dan Swietlik
Music by	Michael Brook
Production companies	Lawrence Bender Productions Participant Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Classics
Release date	May 24, 2006
Running time	94 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	US$+1,000,000
Box office	US$49,047,567 (worldwide)

An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming and inspire them to take action.

The film chronicles Gore's travels, crisscrossing the globe presenting a comprehensive slide show on climate change that, by his own estimate, he's given more than a thousand times.

The idea to document his efforts came from Laurie David who saw his presentation at a town-hall meeting on global warming which coincided with the opening of The Day after Tomorrow. David was so inspired by Gore's slide show that she, with Lawrence Bender, met with Davis Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film.

The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened in New York and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006. The film was released on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment on November 21, 2006. A companion book by Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, reached #1 on the paperback nonfiction New York Times bestseller list on July 2, 2006.

The documentary was a critical and box-office success, winning Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and for Best Original Song. The film also earned $49 million at the box office worldwide, becoming the fifth-highest-grossing documentary film to date in the United States (in nominal dollars, from 1982 to the present), after Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins, Earth and Sicko.

An Inconvenient Truth has been credited for raising public awareness of climate change and reenergizing the environmental movement.

Synopsis

An Inconvenient Truth focuses on Al Gore and his travels in support of his efforts to educate the public about the severity of the climate crisis. Gore says, "I've been trying to tell this story for a long time and I feel as if I've failed to get the message across." The film documents a Keynote presentation (dubbed "the slide show") that Gore has presented throughout the world. It intersperses Gore's exploration of data and predictions regarding climate change and its potential for disaster with his own life story.

Gore begins the film by presenting several majestic photographs of the Earth taken from multiple space missions, Earthrise and The Blue Marble. Gore notes that these photos dramatically transformed the way we see the Earth; helping spark modern environmentalism.

Following this, Gore shares vivid anecdotes that inspired his passion for the issue, including his college education with early climate expert Roger Revelle at Harvard University, his sister's death from lung cancer and his young son's near-fatal car accident. Gore recalls a story from his grade school years, where a fellow student asked his geography teacher about continental drift; in response, the teacher called the concept the "most ridiculous thing [he'd] ever heard." Gore ties this conclusion to the assumption that "the world is so big is that we can't possibly have any lasting, harmful impact on the Earth's environment." For comic effect, Gore uses a clip from the Futurama episode "Crimes of the Hot" to describe the greenhouse effect. Gore refers to his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 United States presidential election as a "hard blow" yet subsequently "brought into clear focus, the mission [he] had been pursuing for all these years."

The Pale Blue Dot, a Voyager 1 photo showing Earth (circled) as a single pixel from 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometres) away, is featured in the film. Al Gore points out that all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home.

In the slide show, Gore reviews the scientific opinion on climate change, discusses the politics and economics of global warming, and describes the consequences he believes global climate change will produce if the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is not significantly reduced in the very near future. A centerpoint of the film is his examination of the annual temperature and CO₂ levels for the past 650,000 years in Antarctic ice core samples.

The film includes segments intended to refute critics who say that global warming is unproven or that warming will be insignificant. For example, Gore discusses the possibility of the collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or in West Antarctica, either of which could raise global sea levels by approximately 20 feet (6 m), flooding coastal areas and producing 100 million refugees. Melt water from Greenland, because of its lower salinity, could then halt the currents that keep northern Europe warm and quickly trigger dramatic local cooling there. It also contains various short animated projections of what could happen to different animals more vulnerable to climate change.

The documentary ends with Gore arguing that if appropriate actions are taken soon, the effects of global warming can be successfully reversed by releasing less CO₂ and planting more vegetation to consume existing CO₂. Gore calls upon his viewers to learn how they can help him in these efforts. Gore concludes the film by saying, "Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands, we just have to have the determination to make it happen. We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource."

During the film's end credits, a diaporama pops up on screen suggesting to viewers things at home they can do to combat climate change, including, "recycle", "speak up in your community", "try to buy a hybrid vehicle" and "encourage everyone you know to watch this movie."

Gore's book of the same title was published concurrently with the theatrical release of the documentary. The book contains additional information, scientific analysis, and Gore's commentary on the issues presented in the documentary. A 2007 documentary entitled An Update with Former Vice President Al Gore features Gore discussing additional information that came to light after the film was completed, such as Hurricane Katrina, coral reef depletion, glacial earthquake activity on the Greenland ice sheet, wildfires, and trapped methane gas release associated with permafrost melting.

