Climate Scientist: Movie “Don’t Look Up” Captures How Nobody Listens

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to JPL’s Peter Kalmus, Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up“, about an incoming planet killer asteroid, is a moving metaphor for the struggle to be heard faced by climate scientists.

I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day

Peter Kalmus
Thu 30 Dec 2021 01.08 AEDT

A film about a comet hurtling towards Earth and no one is doing anything about it? Sounds exactly like the climate crisis

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, Diabasky, on national TV, screams “Are we not being clear? We’re all 100% 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.Advertisement

Given all this, dismissing Don’t Look Up as too obvious might say more about the critic than the film. It’s funny and terrifying because it conveys a certain cold truth that climate scientists and others who understand the full depth of the climate emergency are living every day. I hope that this movie, which comically depicts how hard it is to break through prevailing norms, actually helps break through those norms in real life.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness

“Don’t Look Up” should have been titled “Don’t Look Now”.

Watching “Don’t Look Up” was like watching a low budget amateurish version of Bruce Willis “Armageddon“, with all the funny bits removed.

I mean, the movie Armageddon was enjoyable. Bruce Willis’ character Harry Stamper chasing A. J. around an oil rig with a shotgun, after catching him in bed with his daughter. The entire specialist drilling team failing their NASA psych exam. The crazy guy who likes to play with explosives when they let him.

“Don’t Look Up” characters by contrast are just not that interesting.

PHD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) popping random pills whenever she can get her hands on them, and sneering at the President. DiCaprio overacting character Dr. Randall Mindy’s tiresome struggle to form coherent sentences when talking to anyone who might be able to help resolve the problem, then suddenly coming good halfway through the movie, after the pretty blonde news anchor starts feeling him up on set, followed by a kinky foreplay scene – “Tell me we’re going to die”.

Repeated inexplicable long pans of Hillary Clinton’s White House portraits during the first meeting with the President, including one of her embracing Bill.

OMG, still 1:22:55 to go.

The head pilot of the comet mission shuttle just asked for the President to make his DUIs go away. Was this an attempt at character development?

The shuttle mission aborted after launch – suddenly they want to recover the minerals from the comet, rather than deflecting it. 1:19:00 – Leonardo DiCaprio’s character just did an advertisement for the caricature capitalists who aborted the destroy mission. Then 1:31:00 DiCaprio has a meltdown on TV about why they didn’t destroy the comet. Consistency not.

For some reason main characters keep having black hoods put on their heads for rendition to a black site, but before they are driven off they have a long chat to their friends while wearing the hood. Oh hang on, next scene the hood is removed and he’s driving a car. Maybe the men in black changed their mind.

1:38:00 – “Don’t Look Up” is now a crowd protest chant, like “Lets go Brandon”.

41 minutes to go. Watching the clock. Now someone just started singing.

1:45:00 – The foreign destroy mission just blew up on the launch pad.

1:51:25 – Buying end of world groceries from the chiller section.

1:54:00 – DiCaprio’s character just bought flowers for his wife (after banging the TV personality). All hugs again, like immediately. What a doormat.

1:59:00 – Finally something a little funny – the mineral recovery mission fails, then everyone starts fleeing the situation room “I’ve got to use the rest room”.

2:04:00 – The comet strikes, wiping out the entire cast of tiresome characters. Ah bum, there are survivors. It just wiped out the less annoying characters.

2:07:00 – Weird scene with cellphones and other weirdly intact debris floating about in space.

2:08:00 – I was wrong – 22,000 years later, the President and entrepreneur disembark on an alien planet, all naked, where the President almost immediately gets eaten by an alien, shortly followed by (hopefully) all the other colonists.

Oh dear, there was another survivor – taking selfies in the middle of a smoking ruin.

I guess “Don’t Look Up” is a good metaphor for the climate crisis after all. Shallow, poor plot development, no consistency, boring unsympathetic characters with little genuine depth, and a totally unbelievable ending.

I have no problem with climate disaster films as such – I loved “The Day After Tomorrow“, its a great adventure film, so long as you ignore the bad science. “Snowpiercer” – awesome. But by the end of “Don’t Look Up”, I was rooting for the comet. And the carnivorous aliens.

Update (EW): Bonbon mentions “Greenland“, an awesome disaster movie if you haven’t seen it yet.

