Climate scientists love “Don’t Look Up” – Satirical film “captures the madness I see every day”
By Eithne Dodd
1 January 2022
(Buzz) – The Netflix film Don’t Look Up has divided opinion between critics and audiences. One of the most popular pieces of content on Netflix’s platform since it debuted, Rotten Tomatoes, a site that gives a cumulative critical score show’s just a 55 per cent approval from critics.
So while many people have watched and enjoyed the film, there is one group of people that have been singing the praises of Don’t Look Up – Climate scientists.
Climate scientists inspired by Don’t Look Up
Don’t Look Up is the latest film from Adam McKay, who also directed The Big Short and Vice. It’s an absurdist satire about how the political establishment would deal with a world-ending event.
While it is strongly focused on the American political situation, climate scientists from all over the world love the film.
NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus urged people to see the film. He also wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian saying that the scientists in the film are alone and ignored with the knowledge that the world is going to end. “The panic and desperation they feel mirror the panic and desperation that many climate scientists feel,” Kalmus writes.
Another highly regarded climate scientist Michael Mann, who was an inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio’s role in the film, wrote a blog post entitled “Don’t look up but do see this film.” Mann wrote: “See this film with your friends and family members this holiday season. And if you know someone who thinks that climate change either isn’t real, doesn’t constitute a crisis, or is beyond any hope, bring them with you.” [more]
Climate scientists love Don’t Look Up
I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day
By Peter Kalmus
29 December 2021
(The Guardian) – The movie Don’t Look Up is satire. But speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it’s also the most accurate film about society’s terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I’ve seen.
The film, from director Adam McKay and writer David Sirota, tells the story of astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her PhD adviser, Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), who discover a comet – a “planet killer” – that will impact the Earth in just over six months. The certainty of impact is 99.7%, as certain as just about anything in science.
The scientists are essentially alone with this knowledge, ignored and gaslighted by society. The panic and desperation they feel mirror the panic and desperation that many climate scientists feel. In one scene, Mindy hyperventilates in a bathroom; in another, Dibiasky, on national TV, screams “Are we not being clear? We’re all 100 percent for sure gonna fucking die!” I can relate. This is what it feels like to be a climate scientist today.
The two astronomers are given a 20-minute audience with the president (Meryl Streep), who is glad to hear that impact isn’t technically 100% certain. Weighing election strategy above the fate of the planet, she decides to “sit tight and assess”. Desperate, the scientists then go on a national morning show, but the TV hosts make light of their warning (which is also overshadowed by a celebrity breakup story). […]
After 15 years of working to raise climate urgency, I’ve concluded that the public in general, and world leaders in particular, underestimate how rapid, serious, and permanent climate and ecological breakdown will be if humanity fails to mobilize. There may only be five years left before humanity expends the remaining “carbon budget” to stay under 1.5C of global heating at today’s emissions rates – a level of heating I am not confident will be compatible with civilization as we know it. And there may only be five years before the Amazon rainforest and a large Antarctic ice sheet pass irreversible tipping points.
The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed. And climate scientists have faced an even more insurmountable public communication task than the astronomers in Don’t Look Up, since climate destruction unfolds over decades – lightning fast as far as the planet is concerned, but glacially slow as far as the news cycle is concerned – and isn’t as immediate and visible as a comet in the sky. [more]
I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day
