I Watched a Movie this Weekend. Wish I Hadn't.

 

I don't know a lot of climate scientists but there are a few with whom I maintain an occassional correspondence. There's a fellow from Japan who is analyzing how the loss of glaciers and ice sheets may trigger tectonic events as the weight of that ice is converted to water that runs off into the sea. Interesting stuff but I haven't packed my bags yet.

Then there's a fellow at the University of Hawaii who runs his own climate lab that is unlocking the sometimes overlooked information by churning through mountains of research data.

Here's an excerpt of an email I recently sent.  

I live on Vancouver Island just off the west coast of the Canadian mainland. We see a wide range of climate impacts from premature melting of snowpacks, waters that are vital to salmon spawning in late spring and summer; to the migration of marine life out of the south including the arrival of hundreds of great whales, transient orca, large pods of dolphins, an abundance of seals and sea lions, even brown pelicans.

Ours has been a pleasantly moderate climate, mild summers and winters. Last summer we were shocked by the arrival of "heat domes." Even one block from the waters of the north Pacific we reached 39 degrees Celsius. A few hundred miles inland, the small mountain town of Lytton set all time Canadian temperature records on three consecutive days, finally reaching 49.6 Celsius. On the fourth day the town was erased by fire. Much of British Columbia was blanketed by wildfire smoke with high levels of Pm 2.5 particulates. As summer turned to autumn we were hit by atmospheric rivers and flash flooding that severed every highway and rail line connecting British Columbia to the rest of Canada. Then, as Christmas arrived, the coast was hit by heavy snows that lasted almost two weeks. We seem to have become a Petri dish for climate change.

Now, in the midst of northern hemisphere winter, heat waves are ravaging Australia and South America.

How do we make sense of these changes?

My acquaintance replied that to grasp the nature of our predicament I should watch the movie, "Don't Look Up." I had avoided the movie, not a big fan of Leo DiCaprio. Yet watch it I finally did. Here's the story line from Rotten Tomatoes:

Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem: it's on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a planet-killer the size of Mount Everest is an inconvenient fact to navigate. With the help of Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). With only six months until the comet makes impact, managing the 24-hour news cycle and gaining the attention of the social media obsessed public before it's too late proves shockingly comical -- what will it take to get the world to just look up?!

Spoiler alert - life on earth is wiped out.

Don't Look Up was largely panned by critics. I can understand that. However DLU seems to have traction where it matters, with climate scientists. To some it's an overdone parody. To those immersed in climate science there's nothing funny about it.

It's an all star cast. I particularly liked Mark Rylance as a Steve Jobs character who manipulates the president (Streep) to try to capture the asteroid for its precious minerals.