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Tom Halla
December 30, 2021 10:09 am

For me, it has been fifty years of the green blob crying wolf, and all that showed up was a Pomeranian.

Reply to  Tom Halla
December 30, 2021 11:30 am

…. and an imaginary one at that.

Reply to  philincalifornia
December 30, 2021 12:15 pm
Vuk
Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
December 30, 2021 1:01 pm

What else to expect from the ‘global warming’ and one of the ‘hottest’ years ever.

Vuk
Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
December 30, 2021 1:09 pm

For the moment this minimum tracks pretty closely one from the early 20th century.

SSN-3-minima.gif
Bryan A
Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
December 30, 2021 1:11 pm

Oh the Climate,
It is a changin,
A couple of Scientists
are doin much complainin

And you tell me…
Over and over and over
again my friend,

how you’re led to believe
we’re on the eve
Of destruction….

Vuk
Reply to  Bryan A
December 30, 2021 1:52 pm

because little Swedish twerp
can’t get no satisfaction?

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  Vuk
December 31, 2021 12:42 am

Throw her in a volcano.

Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
December 30, 2021 3:35 pm

Where is griff? He likes to catalog all such natural disasters.

Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
December 31, 2021 3:37 am

I sometimes think Griff is a natural disaster but that would be unkind so I’ll keep it to myself

MarkW
Reply to  Redge
December 31, 2021 8:40 am

How can something so funny be a disaster?

Steve
Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
January 1, 2022 1:52 am

Did somebody clone Al Gore while I wasn’t looking?

Vuk
Reply to  Tom Halla
December 30, 2021 11:42 am

Hunted by pack of hyenas chasing a heard of white elephants.

Observer
Reply to  Tom Halla
December 30, 2021 11:52 am

I decided the movie was an excellent metaphor for politicians and public ignoring the medical experts warning them about the dangers of novel and inadequately tested mRNA “vaccines”.

The equivalent of not looking up would be to ignore all the cardiovascular events we’re seeing in athletes.

Reply to  Observer
December 30, 2021 12:59 pm

not to argue- since I have no clue– but, how common were such events prior to the vaccine? I should think this claim can be proven.

DMA
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 30, 2021 3:57 pm

Reported vaccine deaths for Covid shots are double all other vaccines since 1990. In the US it is about 1.5 times.

Reply to  DMA
December 30, 2021 10:36 pm

Annual mRNA deaths are about 100× the annual average of all other vaccines combined.

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 30, 2021 10:34 pm

Wasfy, et al., (2013) Sudden Cardiac Death in Athletes available at PubMed. The sudden death data are for U.S. NCAA athletes.

Statista says there are 281,699 male NCAA athletes in the US. The annual average sudden cardiac death rate for male athletes is 1 per 37,790. So, we’d expect to see 7-8 sudden cardiac deaths among U.S. male athletes each year.

Zeroth order scaling that number world-wide (US = 6% of the global population) = 124 sudden cardiac deaths average per year globally, among male athletes.

From the paper…
Key Points
• Though exercise is, in general, health-promoting, it is associated with an increased risk of sudden cardiac death for a small number of individuals who harbor cardiac conditions.

• Sudden cardiac death is the most common medical cause of death in athletes, with an incidence of around 1 in 40,000 to 1 in 80,000 athletes per year according to the most recent estimates.

• The risk and causes of sudden cardiac death vary based upon the athlete population. Male gender, black race, and basketball participation all place an athlete at higher risk. Sudden cardiac death in younger athletes (< 35 years) is commonly due to inherited cardiac conditions, while in older athletes (> 35 years) it is most often due to atherosclerotic coronary artery disease.

Scissor
Reply to  Observer
December 30, 2021 1:01 pm

There might be some advantage to being a couch potato, having narrowed deltoid blood vessels surrounded by lots of fat.

J Pellerin
Reply to  Observer
December 31, 2021 11:20 pm

Precisely my reaction!

JCR
Reply to  Tom Halla
December 30, 2021 12:42 pm

More like the skeleton of a Pomeranian…

Or just part of the skull and a femur.

Stephen Reilly
Reply to  Tom Halla
December 30, 2021 2:10 pm

Here is a so-called Climate Scientist banging on about how “Don’t Look Up” is an analogy for the frustrations being suffered by him and his fellow travellers. However, if “Don’t Look Up” was an ‘accurate’ analogy then the script would have had almost countless incidences of them screaming about the comet arriving only to have it not arrive, and then not even mentioning that, just setting a new prediction date a bit further into the future.

steve
Reply to  Stephen Reilly
December 30, 2021 6:35 pm

Spot on..!

