Age of Stupid
Reviews:
Stephen Schneider
Michael Wehner
Film Synopsis 1 2
Recommendations by
ClimateChangeEdu.Org
North American Theater Premier:
May 2009,
San Francisco
Who Was There
Photos 1 2
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Comments on The Age of Stupid
by Michael Wehner, Senior Climate Scientist,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:
While an independent film highlighting potential outcomes of global climate change could provide a good foundation for intelligent discussion of the issues, “The Age of Stupid” is a dangerous film undermining mainstream efforts to raise public awareness of the hazards of climate change. I cannot recommend this film to the climatechangeeducation.org audience, as it is seriously flawed.
Rather than picking the film apart point by point, let’s cut to the chase and focus on the most dangerous and fundamental flaw: The future archivist activities that imply a total breakdown of human society due to global warming. This scenario may make for good filmmaking, but it makes for really bad science. Not only is the whole idea itself preposterous, predicting it will occur in 2055 is downright ridiculous. This is not an outcome considered likely in either the IPCC assessment reports or any of the national assessments. Given how central the catastrophic failure of society is to the film's message, this alarmist film is more likely to fuel the arguments of climate change skeptics rather than foster informed and productive discussions of this extremely important issue.
Rather than dwell on this work of fiction, I would urge those interested in learning about the consensus opinion of future climate change and its impacts to read the Executive Summaries of the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch) and the 2009 White Report “The impact of climate change on the United States” (www.globalchange.gov).
-- Michael Wehner
The opinions expressed here are those of the reviewer
and not necessarily those of the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
the University of California or the United States Department of Energy
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Dr. Michael Wehner
Senior Climate Scientist,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The opinions expressed here are those of the reviewer
and not necessarily those of the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
the University of California or
the United States Department of Energy
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Two films on climate change, co-presented by
SFIFF and Climate Change Education .Org,
in
May of 2009:
Age of Stupid [North American Premier]
A Sea Change [West Coast Debut]
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