Scientific basis

Gore presents the Keeling curve, which shows a pattern of steadily increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1958.

Main articles: Scientific opinion on climate change, Global warming, and Global warming controversy

The film's thesis is that global warming is real, potentially catastrophic, and human-caused. Gore presents specific data that supports the thesis, including:

• The Keeling curve, measuring CO₂ from the Mauna Loa Observatory.
• The retreat of numerous glaciers is shown in before-and-after photographs (see Retreat of glaciers since 1850).
• A study by researchers at the Physics Institute at the University of Bern and the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica presenting data from Antarctic ice cores showing carbon dioxide concentrations higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years.
• Temperature record since 1880 showing that the ten hottest years ever measured in this atmospheric record have all occurred in the last fourteen years.
• A 2004 survey by Naomi Oreskes of 928 peer-reviewed scientific articles on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003. The survey, published as an editorial in the journal Science, found that every article either supported the human-caused global warming consensus or did not comment on it.

The Associated Press contacted more than 100 climate researchers and questioned them about the film's veracity. All 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie said that Gore conveyed the science correctly. Professor Brian Soden, however, expressed concern about the coverage of topics for which there was not a scientific consensus, indicating "I thought the use of imagery from Hurricane Katrina was inappropriate and unnecessary in this regard, as there are plenty of disturbing impacts associated with global warming for which there is much greater scientific consensus." Gore cited Kerry Emanuel's 2005 report in Nature on hurricane intensity increasing with the increase of global mean temperatures.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, at the time chaired by Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, issued a press release criticizing the Associated Press's findings. Inhofe's statement that "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" appears in the film. The majority of climate researchers have rejected Inhofe's views. Eric Steig, a climate scientist writing on RealClimate, lauded the film's science as "remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research." Michael Shermer, scientific author and founder of The Skeptics Society, wrote in Scientific American that Gore's slide show "shocked me out of my doubting stance."

Background

Gore testifies before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on March 23, 2007.

Origins

See also: Al Gore and the environment

According to Gore, he became interested in global warming when he took a course at Harvard University with Professor Roger Revelle, one of the first scientists to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Later, when Gore was in Congress, he initiated the first congressional hearing on the subject. Gore's 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, dealing with a number of environmental topics, reached the New York Times bestseller list.

As Vice President during the Clinton Administration, Gore pushed for the implementation of a carbon tax to modify incentives to reduce fossil fuel consumption causing fossil fuel to last longer and thereby decrease emission of greenhouse gases in the short term but not long term; it was partially implemented in 1993. He helped broker the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. However, it was not ratified in the United States after a 95 to 0 vote in the Senate. The primary objections stemmed from the exemptions the treaty gives to China and India, whose industrial base and carbon footprint are growing rapidly, and fears that the exemptions would lead to further trade imbalances and offshoring arrangement with those countries.

Gore also supported the funding of the satellite called Triana, which would have provided an image of the Earth 24 hours a day, over the internet and would've acted as a barometer measuring the process of global warming. During his 2000 Presidential Campaign, Gore ran, in part, on a pledge to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

The slide show

Gore presents his global warming slide show at the University of Miami.

After his defeat in the 2000 presidential election by George W. Bush, Gore returned his focus to the topic. He edited and adapted a slide show presentation he had compiled years earlier, and began featuring the slide show in presentations on global warming across the U.S. and around the world. At the time of the film, Gore estimated he had shown the presentation more than one thousand times.

Producer Laurie David saw Gore's slide show in New York City at a global warming town-hall meeting after the May 27, 2004 premiere of The Day After Tomorrow. Gore was one of several panelists and he showed a ten-minute version of his slide show.

I had never seen it before, and I was floored. As soon as the evening's program concluded, I asked him to let me present his full briefing to leaders and friends in New York and Los Angeles. I would do all the organizing if he would commit to the dates. Gore's presentation was the most powerful and clear explanation of global warming I had ever seen. And it became my mission to get everyone I knew to see it too.

— Laurie David

Inspired, David assembled together a team, including producer Lawrence Bender and former president of eBay Jeffrey Skoll, who met with Gore about the possibility of making the slide show into a movie. It took some convincing. The slide show, she says, "was his baby, and he felt proprietary about it and it was hard for him to let go."