Reply to  Stephen Reilly
December 30, 2021 10:38 pm

That, and the comet turns out to be an artifact of erroneous data processing.

Stephen Reilly
Reply to  Pat Frank
January 2, 2022 1:00 pm

Thanks Pat. I forgot about that bit.

December 30, 2021 10:10 am

If you think that is a bad film, then look up “The Tomorrow War”. A 200 mio Dollar train wreck supposed to deliver the “climate disaster” narrative in a subtile way..

Bryan A
Reply to  E. Schaffer
December 30, 2021 11:54 am

I thought that Tomorrow War was a much better movie than Don’t Look Up though, especially with how they ended it. Of course I am partial to the Time Travel Genre

fretslider
December 30, 2021 10:12 am

Funnily enough, Morgan Freeman was just on the telly sending people into caves to escape a comet

I’d advise climate scientists to lay off the fiction

MarkW
Reply to  fretslider
December 30, 2021 10:46 am

They can’t deal with facts. Fiction is all they got left.

Reply to  MarkW
December 30, 2021 12:54 pm

And they don’t even do fiction well……..

Reply to  fretslider
December 30, 2021 11:08 am

I would be happy with alarmists packing themselves into caves with no power and no fuel. That would make the world a much better place.

Reply to  Brad-DXT
December 30, 2021 11:33 am

No food either.
Thus begins the seed for the underground dwelling human eating troglodytes in the movie “The Time Machine”.

Not that any of the alarmists have the capacity to refrain from eating all of the rest.

After all, do you see manniacal saving anyone for later consumption?

Reply to  ATheoK
December 30, 2021 1:01 pm

That was a great film- ever since I’ve fantasized about building a time machine.

H.R.
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 30, 2021 5:09 pm

In the future, you do invent one, Joseph. But since you came back, you’ve forgotten that you will invent a time machine.

In the future, you will know that in the past, you didn’t know you would invent a time machine.
😜

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 30, 2021 7:21 pm

Joseph, saw this the other day about time travel
Still laughing

BF0E7791-D4A9-496D-85F3-A3BBE4BDD8C5.jpeg
Observer
Reply to  fretslider
January 2, 2022 5:38 pm

I’ll never forget Morgan Freeman’s “we are at war” video about Putin owning Trump.

What a clown.

Terry
December 30, 2021 10:13 am

The show is satire and yeah it’s really bad. Klamus is pathetic – there is a big difference between a comet coming, and global warming. The fact he doesn’t see this tells you all you need to know about activists like Klamus.

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Terry
December 30, 2021 10:50 am

The fact that Peter Kalmus tries to equate a comet- strike extinction event with climate change, tells me everything I need to know about his veracity and competence as a scientist.

I’m rather disappointed in the author’s treatment, which is in contrast to his usual savvy efforts..
Instead of going after the unscientific rantings of an alleged NASA climate scientist, he set about trying to be a movie critic.
It turns out, he missed the plot. Twice.

Ron Long
Reply to  Alan Robertson
December 30, 2021 11:59 am

The way Peter Kalmus carries on it seems to me that he has unresolved psychiatric issues. An actual scientist would experience introspection moments, wherein they would try to analyze their preferred position and the potential of the opposite position, trying to isolate actual relevant facts. The CAGW crowd NEVER engages in this aspect of science.

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Ron Long
December 30, 2021 12:18 pm

Anyone can look up Peter Kalmus’ bio and learn that he is a “climate communicator”., employed by NASA.
He turns tricks for Gavin Schmidt.

Mr.
Reply to  Alan Robertson
December 30, 2021 12:45 pm

And there may only be five years before the Amazon rainforest and a large Antarctic ice sheet pass irreversible tipping points.

With these words, you know they’re not written by a scientist of any calling.

(the alarmist media lap them up though, because that’s what they’ve become)

Scissor
Reply to  Ron Long
December 30, 2021 1:06 pm

Do I have the right Peter Kalmus?

https://www.webumenia.sk/en/autor/4684

Ron Long
Reply to  Scissor
December 30, 2021 3:06 pm

I can’t believe I looked at that site. Please don’t anyone else go there.

