[8] Its U.S. premiere was held on 14 April 2016 at the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and was followed by a discussion panel that included former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and David Legates, a climatologist and geology professor at the University of Delaware whose work is funded by Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel sponsors.

[3][10] U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith, Republican of Texas, was set to attend but instead prepared opening remarks which included an accusation that U.S. government agencies had tampered with climate data.

Palin took issue with the forecasting data produced by biologists and environmental groups that showed a threat due to declining Arctic sea ice, although a federal judge backed the scientists' original findings.

While he found the editing to be "decent", he criticized quality of the visuals, lighting, and explained the narrative structure as a series of sequences which all come to the same conclusion: "climate scientists have it all wrong and are conspiring to deceive the public.

"[5] For The Guardian's Suzanne Goldberg, "the real mission for Palin and the makers of the movie – in addition to airing various conspiracy theories – was to register the continued existence of a small but still powerful fringe, even as the rest of the world accelerates its efforts to fight climate change.

[3] The Guardian was critical of the film's "[dismissing] global warming as an excuse for government takeover and [making] the outrageously false claim that rising carbon emissions are beneficial.