Damian Sendler: Even though climate change has been a difficult subject to get to the attention of the general public, a film that attempts to bring it to life has taken the world by storm. When “Don’t Look Up,” a dark comedy about a looming comet, debuted on Netflix last week, it topped the streaming service’s most-watched list in 88 of the 89 countries in which it was accessible. 

Damian Jacob Sendler: Most climate scientists are quite impressed by how well the film portrays their battle to explain the gravity of the climate catastrophe to policymakers and members of the public. This movie contains major plot spoilers. It depicts politicians, including the president, and tech industry elites preferring profit over humanity’s survival in the face of an existential threat. As the film progresses, astronomy naysayers believe that the comet can simply be ignored until it fades into obscurity. 

According to Lisa Graumlich, incoming president of the American Geophysical Union and professor at the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, “I actually stayed up until midnight to watch it as soon as it was available to me on the West Coast.” As a result, “I went between laughing and feeling like I was about to burst into tears because it sounded so familiar.” 

Damian Sendler

For some scientists, one of the most moving aspects of the film is the superficial, even dismissive, coverage of their warnings in the media. As a result of the New York Times-esque media exposé, the scientists who discovered the comet are asked to lighten up and make the news more appealing on a morning TV chat show. Graumlich recognizes the wrath and misery felt by the young researcher, represented by Jennifer Lawrence. 

It was “very evocative of what we’ve experienced,” she added, “for many of us” to be taken seriously, at times ridiculed by the press, and to have politicians pay attention for a period but then lose focus. 

Graumlich’s early work experience is strikingly identical to Lawrence’s character’s in “Don’t Look Up,” a PhD student. 

As a tree-ring expert, Graumlich studies how climate has evolved through time, in part to determine if what we’re experiencing is natural or human-caused. When I was a young scientist, I turned 30…. My research into tree rings and previous climatic variability was featured in the New York Times a week later. You are proud to send this to your mum. Later that day, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show picked up on the subject. His jokes were directed at everything from myself (my name), to my name, to the absurdity of the idea that one could understand global warming by studying tree rings.”

In “Don’t Look Up,” some climate scientists believe that the media’s treatment of the comet in the film is a metaphor for how the American public has responded to climate change. A UCLA climate scientist tells Yahoo News that “there’s obviously some criticism of the media in the film—I don’t think it’s a media problem, per se, it’s a societal problem.” As he pointed out on the morning program appearance by the scientists, “there are some sequences which were humorous in the movie but on further reflection not all that funny. “In essence, they’re advised to lighten up, loosen up, and stop being so depressed. When it comes to climate change and extreme [weather] occurrences, I’ve heard the same thing from people in comparable positions nearly verbatim. 

Damian Jacob Sendler

“The criticism about the broader media landscape and the way society interprets bad news rings very true,” Swain said. “My interactions with journalists are usually very positive and constructive.”

However, the hazard posed by climate change differs greatly from that of a comet that will strike Earth in less than seven months. Even while its impacts began in the late 19th century, they have only recently become noticeable to the casual spectator. Scientifically speaking, the video does depict the political and economic hurdles that must be overcome in order to mobilize the people against any future threat. 

Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: MIT atmospheric science professor Kerry Emanuel tells Yahoo News that the new film was a “kind of parody that revealed an underlying truth” about climate change. As a parody, it was evident that it was exaggerated. Science is becoming increasingly irritated that it’s not being taken seriously by the media and politicians, who are essentially ignoring it.” 

Field, head of Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and professor of multidisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University, said he “enjoyed” the movie. “It makes you think about a lot of different things. A parable about climate change, it’s not about what we actually expect to happen. When scientists discuss critical issues, I find it difficult to avoid the frustrations and temptations that come with that. Remember that climate change is not Earth-ending in six months and 14 days, or whatsoever timetable there is in “Don’t Look Up.”” Keeping this in mind is crucial. 

As Swain put it, “Climate change is not like a physical object falling towards Earth that may suddenly wipe out humanity. “It’s not an appropriate parallel for climate change in the physical scientific sense. However, I believe it was done on purpose because we’ve been doing a pretty excellent job of collectively covering our eyes, plugging our ears, and burying our heads in the sand about some really alarming things going on in the global climate system. It appears that some of the climatic catastrophes are too subtle to be detected. As a result, I believe that the decision to make it a physical object impacting Earth and bringing an end to humanity was a necessary one. 

Michael E. Mann, a Penn State atmospheric science professor, told Yahoo News, “My own view is that it’s an imperfect analogy by design.” When Leonardo DiCaprio portrays the role “Don’t Look Up” in “Don’t Look Up,” he was inspired by the way Mann conducts his many media appearances. 

He may have wanted to focus our attention on an issue that isn’t burdened with ideological baggage, like climate change has become because of a fossil-fuel-funded disinformation effort,” Mann says. When faced with an oncoming catastrophe where entrenched interests could profit from inaction, he decided to build a politically neutral vehicle for investigating the constraints of our politics and media environment. To wit, McKay underscores one of my main points in my new book, “The New Climate War,” concerning the dangers of letting techno-billionaires to determine how we respond.” 

It also highlights the fact that we’ve been putting off action on climate change for so long that it now requires larger, faster, and more aggressive response than it would have if we’d taken action sooner. 

As Emanuel pointed out, “no metaphor is perfect,” but two features allow for a connection to the climate change issue. “One is that it’s something that’s going to happen in the future but isn’t making much of an impact right now. The longer you wait to take action, the more difficult and expensive it will be. This is true in both the climate change and the long-term effects cases. 

Damien Sendler: A meteor or asteroid can be deflected by a small amount of energy if caught early enough, according to Emanuel. There will be enormous forces required if one waits until the very last minute. Eventually, you will run out of energy and be unable to do anything about it. And the weather is also comparable in this regard. We wouldn’t have to spend nearly as much money today if we had begun [climate action] 40 years ago. You put it off and put it off, expecting that the next generation would have to deal with it instead of us, and it’s becoming more and more expensive. In the end, you will be powerless to stop it. 

Climate scientists have even used the analogy of an item from outer space in the past themselves to explain their findings. “Put yourself in the shoes of a massive asteroid on a collision course with the planet. When James Hansen, former NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies director, spoke at TED in 2012, he said: “That’s what we face right now,” he said. On his website at Columbia University, where he is currently an adjunct professor in the Earth Institute’s program on climate science, awareness, and solutions, Hansen remarked how “Don’t Look Up” echoed his own discovery. 

There are many parallels between this film and climate change, according to Hansen in his blog post. When scientists try to convey the urgency of both the asteroid tale and the real-world climate story, they are discouraged, Hansen says. These villains include greedy industry, incompetent and corrupt government; media that abandon responsibility for ratings; and an uninterested people. Is there any hope for the asteroid’s story, given the challenges it faces? And that’s just the beginning of what the true climate story has to deal with. As a result of intergenerational conflict, today’s adult leaders fail to take necessary actions, yet today’s young people and kids pay the repercussions. ” 

The COVID-19 pandemic and other hazards to public health and safety tend to frustrate experts in other disciplines, according to several climate scientists who expressed their frustration with political denialism and inactivity on climate change. “It could well have been” about COVID, Emanuel remarked, despite the fact that the producers had climate change in mind when filming the video. “It is frustrating for climate scientists, as it is for the entire medical profession trying to get people to wear masks and get vaccines” to be disregarded by politicians and members of the public who are hesitant to embrace an unpleasant truth, he added.

Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.