David said the box office returns weren't important to her. "None of us are going to make a dime." What is at stake, she says, "is, you know, the planet."

David and Bender later met with director Davis Guggenheim, to have him direct the film adaptation of his slide show. Guggenheim, who was skeptical at first, later saw the presentation for himself, stating that he was "blown away," and "left after an hour and a half thinking that global warming [was] the most important issue...I had no idea how you’d make a film out of it, but I wanted to try," he said.

In 2004, Gore contacted Duarte Design to visually enhance his presentation. The design firm "condensed his material, incorporated new data and stories and employed new media, such as video and animation."

Duarte designer, Ted Boda detailed the extensive work that went into the creation of Gore's slides: "As a designer for the presentation, Keynote was the first choice to help create such an engaging presentation. Apple's Keynote anti-aliases its fonts and graphics, scales vector objects and supports QuickTime videos easily and without any plug-ins. Duarte used a combination of Keynote's graphics and graph tools, Illustrator, Photoshop, AfterEffects (for more complex animations) and dropped in numerous videos from different sources to complete his presentation. Some of the videos dropped were up to 1920x1080 (HD)."

Production

When Bender first saw Gore's presentation, he said to himself: "‘OK, this is a movie. I know it can be made more visual, but we need to find a personal way in.' And that meant hours and hours and hours of interviews. At one point Gore said it felt like we were making “Kill Al Vol. 3.”"

"It was grueling, and we did it in a very short period of time," Bender says. "We followed him to China, we shot in Nashville, Stanford; we went all over the country. It was a lot of travel in a very short period of time. And they had to get this thing edited and cut starting in January, and ready to screen in May. That’s like a seriously tight schedule. So the logistics of pulling it off with a low budget were really difficult, and if there’s one person who gets credit, it’s Leslie Chilcott, because she really pulled it together."

Technical aspects

The majority of the movie exhibits Gore delivering his lecture to an audience at a relatively small theater in Los Angeles. Gore's presentation was delivered on a 70-foot digital screen that Bender commissioned specifically for the movie.

While the bulk of the film was shot on 4:4:4 HDCAM, according to director Guggenheim, a vast array of different film formats were used: "There’s 35mm and 16mm. A lot of the stuff on the farm I just shot myself on 8mm film. We used four Sony F950 HDCAMs for the presentation. We shot three different kinds of prosumer HD, both 30 and 24. There’s MiniDV, there’s 3200 black-and-white stills, there’s digital stills, some of them emailed on the day they were taken from as far off as Greenland. There was three or four different types of animation. One of the animators is from New Zealand and emailed me his work. There’s JPEG stuff."

Score and soundtrack

An Inconvenient Truth was scored by Michael Brook with an accompanying theme song by Melissa Etheridge. Brook explained that in the making of the soundtrack, he wanted to bring out the emotion expressed in the film: "...in Inconvenient Truth, there's a lot of information and it's kind of a lecture, in a way, and very well organized and very well presented, but it's a lot to absorb. And the director, Davis Guggenheim, wanted to have - sort of give people a little break every once in a while and say, okay, you don't have to absorb this information, you can just sort of - and it was more the personal side of Al Gore's life or how it connected to the theme of the film. And that's when there's music."

Etheridge agreed to write An Inconvenient Truth's theme song, "I Need to Wake Up" after viewing Gore's slide show.

"I was so honored he would ask me to contribute to a project that is so powerful and so important, I felt such a huge responsibility," she said. "Then I went, 'What am I going to write? What am I going to say?' " Etheridge's partner, Tammy Lynn Michaels, told her: "Write what you feel, because that's what people are going to feel."

She found the words: "I need to move, I need to wake up, I need to change, I need to shake up..."

On tour, Etheridge has urged her audiences to see the film and to act.

Etheridge's commitment to the project touched Gore. "Melissa is a rare soul who gives a lot of time and effort to causes in which she strongly believes," he said.

Etheridge received the 2006 Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I Need to Wake Up." Upon receiving the award, she noted in her acceptance speech:

Mostly I have to thank Al Gore, for inspiring us, for inspiring me, showing that caring about the Earth is not Republican or Democrat; it's not red or blue, it's all green.