Reply to  Ron Long
December 30, 2021 10:26 pm

Oww, my eyes … quick find the bleach.

Ruleo
Reply to  Ron Long
January 1, 2022 11:39 pm

I should have listened to you…

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Scissor
December 30, 2021 6:39 pm

Nah, The “scientist” Peter Kalmus works for NASA.
Pretty sure the guy(?) you found is Hunter Biden’s ghost painter.

Scissor
Reply to  Alan Robertson
December 30, 2021 7:36 pm

🙂

Reply to  Alan Robertson
December 30, 2021 1:02 pm

A movie about Climategate would win Academy awards – at least it should, though Hollywood has bought into the climate scam.

Paul Johnson
Reply to  Terry
December 30, 2021 1:58 pm

It’s really hard to satirize people you don’t understand. It comes off as a bad caricature.

IanE
December 30, 2021 10:20 am

Oh, Peter, could I suggest you change your name to CalmDown??

Rod Evans
December 30, 2021 10:22 am

As soon as I saw DiCaprio was heading the cast along with Ms Streep I was waiting for the obvious overlap with “The Climate Crisis”
The good news is the film direction and plot is so bad it never got started.
The only take away was the MSM are completely self focused and can’t relate to anything that does not put them centre stage.
For those that haven’t seen the movie consider your good fortune, you have not squandered 2 hrs plus on watching amateur garbage pretending to be entertaining.

Bryan A
Reply to  Rod Evans
December 30, 2021 11:49 am

That means the movie is destined to receive Ye Olde Oscar nomination for best picture.

Reply to  Bryan A
December 30, 2021 1:07 pm

perhaps we’ll get lucky and Ricky Gervais will host the Oscars, if that movie gets nominated, and rip into the film- he has hosted he Golden Globe awards where he ripped into everyone, hilariously- you can find some of that on YouTube

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 30, 2021 6:30 pm

”If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time at school than Greta Thunberg, so if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your God, and f**k off.”
Ricky Gervais.

Reply to  Mike
December 31, 2021 2:53 am

I like Ricky’s work- funny guy, and thanks to living in the modern world, he’s now worth about $140 million dollars. If he was around hundreds of years ago, he’d be the court jester and living in a hut.

December 30, 2021 10:27 am

You were looking into a mirror, that’s why you didn’t like it. Most of the people looked like idiots in the movie, just like most of the prominent people in power today, and the crowd they command. Sometimes the scientists too, but they got to their senses soon.

Dave Yaussy
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 10:54 am

The movie is a pretty poor analogy to the climate crisis, if that’s how they intended it. You can directly calculate an asteroid’s course; you can only model, using many assumptions and a big margin of error, the effects of greenhouse gases.

But the biggest problem with your comparison is the fact that the end of the world from climate change has been predicted for about 35 years, and the world has only gotten wealthier and more peaceful. Given that history, it’s no surprise that no one is looking up.

Reply to  Dave Yaussy
December 30, 2021 4:02 pm

The movie is a pretty poor analogy to the climate crisis

I think they wanted to parody more than that, eg. virus “skepticism”.

you can only model, using many assumptions and a big margin of error

Sorry, climate science has advanced in the last 30 years, and we should definitely listen to it. Illustration from the movie: the president’s “hesitation” hearing the less than 100% probability was right on topic here (eg. anything that is perceived ambiguous is used as an opportunity for bullshiting).

the world has only gotten wealthier and more peaceful

Perhaps you should check the facts.

Drake
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 5:41 pm

“the world has only gotten wealthier and more peaceful”

Those are the facts. But you would need to actually do some research to know that.

The only DRAG of wealth to the poorest populations of the world has been the MASSIVE sums of money being spent of wind and solar and electric cars. Just think of all the houses and transmission lines and coal and nuclear generation capacity that could have been provided to the riff raff (you and your ilk’s obvious opinion of them since they are not worth any effort to HELP) of Africa if you perverted power hungry greedy morons had not, for 35 years, pushed the Global Warming charade.

Oh, I guess you ARE right. Wealth is the accumulation of USEFUL things. The crap so many governments have spent so much on in this crusade against global warming IS NOT USEFUL. It does not add to the collective WEALTH of the world!

Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 5:46 pm

Climate science has *NOT* advanced very much in the last 30 years. Their models still turn into y=mx+b projections beyond about 3-5 years – STILL! No indication of natural variation, no indication of cyclical trends, no uncertainty based on propagation of uncertainty from each prior annual iteration, etc. The only difference in the models is the programmers choice of what “m” and “b” are!

And this is in the face of the greening of the planet, continual record harvests of food, fewer people dying from climate (e.g. cold weather), and a continual decrease in the poverty rate.

Perhaps you should check the facts.”

The facts are as I stated. There doesn’t seem to be any negatives. Even the polar bear population is increasing.

Freeman Dyson said many years ago that climate has to be investigated on a holistic basis. That means taking *everything* into account in the biosphere, not just temperature. None of the models do that at all. It’s like trying to guess what your garden is going to do by just measuring the temperature of the water you use on it while ignoring weed growth, insect growth, air temperature, and soil conditions.

Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 6:32 pm

Sorry, climate science has advanced in the last 30 years, and we should definitely listen to it.”

It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

MarkW
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 7:04 pm

It really is fascinating how so called scientists, who’s only “data” is a broken climate model, attacks anyone who is skeptical of the scam they are pushing.

If climate science has advanced over the last 30 years, why hasn’t the error margine for the climate sensitivity best guess improved any?
If climate science has advanced so much, why are all of the predictions still failing?

Those are the facts.

Richard Page
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 9:39 pm

Sorry nyolci, but no. ‘Climate science’ has not advanced in the last 30 years, nor in the 40 odd years since the 1970’s JASON report into atmospheric CO2, which is still at the cutting edge of your precious ‘climate science’. The reports are getting more detailed, the voices more strident, but the fact is that all progress on ‘climate science’ hit a brick wall and came to a juddering stop – it’s a complete dead end because the basic premise is so badly flawed that it has no relevance to real world observations and cannot progress any further without disproving itself. This is why there is an agenda to stifle and shut down any research that will undermine the ‘climate science’ – thousands of activists and ‘climate scientists’ would lose their jobs and comfortable incomes if that happened, not to mention the widespread defunding of many universities. There’s too much at stake to risk any progress.

MarkW
Reply to  Richard Page
December 31, 2021 9:00 am

They are continually finding new things about how the atmosphere works. Unfortunately none of these new findings seem to make it into the climate models.

Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 11:41 pm

Looking at the UN ag production data looks totally dismal for Europe (actually 2018 quoted). Something odd, it shows France down 24% in calories. Germany down 10% … I used to work in ag, those are dismal. If they’re that bad, there should be global repercussions. So I checked up on EU data … hmmm total cereal yields bounce between 260 and 300 million tons per year from 2009 to 2021. That’s about 13% variation, not bad. Year 2018 is at 271Mt. I don’t know how 271Mt is 24% less than 2017’s 285Mt though, its down 5% in my calculations.

The source paper for the UN data page I looked at was titled “Climate change has likely already affected global food production.” So perhaps a little bit of Climate Change English was applied to the ball here. The paper showing France 2018 -24% (calories produced) was published by Plos One, a pay to publish company. How this ended up in the UN data I do not know.
But overall, the global trade dashboard shows food is in good shape.

Reply to  nyolci
December 31, 2021 8:43 am

The only advancement climate “science ” has made is a proliferation of worthless pre-programmed models. Models never work.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 11:03 am

Whadda maroon … whadda ignoranimus! 🙂

What A Maroon! – YouTube

Lrp
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 11:37 am

The issue is not the movie, which is obvious trash, but Kalmus who believes it to be a fitting analogy to climate science.

Reply to  Lrp
December 30, 2021 3:53 pm

And it was a fitting analogy.

MarkW
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 7:06 pm

So doubting someone who has failed every prediction so far, is an utterly ridiculous thing to do?

Richard Page
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 9:42 pm

A pile of garbage is a fitting analogy for the climate change industry?

Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 10:45 pm

… a fitting banalogy, nyolci. One letter off.

Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 11:40 am

You were looking into a mirror, that’s why you didn’t like it.”

Typical icky.
Has nothing worthwhile to say so, starts off with ad hominems.

2hotel9
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 11:51 am

So they looked and acted like you. Got it.

Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 1:07 pm

The “scientists” looked like the most idiotic of all.

Derg
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
December 30, 2021 1:47 pm

Just like Mann?

Derg
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 1:46 pm

Why do you hate humanity?

