Let me start by saying that energy conservation and incentives to stop pollution are A Good Thing.

Too bad the film isn't about that topic until the final credits are rolling.

Al Gore is on a mission; however, it's not to save the environment. He's on a mission to get elected president. He says he's retired, and opens with a comment of how he used to be the next president of the United States and continuously makes comments about his opponents administration. His tactics are scaring us into believing that he will save us; however, he doesn't even acknowledge the one technology that would actually reduce carbon emissions (nuclear power),except for showing the bomb.

Okay, first, about the 'facts':

-The graph of the 300,000 years of carbon dioxide and temperatures. Brilliant data, poorly interpreted. Gore smugly states the obvious 'fact' that the changing carbon dioxide is what changed the temperatures over the seven ice ages. He does not mention the possibility, or probability, that the changing ocean temperatures affected the gaseous solubility of the carbon dioxide in the ocean water and resulted in varied CO2 concentrations. Read that carefully, it is just as likely the temperature change over the known history caused a change in CO2, not the reverse.

Then he gets on a scissor lift to show the change in CO2 spiraling out of control, without acknowledging the zero of the concentration axis would be ten feet below the floor.

-The 'hockey stick' graph--Gore neglects to mention that the authors of that figure did not release their methods for analysis, nor did they release the raw data to others for critical analysis. Subsequent analysis had shown the data are sharply skewed to reflect a stronger contribution from recent temperatures.

Then there were tons of pictures showing the earth is getting warmer by the melting (see how beautiful they are) glaciers; however, there are no timestamps on them showing what season they are. Maybe they are permanently iced, maybe they aren't

Then he tugs on heartstrings. He shows pictures of the Antarctic glaciers melting, and follows up with a CGI polar bear swimming and drowning. Then he shows the World Trade Center memorial being flooded from Greenland ice melting. He barely acknowledges that those are absolute worst case scenario predictions.

It is probable that the global temperature is increasing, just like the temperatures increased before all of the other ice ages. And, it's true that the CO2 is increasing at this moment. Those are facts, but as I have seen dozens of times in my career as a chemical engineer, two variables trending does not define the dependence of one on the other, nor if there is a dependence, it does not define which variable is dependent.

In short, Gore oversimplified a global phenomenon that he does not understand, and tried to scare the world. If, because of this film, people drive slower and use less electricity, then the effect of the film is not bad overall, but to make those statements with such ignorant smugness is irresponsible.

That's why I gave it 5 out of 10 stars.

An Inconvenient Truth is as entirely simplistic and demagogic as the turgid slop created by the rabid and idiotic Republicans, it meanders along intangible lines until it attempts to gorge something into your face, namely that we'll all be dead in a few hundred years, which is already indisputable, but who cares, humans are selfish, destructive creatures, I frankly do not waste my time caring about human extinction. I'll just call it a "natural progression". Let the apocalypse begin, but meanwhile, we have to listen to the same brazen, slanted politicians who propose another "new society", well, don't be fooled, we'll all still be controlled by the wealthy, by those in power and by those idiots who created the catastrophes in the first place. Nothing will ever change.

Al Gore, whose hypocrisy is quite evident in the film, as he is being driven in a gas guzzling car all alone using a consumerist computer, he also lives on huge acres of land in a rather large mansion, the land itself was used for destructive erosive purposes including cattle, tobacco, pig farming (which accounts for methane gas traces) and who knows what else, his wealth is predicated on exploitation, greed and his investments include numerous large companies in the world with disputable records. I hardly think this man is qualified to lecture the less fortunate, but his prestige is based on his opposition to another ludicrous political party, that is all, meanwhile he emits those very same rancid characteristics that make politics and politicians so appalling. This bozo happens to be living the comfortable life and yet he's lecturing poor people in Africa about crop farming and cut and burn techniques? He travels across the world in first class seats in fuel wasting jets, uses product placed computers in the documentary, and yet he thinks everything is a "moral issue". He's entirely absorbed in his own deluded nightmares, he says he came to these conclusions because of the death of his sister (from tobacco induced cancer and the near death of his son by an automobile of all things). Did he fight against the tobacco companies or propose that automobiles be banned because they are dangerous hulking machines? NO. Everything must serve the "economy", so why is he any different, the answer is he is not.

His forlorn and exhausted attempts at humanistic philosophy are disastrous, all this while he's being filmed in the forest or along a little river eschewing stale life affirming quotes. Well Mr Gore, why don't you try living like the common people then? He is a politician, plain and simple, he has a career invested in the power structure. My question is, why doesn't he concentrate on the powerful industrial nations of the earth who are to blame for most of the complications? He doesn't do that because it would be unwise for "investments, stocks and corporations".