Untitled

Track #	Title	Performer	Length (M:SS)
1	"River View"	Michael Brook	1:23
2	"Prof. Revelle"		2:07
3	"How Could I Spend My Time?"		4:02
4	"Katrina"		1:36
5	"Election"		2:58
6	"Farm, Pt. 1"		1:43
7	"Farm, Pt. 2"		3:04
8	"Airport"		2:14
9	"Flood"		2:15
10	"Beijing"		1:21
11	"Tobacco"		2:11
12	"1000 Slide Shows"		2:19
13	"Earth Alone"		3:30
14	"Best Unsaid"		2:40
15	"Boom"		1:58
16	"Carte Noir"		3:09

Reception

Box office

The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006. On Memorial Day weekend, it grossed an average of $91,447 per theater, the highest of any movie that weekend and a record for a documentary, though it was only playing on four screens at the time.

At the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the movie received three standing ovations. It was also screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was the opening night film at the 27th Durban International Film Festival on June 14, 2006. An Inconvenient Truth was the most popular documentary at the 2006 Brisbane International Film Festival.

The film has grossed over $24 million in the U.S. and over $49 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing documentary in the U.S. to date (after Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins, Earth and Sicko).

Al Gore has stated, "Tipper and I are devoting 100 percent of the profits from the book and the movie to a new bipartisan educational campaign to further spread the message about global warming." Paramount Classics committed 5% of their domestic theatrical gross from the film to form a new bipartisan climate action group, Alliance for Climate Protection, dedicated to awareness and grassroots organizing.

Reviews

The film received a generally positive reaction from film critics. It garnered a "certified fresh" 93% rating at Rotten Tomatoes (as of May 21, 2007), with a 94% rating from the "Cream of the Crop" reviewers. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 75, based on 32 reviews. Film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper gave the film "two thumbs up". Ebert wrote: "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."

Critic David Edelstein called the film, "One of the most realistic documentaries I've ever seen—and, dry as it is, one of the most devastating in its implications." David Remnick added that while it was "not the most entertaining film of the year...it might be the most important" and a "brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide." New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott thought the film was "edited crisply enough to keep it from feeling like 90 minutes of C-SPAN and shaped to give Mr. Gore's argument a real sense of drama," and "as unsettling as it can be," Scott continued, "it is also intellectually exhilarating, and, like any good piece of pedagogy, whets the appetite for further study." Critic Jayson Harsin declared the film's aesthetic qualities groundbreaking, as a new genre of "Powerpoint" film. In addition Harsin drew attention to its persuasive or rhetorical nature (instead of only its scientific claims), including the use of emotion in analogies to the danger of tobacco and to the universal identification with the fate of our children. NASA climatologist James Hansen said that with An Inconvenient Truth, "Al Gore may have done for global warming what Silent Spring did for pesticides. He will be attacked, but the public will have the information needed to distinguish our long-term well-being from short-term special interests."

On the other hand, several reviews criticized the film on scientific and political grounds. Journalist Ronald Bailey argued in the libertarian magazine Reason that although "Gore gets [the science] more right than wrong," he exaggerates the risks.Global warming skeptics were vocally critical of the film, such as MIT physicist Richard S. Lindzen, who wrote in a June 26, 2006 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that Gore was using a biased presentation to exploit the fears of the public for his own political gain. Some reviewers were also skeptical of Gore's intent, wondering whether he was setting himself for another Presidential run. Boston Globe writer Peter Canello criticized the "gauzy biographical material that seems to have been culled from old Gore campaign commercials." Phil Hall of Film Threat gave the film a negative review, saying "An Inconvenient Truth is something you rarely see in movies today: a blatant intellectual fraud."

In "extensive exit polling" of An Inconvenient Truth in "conservative suburban markets like Plano and Irvine (Orange County), as well as Dallas and Long Island", 92 percent rated "Truth" highly and 87 percent of the respondents said they'd recommend the film to a friend.

Awards

An Inconvenient Truth has received many different awards worldwide.

File:AlGoreWin.jpg

Gore during the Oscar acceptance speech for An Inconvenient Truth with other members of the crew

The film won the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature and Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up". It is the first documentary to win 2 Oscars and the first to win a best original song Oscar.

After winning the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, the Oscar was awarded to director Davis Guggenheim, who asked Gore to join him and other members of the crew on stage. Gore then gave a brief speech, saying:

My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue; it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That's a renewable resource. Let's renew it.

