James Cameron, the creator and director of many smash hit movies, has teamed up with producer Jerry Weintraub to make a television series on climate change for the Showtime television channel. The series, according to the promotional trailer below, seems to focus of the human story of climate change - how climate has already begun to impact the lives of people all around the world.
In the trailer, James Cameron says:
"Everybody thinks this is about melting glaciers and polar bears. I think it's a big mistake. This is one hundred per cent a people story"
I believe he's right. Even though Skeptical Science's core message is about the observational evidence underpinning the science of climate change, facts alone are unlikely to be enough to turn public opinion around. People remember human stories better than facts and figures, so examining the impacts of climate change on people around the world may leave a longer-lasting impression on viewers.
Indeed, if there's one thing that is guaranteed to shift public opinion into combating climate change, it's the warm, clammy, hand of reality intruding upon your own personal life. Whether that's in the form of more frequent and extreme heat waves, more extreme downpours, more intense drought and bushfires, or rising sea levels amplifying current flood risk many times over. Whatever form it takes, climate change is going to, at some point, intrude upon all our lives in a very detrimental way.
Sure, SkS regulars may take issue with the 99% analogy used by James Cameron, rather than the 97% which frequently appears in the scientific literature, including our study, Cook et al (2013). And with the claim by Weintraub that hurricanes are twice as bad as they ever were (they're not). Aside from these slight flaws it is encouraging to see one of the greatest filmakers of our time turn his talents toward communicating the urgency of combating climate change.
Posted by Rob Painting on Thursday, 5 December, 2013
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