CO2 is good for us.

Reply to  Derg
December 30, 2021 3:55 pm

CO2 is good for us.

Good on you, you’re a decent idiot. (Mods, the “hate humanity” is ad hom, so I reply in kind.)

MarkW
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 7:07 pm

That’s funny, for the guy who’s first comment was an ad hom. Like most socialists, you can dish it out, but you can’t take it.

Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 30, 2021 3:52 pm

Well, it wasn’t crap. The most I can bring up against it is that the first part was kinda slow. It is clearly not the best ever movie I’ve ever seen, this I openly admit. Anyway, it’s obviously a transparent parody of both the climate and the virus “skeptic” crowd.

MarkW
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 7:08 pm

I see that like your science, you judge a movie by whether you agree with the story being told.

LdB
Reply to  nyolci
December 30, 2021 8:07 pm

I think it was intended to be a parody but actually it is funny simply because of the absurdity .. it actually walks across that line of parody to theatre of the absurd.

drh
December 30, 2021 10:27 am

I actually sat through this entire piece of garbage. Once they showed the “denialists” wearing red hats, I just rolled my eyes. I read some reviews after the fact and pretty much all sides think it’s garbage just for different reasons. The left complain that it doesn’t take a real problem serious, the right that it portrays what climate change is not. Please don’t waste your time on this. It could’ve been funny, but it’s not.

Mr.
Reply to  drh
December 30, 2021 12:53 pm

If you watched closely though, there is a fleeting moment where Meryl Streep does a Hilary Clinton impersonation by looking up at a fireworks display with that open-mouthed look of rapture that Hilary used to do when the colorful balloons were loosed.

I think that Streep’s character could easily be interpreted as channeling Hilary throughout.

Mr.
Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 30, 2021 9:46 pm

“What’s in this for me?”

I don’t know what could have been in the minds of the writers & directors Eric.

Maybe they’d read Christopher Hitchens’ book about Team Clinton – “Nobody Left To Lie To”.

William
Reply to  Eric Worrall
January 2, 2022 10:40 am

“ Meryl Streep’s President Orlean Influences
When the Don’t Look Up trailer first dropped, you would be forgiven for thinking that there are hints of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the woman who almost was the President of the United States, in Meryl Streep’s blonde female POTUS with a penchant for pant suits. And that’s because, truthfully, there are multiple nods and references to all of our most recent national leaders in Streep and McKay’s unholy creation. But the figure she’s clearly most emulating is the orange hued man who was president when cameras first rolled on the movie: Donald Trump.
Like Trump, Orlean is a former reality television star who preposterously rose to national politics and is vocally outspoken in her anti-intellectualism and anti-science ignorance. Just last year, as Don’t Look Up was preparing to film during the pandemic, Trump told Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary for natural resources, that he thought the earth was going to “start getting cooler – you just watch.” When Crowfoot responded that he wished the science agreed with the president, Trump added, “Well, I don’t think the science knows, actually.”
From Denofgeek.com

[fix the misspelling of your email-mod]

Reply to  drh
December 31, 2021 9:08 am

What they are not listening to are the so called deniers, such as Willie Soon, Anthony Watts, Dr. Patrick Moore, etc., and they are listening to people such as Michael Mann, etc.

December 30, 2021 10:41 am

I wonder whether history may see this movie differently. Once you equate the comet with covid and the attempt to mine it as the one track minded vaccine the whole thing comes to life and depicts the current situation. And the comments about suppressed experts is more valid with the current situation than climate change. In any case that Invershell(? ) character makes a perfect Bill Gates!

William
Reply to  Basil Hooper
January 2, 2022 10:47 am

Consider how much can be explained by Incorrigible Ignorance and a lack of education.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/education-gap-explains-american-politics/575113/

[fix the misspelling of your email-mod]

John the Econ
December 30, 2021 10:52 am

The big difference is that if someone did discover a comet heading for earth, they would immediately publish their observation. Soon thereafter, dozens, hundreds, then thousands of other astronomers (professional and amateur) would locate the comet and validate its existence. After a long enough series of observations, numerous astronomers would take the publicly available and consistent data and independently calculate the comet’s trajectory and determine how close it would come to earth using mathematics that have been established and well-tested for the better part of a century and therefore almost all arriving at the same conclusion. Countless other astronomers and mathematicians would validate their work. Since the results of all of this work is observable, consistent, and repeatable, there is little debate about “consensus” because everyone involved has independently arrived at the same conclusion.