In addition, the film received numerous other accolades, including a special recognition from the Humanitas Prize, the first time the organization had handed out a Special Award in over 10 years, the 2007 Stanley Kramer Award from The Producers Guild of America, which recognizes "work that dramatically illustrates provocative social issues" and the President’s Award 2007 from The Society for Technical Communication "for demonstrating that effective and understandable technical communication, when coupled with passion and vision, has the power to educate—and change—the world." For Gore's wide-reaching efforts to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of global warming which is centerpieced in the film, Al Gore, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

The film won many other awards for Best Documentary:

Best Documentary Feature Awards/Nominations

• Chicago Film Critics Association - 2006-12-28
• Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association - 2006-12-18
• Florida Film Critics 2006 - 2006-12-22
• Kansas City Film Critics Awards 2006 2006-01-02
• Las Vegas Film Critics Society 2006 - 2006-12-18
• National Board of Review - 2006-12-06
• New York Film Critics Online - 2006-12-10
• New York Film Critics Society - 2006-12-12
• Ohio Film Critics Awards 2006 - 2007-01-11
• Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards 2006
• Online Film Critics Society 2006
• Phoenix Film Critics Circle 2006
• Satellite Awards 2006 (Nominated) 2006-12-18
• St. Louis Film Critics Awards 2006 2007-01-07
• Toronto Film Critics Association Awards 2006 (Nominated) 2006-12-19
• Utah Film Critics Awards 2006 2006-12-28
• Washington D.C. Film Critics Association 2006 2007-12-10

Best Non-Fiction:

• National Society of Film Critics - 2007-01-06

The related album also won Best Spoken Word Album at the 51st Grammy Awards.

Impact

The documentary has been generally well-received politically in many parts of the world and is credited for raising further awareness of global warming internationally, prompting calls for more government action in regard to the climate. Several colleges and high schools have begun to use the film in science curricula, though at least one US school district put temporary restrictions on its use in the classroom.

Governmental

United States

Then-president George W. Bush, when asked whether he would watch the film, responded: "Doubt it." He later stated that "And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects, and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the environment." Gore responded that "The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming and he [Bush] has today again expressed personal doubt that that is true." White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino stated that “The president noted in 2001 the increase in temperatures over the past 100 years and that the increase in greenhouse gases was due to certain extent to human activity”.

Australia

In September 2006, Gore traveled to Sydney, Australia to promote the film. Then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would not meet with Gore or agree to Kyoto because of the movie: "I don't take policy advice from films." Former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley joined Gore for a viewing and other MPs attended a special screening at Parliament House earlier in the week. After winning the general election a year later, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified Kyoto in his first week of office, leaving the United States the only industrialized nation in the world not to have signed the treaty.

Europe

In the United Kingdom, Conservative Leader of the Opposition David Cameron urged people to see the film in order to understand climate change.

In Belgium, Margaretha Guidone persuaded the entire Belgian government to see the film. 200 politicians and political staff accepted her invitation, among whom were Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt and Minister-President of Flanders, Yves Leterme.

In Germany, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel bought 6,000 DVDs of An Inconvenient Truth to make it available to German schools.

In Spain, after a meeting with Gore, prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said the government will make An Inconvenient Truth available to schools. Gore received the Prince of Asturias Prize in 2007 for international cooperation.

The film was placed into the science curriculum for fourth and sixth-year students in Scotland, as a joint initiative between Learning and Teaching Scotland and ScottishPower.

Latin America

In Costa Rica, Gore met with president Oscar Arias, and was well received by other politicians and the local media.

Canada

In Burlington, Ontario, Canada, the Halton District School Board made An Inconvenient Truth available at schools and as an educational resource.

Reaction from climate skeptics

Pro-business think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute released pro-carbon dioxide television ads in preparation for the film's release in May 2006. The ads featured a little girl blowing a dandelion with the tagline, "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."

In August 2006, the Wall Street Journal revealed that a YouTube video lampooning Gore and the movie, titled Al Gore's Penguin Army, appeared to be "astroturfing" by DCI Group, a Washington public relations firm.