Al Gore gives monotonous lectures about the subject in the documentary, namely to wealthy white people in the audience, who clap on cue, while showing them graph charts, numbers and percentages, and speaking in a dreary tone, no one without a Harvard (which the elites control) education can make sense out of it, but he tells us everything is going to hell. No kidding, but I think he fails to account for this problem precisely in the approach that capitalism has taken for the planet, namely that it is expendable and a waste dump. He never once mentions how industrialization has created these problems, he just wants to put mild bandages on them but not eradicate the whole oppressive system. Its obvious he was spoiled, sent to the schools for elites and has the same basic temperament for politics as any other back stabbing, inconsistent dullard in Washington. Whoever made this propaganda, as it is in no way different than what the Republicans have conceived, had only goals in mind that were directed by capitalistic impulse. That is to say, someone is going to benefit, and it seems the "new green" politicians who support venture capitalist companies who are buying up hordes of land in an attempt to develop the "new Utopian future" with "new technologies". It's the same old story, Al Gore is a believer in the elitist structure, he actually believes there is a "democracy" in the US which I find very naive. If we aren't paying wages to the oil companies, then we'll be paying them to the wind and solar companies.

I find the speech at the end quite rancid, along the lines of something GW Bush would have oozed over to the dumb downed masses, Gore speaks about "people uniting together to defeat communism" in the 1990's, what it had to do with global warming, absolutely nothing but he attempts to get base emotions ruminating in people. With that said, he didn't understand that communism never existed in the world, the systems in Europe and USSR were merely a tyrannical form of authoritarianism and capitalism, no less different than what controls the US interests. Social ecology was not even mentioned here, which is really a travesty. If you want to change the world, then one must dispose of those antiquated systems that are based on greed, exploitation and violence.

Is Al Gore is doing a Chicken Little act in "An Inconvenient Truth"? I wish he were. This stunning documentary about global warming is a well-reasoned, clearly-proved, intelligent, cogent, irresistible torrent of scientific data, in a curiously warm, engaging, often funny presentation. What an entertaining horror movie this is! Unexpectedly, improbably, Gore is doing a Hitchcock act here, all affable and chummy... before scaring the hell out of the audience. And that he does, with charts, statistics, projections coming from hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, none challenged, while allowing how some 50% of mass-media treatment of global warming *is* subject to questions. There is even a cute animation segment about exaggerated global-warming claims.

There is no need to exaggerate. Unchallenged studies are showing an extraordinary rise in ocean temperatures, the disappearance of glaciers, the melting of the poles - and then Gore twists the knife with a series of graphics showing areas to be inundated by rising waters. In a flooded Manhattan of the future, Gore says, the site of the World Trade Center will be under water. "Terrorism," he says, without drama or overemphasis, "is not the only danger we must face." The threatened catastrophe is not in the distant future. The US Geological Survey predicts that by 2030, Glacier National Park will have no glaciers left. In the last 30 years, 400,00 square miles of Arctic sea ice have melted; polar bears today drown when they cannot find an ice floe to rest on. What has Congress done about global warming? Absolutely nothing.

Davis Guggenheim's documentary is based mostly on Gore's multimedia presentation on climate change, a lecture he has delivered hundreds of times in recent months. While Gore is managing the show with powerful efficiency, there is nothing dry or tired about it. The film is virtually flawless, even some of the cornier visuals fit in. Gore's personal remarks are affecting: the death of his sister from lung cancer, after lifelong smoking, forced the family - after generations of tobacco-growing in Tennessee - to quit the business. No overt statement is heard, but there is an inevitable comparison with the world's addiction to many activities directly contributing to climate change.

Political references are at a minimum. The only strong criticism of the Bush presidency is in the context of the Republican rejection of the Kyoto Treaty, making the US one of two countries in the world to do so (Australia is the other one). Following a huge list of countries paying at least lip service to the cause of climate control under the treaty, Gore shows a similarly large list of US cities where local government is taking measures not supported by Washington.

Gore is clear about the danger of being overwhelmed by the danger of what's happening, and he concludes the film by saying that going from denial to despair without pausing to see what can be done is the wrong course of action, or rather inaction. "Political will," Gore says, "is a renewable resource." Gently, but firmly, he calls for attention to a clear and present danger that cannot be ignored... even if faith-based denial of the evidence before us remains largely the order of the day, with all the comfort of darkness behind closed eyes. An alternative is at http://www.climatecrisis.net/.