Little of this happens in “climate science”.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  John the Econ
December 30, 2021 11:48 am

That’s what needs to happen in climate science, but all alarmist climate science has to work with are unsubstantiated assumptions and assertions. Nothing observable.

John the Econ
Reply to  Tom Abbott
December 30, 2021 4:47 pm

…because it only happens exclusively in computer models.

John the Econ
Reply to  Tom Abbott
December 30, 2021 4:48 pm

Maybe when we all move into the “meteverse” we can finally experience it ourselves.

Reply to  John the Econ
December 30, 2021 1:46 pm

Perhaps if 100 different trajectories were calculated, some with it hitting Uranus and others showing it disappearing into another galaxy, then averaged to show an Earth strike projection, they would be believed.

Drake
Reply to  John in Oz
December 30, 2021 5:59 pm

Al right John, now YOU made me LOL.

Now that would be a really great analogy for “climate science”. nyolci, your response?

John Bell
December 30, 2021 10:55 am

No wonder the alarmists are frustrated! Imagine people ignoring them simply for crying WOLF! WOLF! for 50 years and things just getting better, and no sky falling either. They are so angry with people for not being as gullible as they are. HA HA HA

Tom Abbott
Reply to  John Bell
December 30, 2021 11:51 am

Alarmist climate scientists think everyone else is stupid, but it may be the other way around. In fact, I would have to say it is the other way around, because alarmist climate scientists can’t tell fact from speculation, and that’s not a sign of intelligence, to me.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Tom Abbott
December 30, 2021 1:48 pm

I truly believe that the alarmist “scientists” are no more fooled than those who tell the truth. They’ve all known for nearly two decades it’s all fraud. Surely no scientist with a functioning brain actually believes this crap. They made a decision some time ago to support “the cause” and now they’re stuck with it.

Drake
Reply to  Rory Forbes
December 30, 2021 6:02 pm

“They made the decision some time ago to support “the cause” their gravy train and now they’re stuck with it making a living from it.

There, fixed it for you.

Rory Forbes
Reply to  Drake
December 30, 2021 8:43 pm

Much obliged 🙂

… so that’s what “the cause” means.

markl
December 30, 2021 10:59 am

Thanks to the media people like this are fed propaganda daily to satiate their feelings of righteousness and compound their fears.

Reply to  markl
December 30, 2021 11:57 am

The script is still in re-write.

B40859E4-D921-42DF-B4FC-3C6217D90212.jpeg
Reply to  gringojay
December 30, 2021 12:28 pm

You just ruined DaVinci’s most famous painting!
Vandalism!

alastair gray
Reply to  gringojay
December 30, 2021 12:29 pm

Love the very un-enigmatic scowl, but did you know that Great has found a soulmate in Oslo

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/angry-little-boy-crying-a-sculpture-by-gustav-vigeland-at-frogner-in-picture-id111026507?s=2048×2048

markopanama
Reply to  alastair gray
December 31, 2021 1:46 pm

Not just a soulmate, but an offspring! Born pissed off and not improving with age.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  gringojay
December 30, 2021 1:26 pm

Is that Moaner Greta?

Chris D Mikkelsen
December 30, 2021 10:59 am

Unsettled by Steven Koonin should be required reading for everyone.

Ed Zuiderwijk
December 30, 2021 11:03 am

Good heavens. Talk about mad(ness).

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Ed Zuiderwijk
December 30, 2021 11:58 am

The guy is extremely delusional. I hope he doesn’t have any role in talking to kids about climate change. He would scare them to death. And he couldn’t prove one thing he said about CO2 wrecking the Earth’s climate.

Lrp
December 30, 2021 11:11 am

The scientist title is given too lightly these days

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Lrp
December 30, 2021 12:00 pm

Isn’t that the truth.

When it comes to climate science, the title ought to be “Speculator”.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Tom Abbott
December 30, 2021 4:25 pm

In CliSciFi the title is “Model Slinger.”