Controversy

In the United Kingdom

The Dimmock case

Further information: [[:Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills]]

As part of a nationwide "Sustainable Schools Year of Action" launched in late 2006, the UK Government, Welsh Assembly Government and Scottish Executive announced between January-March 2007 that copies of An Inconvenient Truth would be sent to all secondary schools in England, Wales and Scotland. The UK Government's distribution of the film was challenged in May 2007 in the High Court of Justice by a group of global warming skeptics led by Stewart Dimmock, a lorry (HGV) driver and school governor from Kent, England, a father of two sons who attend a state school. Dimmock has twice stood as a local election candidate for the New Party and received backing for the case from Viscount Monckton, the author of the New Party's manifesto. The plaintiffs sought an injunction preventing the screening of the film in English schools. They argued that schools are legally forbidden to promote partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in school and, when dealing with political issues, are required to provide a balanced presentation of opposing views.

On 10 October 2007, Mr Justice Burton, after explaining that the requirement for a balanced presentation does not warrant that equal weight be given to alternative views of a mainstream view, ruled that it was clear that the film was substantially founded upon scientific research and fact, albeit that the science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political program. The film could then, on that basis, be shown, provided an accompanying explanation was given of its scientific errors, in order to prevent political indoctrination.

The judge concluded "I have no doubt that Dr Stott, the Defendant's expert, is right when he says that: 'Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate.'" On the basis of testimony from Robert M. Carter and the arguments put forth by the claimant's lawyers, the judge also pointed to nine errors, i.e. statements that he found to depart from the mainstream. He also found that some of these errors arose in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of Al Gore's political thesis. Since the government had already accepted to amend the guidance notes to address these errors along with other points in a fashion that the judge found satisfactory, no order was made on the application.

The Minister of Children, Young People and Families, Kevin Brennan, declared the outcome a victory for the government, stating: "We have updated the accompanying guidance, as requested by the judge to make it clearer for teachers as to the stated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change position on a number of scientific points raised in the film. Stewart Dimmock also declared victory but expressed dissatisfaction at the verdict, saying that "no amount of turgid guidance" could change his view that the film was unsuitable for the classroom. A spokesman for Gore said: "Of the thousands of facts in the film, the judge only took issue with just a handful. And of that handful, we have the studies to back those pieces up."

In the United States

In the United States, 50,000 free copies of An Inconvenient Truth were offered to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), which declined to take them. Laurie David, one of the film's producers, provided an email correspondence from the NSTA detailing that their reasoning was that the DVDs would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters," and that they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs. In public, the NSTA argued that distributing this film to its members would have been contrary to a long-standing NSTA policy against distributing unsolicited materials to its members. The NSTA also said that they had offered several other options for distributing the film but ultimately "[it] appears that these alternative distribution mechanisms were unsatisfactory." Laurie David has stated that NSTA Executive Director Gerry Wheeler promised in a telephone conversation to explore alternatives with NSTA's board for advertising the film but she had not yet received an alternative offer at the time of NSTA's public claim. She also said that she rejected their subsequent offers because they were nothing more than offers to sell their "commercially available member mailing list" and advertising space in their magazine and newsletter, which are available to anyone. She noted that in the past, NSTA had shipped out 20,000 copies of a 10-part video produced by Wheeler with funding provided by ConocoPhillips in 2003. NSTA indicated that they retained editorial control over the content, which David questioned based on the point of view portrayed in the global warming section of the video.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science publication ScienceNOW published an assessment discussing both sides of the NSTA decision in which it was reported that "David says NSTA's imprimatur [i.e. endorsement or sanction] was essential and that buying a mailing list is a nonstarter. 'You don't want to send out a cold letter, and it costs a lot of money,' she says. 'There are a thousand reasons why that wouldn't work.'"

In January 2007, the Federal Way (Washington State) School Board voted to require an approval by the principal and the superintendent for teachers to show the film to students and that the teachers must include the presentation of an approved "opposing view". The moratorium was repealed, at a meeting on January 23, after a predominantly negative community reaction.

Shortly thereafter, the school board in Yakima, Washington, calling the film a "controversial issue", prevented the Environmental Club of Eisenhower High School from showing it, pending review by the school board, teachers, principal, and parents. It lifted the stay a month later, upon the approval by a review panel.

See also

• List of documentaries
• Live Earth
• Paramount Classics
• Participant Productions
• The 11th Hour, a film regarding the same subject
• The Age of Stupid
• Not Evil Just Wrong, a documentary challenging An Inconvenient Truth
• Timeline of environmental events
• United Kingdom Climate Change Bill
• An Inconvenient Truth (opera)
• The Great Global Warming Swindle

External links

• An Inconvenient Truth
• An Inconvenient Truth at AllMovie
• An Inconvenient Truth at IMDb
• Unofficial Transcript