It’s hard to know what to make of the new film Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, which is released on July 19. It can’t quite make up its mind whether it is a satire on the ineffectiveness of the global warming alarmist community in this country or a call to arms.

The director, Randy Olson — who also made the Derbian documentary A Flock of Dodos about the science of evolution — is a former scientist. His shtick is that he wants the truth about the problem of global warming to come out via the data and the words of honest scientists, but that he comes to realize this won’t work. So the course the film charts is of a failed attempt to make that sort of film, followed by an epiphany where he realizes the human cost of global warming is the only thing that will make people care. (There is also a sub-plot about the film’s flaky producers attempting to find a Hollywood celebrity to host the film only to find that no one is interested, which begins to grate and is thankfully dropped).

The epiphany comes after a visit to Washington, D.C., where it appears that the skeptics have an answer for everything he throws at them. Pat Michaels, Marc Morano, Fred Singer, and our own Steve Hayward are shown as very effective “blockers” of the science-reliant argument. Only after an intervention from the film’s supposed sound guy does Dr. Olson (and an embarrassing visit to a hip-hop club by his mother) realize that it is emotional arguments that will win the day. The voice of authority on this is added by Naomi Oreskes (yes, that Naomi Oreskes), who suggests that they go to New Orleans.

The devastation, and continued lack of progress in rebuilding the city, is clearly seen as the answer to the skeptics’ resiliency argument. If the richest country in the world can’t cope with this disaster, what is the hope for the world when warming-driven disasters predominate, asks the film. If this is the clincher, then it’s a poor one. Examples of the value of resiliency abound. Even this movie hints that the real problem in New Orleans might have been government – there is a segment where residents (rightly) complain about having been evicted by the New Orleans Housing Association even though their abodes suffered very little water damage (and lets not go into the role of Army Corps of Engineers and environmentalists in weakening New Orleans’ defenses).

The movie actually ends on an egregious series of factual errors and omissions, contending that the Kyoto Protocol was signed and ratified by 175 nations in 1992. No. It was signed in 1997 (he’s thinking of the Earth Summit) and finally ratified so that it would come into effect with Russia’s signature in 2004. Dr. Olson also says that since 1990, American emissions have risen by 20 percent while the rest of the Kyoto nations’ emissions have not increased at all. To begin with, this would make one think that 174 nations have a net increase in emissions of zero, which is poppycock. Only a small minority of Kyoto parties actually undertook to reduce emissions, which is why China is now the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases ahead of the U.S., with Indonesia third and India fourth. Meanwhile, the nice little trick with the 1990 baseline for Kyoto allowed Europe to bank emission reductions already achieved. Since Kyoto was signed in 1997, U.S. emissions have grown by 5 percent, with the Kyoto parties’ emissions increasing by about 20 percent. Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Australia, Turkey, Austria, New Zealand, Greece, Iceland, and Canada have all increased emissions more than the U.S. since 1997 (see here for graphs). So that’s a pretty weak point on which to end, to say the least.

Overall what did I think of the movie? I’d say it was worth watching. While the film is still a satire there are some pretty funny moments – I laughed out loud a couple of times. I have to say that there’s more than a few stereotypes involved, but given its satirical nature, I think that’s allowable. It begins to drag after a very funny scene of a supposed production meeting where they toss out every single possible title for a global warming movie you could think of. Any notion that there might be genuine scientific debate is then cut off by the ultimate appeal to authority – the Director’s mother – and after that, the New Orleans based call to arms begins. Where the movie is best – and perhaps most valuable for its intended audience — is in what amounts to a spot-on satirical critique of the weaknesses of the “science-based” argument for action. Yet its audience will probably view the satire as a betrayal and view the end of the movie – the weakest part – as the best.

I’ve sat through a number of global warming documentaries – on both sides – and this one of only two I’d watch again. The other one is coming soon.