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Scientific American: ‘Hollywood: Can You Get Climate Change Right for Once?’ Warmist turns on fellow Warmists – Urges stop only seeing ‘climate in apocalyptic terms’

Except: ‘Can you show how rising temperatures upend expectations, shatter dreams, and create new worlds?’

‘I don’t want to put scientists in the strange and awkward position of being asked to apologize in 12 years when we are not all, in fact, dead.’

‘So far, Hollywood has only tried to tell one story about climate. And it’s the wrong one.’

‘If we only see climate in apocalyptic terms, we miss stories that are more compelling and more realistic’

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/hot-planet/hollywood-can-you-get-climate-change-right-for-once/#googDisableSync

Hollywood: Can You Get Climate Change Right for Once?
During Oscar season, it’s good to take note that if we only see climate in apocalyptic terms, we miss stories that are more compelling and more realistic

By Kate Marvel on January 30, 2019

Hollywood: Can You Get Climate Change Right for Once?

This week, the Academy released the list of Oscar nominations. I’ve seen exactly one of the nominated films (go Black Panther!) because I’m extremely busy and too worried by current events to enjoy watching anything more stressful than the Great British Baking Show. My more cine-literate friends assure me, though, that none of the movies recognized is about climate change. This doesn’t surprise me. So far, Hollywood has only tried to tell one story about climate. And it’s the wrong one.

I know this because I’ve recently started a podcast (shameless plug here) where four scientists watch disaster movies to raise money for a good cause. We’ve already sat through The Day After Tomorrow, in which Dennis Quaid breaks Antarctica, triggering a global cooling event not seen since the Younger Dryas. We’ve seen Geostorm, where Gerard Butler mitigates climate change by shouting at the weather. And we’ve seen Sharknado, where global warming results in tragic catastrophe (basically, Ian Ziering’s career). The narrative is clear: humans get their comeuppance, Nature fights back, multiple cinematic disasters happen in the space of two hours. No one has time to care about anything but the apocalypse at hand.

Of course, this isn’t what really happens. There are disasters, to be sure: human fingerprints are apparent in events as disparate as the California wildfires and the rainfall that Hurricane Harvey dumped on Houston. But these unfortunate events happen against a near-constant backdrop of other unfortunate events. A hurricane can be swept from the news by a new revelation about Russia, and natural disasters compete for attention with the messes made by governments. Even when there’s a clear and obvious climate component to a disaster, other things matter too. Sometimes they matter much more. Hurricane Maria was turbocharged by warm sea-surface temperatures, but it was governmental incompetence and institutionalized racism that made it into a disaster for Puerto Rico. Climate change is almost never the only story.

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