December 30, 2021 11:30 am

Personally, I thought it WAS NOT ABOUT CLIMATE AT ALL. In fact, I thought they went out of their way to AVOID association with CC as being too close to an overdone theme. The theme was “Don’t Look Up” to our celebrity leaders….as they are just in it for their personal aggrandizement. I thought the actor’s uses of the public speaking affectations of Trump, Biden, Musk, Jobs, and and a couple of interview show hosts was truly thematically masterful. Anyone who thinks its hidden agenda was CC, is probably displaying their own bias.

Reply to  DMacKenzie
December 30, 2021 12:13 pm

Of course it was allegory of climate change, that why DiCaprio was involved. That couldn’t be more clear.

Reply to  Pat from kerbob
December 30, 2021 12:36 pm

I wonder if he feels duped, now that it is clearly somewhat satirical of his real life self…and even takes a kick at the heroic scientist turned philanderer that he portrays…

Reply to  DMacKenzie
December 30, 2021 7:13 pm

That would take self awareness

He has about the same amount of that as Justin

markopanama
Reply to  DMacKenzie
December 31, 2021 1:50 pm

I agree – among the people I know in our town who have seen it, 100% think it is about covid. Which is up close and personal 24/7 in their lives. CC is a non-problem somewhere for someone else. They tut-tut about it, but like porn, are willing to do nothing about curbing it in their personal lives.

Roger
December 30, 2021 11:30 am

Melancholia was an excellent film. So was On The Beach, if you prefer slightly more realistic science.

Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 30, 2021 7:12 pm

Melancholia has Kirsten Dunst buck naked soaking up the moon glow, I guess because that draws eyes and $$

I confessed I watched

Tom Abbott
December 30, 2021 11:30 am

From the article: “The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed.”

Ridiculous! This guy is completely divorced from reality.

Reply to  Tom Abbott
December 30, 2021 6:43 pm

From the article: “The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed.””
Probably hasn’t stood up from behind his computer and stepped outside in years. This is precisely why the green vote and bed wetting is strongest in the inner city.

Solar Mutant Ninjaneer
December 30, 2021 11:32 am

I absolutely loved your review Eric. It made me smile.

Tom Abbott
December 30, 2021 11:33 am

From the article: “It’s funny and terrifying because it conveys a certain cold truth that climate scientists and others who understand the full depth of the climate emergency are living every day.”

You don’t understand anything, you just think you do. Delusional.

Mike Edwards
December 30, 2021 11:37 am

From the Guardian, so hysteria is only to be expected.

“doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction”

Pretty well sums up the state of Climate Delusion here, just about as far from reality as it’s possible to get.

Richard Page
Reply to  Mike Edwards
December 30, 2021 9:49 pm

But of course – climate activists and climate ‘scientists’ are convinced that they are all superheroes on a vital mission to save the planet. Delusional megalomania for inadequate, dysfunctional individuals.

Charlie
December 30, 2021 11:37 am

I’ve watched it. A piece of light entertainment with the emphasis very much on light. Trust the Guardian to provide pixels for a bedwetting climate zealot to claim this is just like global warming. It isn’t. You have definitely better ways to spend two hours of your time than watching this.

2hotel9
December 30, 2021 11:49 am

Peter? Want people to listen to you? Stop spewing leftist political sh*t. Problem solved.

Truthbknown
December 30, 2021 11:50 am

There is NO CLIMATE CHANGE! They have been saying that dumb-schitt for 35 years now! That sea has not risen one inch since then! According to these dopes we would have all been underwater decades ago…

Klem
Reply to  Truthbknown
December 30, 2021 12:14 pm

I’m in my 60s, I’ve lived by the ocean at various locations all my life. I actually have noticed a small amount of relative sea level rise over all those years, maybe 3 inches or so. When are we going to start seeing the predicted 5 meters of ocean rise?

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Klem
December 31, 2021 3:57 am

“When are we going to start seeing the predicted 5 meters of ocean rise?”

As soon as all the ice on Greenland melts. The last figure I recall is it would take about 17,000 years for the Greenland ice to melt, and that’s assuming it gets warm enough to melt all the ice on Greenland, which is not close to happening so far.

So it will be a while before we see five meters of sea level rise. If ever.

Ruleo
Reply to  Tom Abbott
January 1, 2022 11:53 pm

Even if all that ice melted it ain’t all going to the oceans. Greenland topography is a freakin’ bowl.

greenland-basin.jpg
Truthbknown
December 30, 2021 11:53 am

None of the celbutard pukes in this film are selling their beach front homes in Malibu!

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