After a long period of development, James Cameron’s terrific and powerful mega-project on climate change, “Years of Living Dangerously”, opens today on Showtime.
The first hour installment of the 9 part series features glimpses of climate change impacts around the planet through the eyes of well known guides.
First episode is free online, above.
The series sets a dramatic, powerful urgent tone. The first episode takes the bull by the horns – crisscrossing the planet to take snapshots of climate impacts, and the processes behind them, through the eyes of those impacted.
Climate deniers often claim to be against subsidies that “pick winners” among different energy options. They are often conspicuously silent when those subsidies go to the nuclear industry. History has shown that nuclear power cannot exist without massive infusions of public money, and guarantees of profit from taxpayers and ratepayers. The danger is, this energy is so expensive it may crowd out other options.
LONDON, 7 April – The United Kingdom’s plans to build heavily subsidised nuclear power stations have come under withering attack from a coalition of Members of Parliament, academics, energy industry experts and environmental groups.
Evidence has poured into the European Commission, which is investigating whether the deal with the giant French nuclear company EDF breaks EU competition rules. The evidence from many objectors, whose submissions had to be made by today, claims that if the contract goes through it will wreck Europe’s chance of building up renewable energies to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
They say renewables will have to compete in an unfair market where one generator, nuclear, is guaranteed to be able to sell all its electricity at a stable price and with a built-in profit until 2058.
The UK Government has agreed a minimum price of £92.50 (US $153) a megawatt hour from a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in the west of England from 2023 – roughly double the existing price of electricity in Britain. The price will rise with inflation and runs for 35 years, a deal unprecedented in the energy sector, and not available to renewable energies like wind and solar. The guarantee will continue for all future nuclear stations too.
Al Gore might need to dust off his projector. The creative forces behind the Oscar-winning environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth are hatching plans for a sequel to the film that raised global awareness of climate change. “We have had conversations,” producer Lawrence Bender tells THR. “We’ve met; we’ve discussed. If we are going to make a movie, we want it to have an impact.”
The first film certainly did. Released in 2006 by Paramount andJeff Skoll‘s Participant Media, the Davis Guggenheim-directed doc grossed nearly $50 million worldwide and helped propel Gore, its narrator, to a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. But Bender believes that during the ensuing years, the fossil-fuel industry has changed the dialogue with a misinformation campaign. “They did a really good job of pushing back and confusing people,” he says. “Some people actually believe global warming doesn’t exist.”
The movie Noah has come under fire for a multitude of reasons, including charges that it leans heavily on environmentalist themes. Director Darren Aronofsky responded in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, arguing that there is a clear and present theme of environmentalism in the Book of Genesis that is merely reflected in the film.
Amanpour observed how people have reacted to the movie by branding Noah an “environmentalist wacko.” Aronofsky said the Bible has messages about tending the earth and taking care of all living creatures that he thought needed to be in the movie.
“Noah is out saving the animals. He’s not out saving innocent babies. He’s saving the animals. He’s saving creation. In Genesis2:15, the first thing that God tells Adam to do is to tend and to keep the garden. It’s right there in Genesis. So it was very clear to us that there was an environmental message, and to pull that message out of it, we think, would have been more of an editing job than just presenting what was there.”
Aronofsky also spoke of the dangers of climate change in the modern era, bringing up the U.N.’s recent report and telling Amanpour, “We are living the second chance that was given to Noah.”
Gotta say one has to have doubts about all those folks who insist on the literal truth of the Bible, but also insist that that Jesus was a nordic midwestern white guy, as in just about every image, cinematic or otherwise, that you’ll find.(see below)
Come to think of it, Aronofsky’s Noah is a very white guy – Australian Russell Crowe, and his daughter is played by very shiksa Emma Watson. One assumes the movie would never have gotten financed if they’d cast actual middle easterners in the roles.
What does this say about us? You tell me.
I’ve been covering the evolving debate on the impact of arctic warming and ice loss on mid-latitude jet streams and weather.(see that video with Jennifer Francis and Jeff Masters below)
Above, part 1 on Dr. Steven Vavrus’ talk at the American Meteorological Society. In part 2, below, you’ll hear some of the tough questions and pushback at the end of the talk. This is a fascinating window into the real ongoing debate – not whether climate change is happening, but HOW is it happening, and how is it playing out.
At the meeting, proponents of the hypothesis, including its originators and supporters—researchers like Rutgers’ Jennifer Francis and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s James Overland—presented data on how they believe a warming Arctic is affecting lower-latitude weather.
Other scientists, in turn, presented evidence from model studies and statistical tests showing no such linkage.
“It was a very interesting meeting because there was a great deal of debate,” Meier said.
David Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist and a researcher at Rutgers, who lead the workshop committee, said it’s hard to find statistically significant signals in part because dramatic Arctic sea ice loss has only been going on for a short period of time, since 2007.
“It’s clearly not nearly long enough a record to be able to identify any linkages in a statistically significant sense,” he said.
Robinson believes the hypothesis is a strong one. “I think Jen Francis presents incredible evidence,” he said.
But the way that science works is that someone puts forth an idea, and then “everyone has at it,” he said.
But the idea that Russia could threaten to turn off Europe’s gas is likely to change the way people think about the cost of renewable energy, some analysts say.
“It creates a different mindset about renewables,” says offshore wind analyst, Sophia von Waldow, of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance research group. “People no longer think, ‘This is very expensive and it’s affecting our energy bills’.” Instead, they start to see the benefits of having an independent source of electricity, she adds
Offshore wind power companies are among the most likely beneficiaries of such a shift in opinion, if it lasts.
Offshore wind is newer and more expensive than the two leading renewable technologies, onshore wind or solar power, meaning it will rely on subsidies for longer than its older counterparts.
Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe will appear with Academy Award-nominated actor Don Cheadle on a nine-episode documentary series premiering next week.
The show, Years of Living Dangerously, debuts at 9 p.m., April 13 on the Showtime cable network.
Viewers can also catch the full first episode free on April 7 here.
The first episode will focus on the drought inTexasand how it is impacting the city ofPlainview.
“I hope this program will show us how climate change isn’t just some far-off issue that only matters to our children’s children, the polar bears in the Arctic or to islanders in theSouth Seas,” Hayhoe said in a release from Tech.
Mayor Wendell Dunlap told A-J Media in March 2013 that Showtime pickedPlainview because of the closing of the Cargill beef processing plant.
Hayhoe will discuss howWest Texascope with an already-extreme weather climate, and how the patterns seen in the past are changing.
“What’s happening inWest Texasshow us why we care about climate change,” Cheadle said. “It’s affecting the livelihoods of real people, today.”
My own interview with Hayhoe, which she told me is still her favorite, below.
In a special one hour documentary airing this Sunday night, NBC News’ Ann Curry reports there is virtually no debate among climate scientists: 97 percent now believe climate change is real and the warming is largely caused by human activity. A year in the making, and less than a week after stunning predictions about the future from the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Ann Curry Reports: Our Year of Extremes – Did Climate Change just Hit Home?,” takes viewers on a journey to the Arctic at the top of the world, to drought stricken regions in the American West, to the edge of rising seas in Florida, and into extreme weather events all over the globe.
Dark Snow Project Chief Scientist Jason Box continues to be a go-to guy for journalists across the world. Here he chats with NBC’s Ann Curry at Disco Bay, Greenland.
