I think ya missed the point Matt. Number one, your choice, the bad blockbuster movie means lotsa people talking about a bad blockbuster movie, not global warming. In other words, the hype moves an otherwise serious subject into the real of the fantastic and the not really-real. Ya, like, maybe you're too young to remember that other bad blockbuster, The Towering Inferno?

Me thinks you're missing the point, Effle. Let's face it -- bad silverscreen epics are the reason little kids learn at an early age about fire (Towering Inferno), Christianity (the 10 Commandments), dinosaurs (Jurassic Park), and anger management issues (The Incredible Hulk). At the end of the day, this movie is doing a service for the environmentalist cause. Beret-wearing, latte sipping, poetry writing, art-flick watching champagne sipping snobs like yourself miss the point -- in the same way that you didn't get Michael Moore or the Sex Pistols.

"Critc's" last sentence will ensure readers spend more time discussing the silly, over-the-top, cliche'd personal charactertization of the previous poster than the actual point! Class warrior fatigue anyone? BTW I grew up worshipping Charlton Heston as a result of early exposure to bad disaster flicks. And rumour has it that there is a shop selling Ernest Borgnine blow-up dolls...

Dear the Critic or Matt (whichever you prefer to go by). Now, now, now, champagne sipping snob? Me? Wow. No. Well, occassionally. Actually I'm more of a red wine girl, I'd say. And by the way, I get Mike Moore just fine, and I got the Sex Pistols too, strange as you might find that. Though, frankly, I don't know why you would. I find your presumptions interesting to say the least--they make you sound a little brazen however, given that you haven't a clue who you are deriding.

I wasn't saying that kids, or adults for that matter don't LEARN from that Hollywood crap (most of it is crap--read what Michael Moore has to say about it). Rather what I was saying was that the sensational aspects of the blockbuster create a sense of the UNREAL, the sensational, the not-to-be-taken-seriously--if for no other reason than it obfucates the truth with hyperbole. Not that is a big ol' snobbish word that means: overstatement.

Here's a parallel that you might understand, I don't know. Drug awareness programs that featured uniform clad policemen talking in serious voices, in stern parental terms to kids about the life threatening dangers of, say, smoking a single joint didn't quite deliver the message see? Nor did Reefer madness. It was cloaked in too much rhetoric and overkill. That's the point I was making about the cheeseball bad blockbuster, and it's the point made in the article too I think.

If you look at the statistics of how many Americans believe in global warming (falling) then look at how many believe in Bible prophesy or Noah's Ark, I am inclined to suggest that all scientfic information be withdrawn from the issue and replaced with mystic explanations. Then, perhaps it would gain better acceptance.

(To effle: I ain't the Critic; that was nasty of him/her). Unfortunately, the question of believing or not in global warming is becoming increasingly irrelevant because the initial impacts are already here and it's going to hit everyone somehow, putting belief in the back seat to experience. The real battle lines are going to be whether folks are ready to give up their SUVs NOW, or whether they want to roll double or nothing on even more extreme impacts in the future.

The anti-nuke films you mentioned were from the 80s, not the 70s. They coincided with the rise of anti-nuke protests in that same decade, thanks to warmongering by Reagan. If You Love this Planet was not a disaster movie per se. It was a documentary about nuke campaigner Helen Caldicott. And it's WarGames, not The War Game. But good argument in your article all the same.

Hi Fact Checker, Thanks for the fact checking but the film I was referring is called "The War Game" it's A British documentary, not the Matthew Broderick film. You're right about the films mostly being from the 80's but they span from 1967 through to early 90's.

Hi Effle, Sorry about the character assissination. But like Michael Moore has proven, sometimes it takes a dose of low-brow culture -- not the Chomsky manifestos -- to really wake up the general public. Fahrenheit 911, which is about to become a Hollywood phenom, will be remembered as the movie that scrared the crap out of the US public and threw the Bush family out of office. For the record, Effle, I own a beret, drink cheap champagne on New Year's, drink lattes, have once written a poem, and rent the occasion art-flick. Sorry again.

I have a good sense of humour, and it's nodda problem. I didn't admit to owning the beret because I think it makes me sound like a Faye Dunaway wannabee, besides, they're worn more in the east from what I can see. I rarely see anyone with a beret out west. More the Tilley type I guess.

Also, nothing wrong with a little lowbrow culture and I entirely agree with what you're saying about Michael Moore's latest. Let's hope.

Global warming is all political tripe. Climatology, like the other sciences, has no easy answers and those who say they have it are lying. The fifth day of a five day forecast is accurate 20% of the time and these guys are gonna tell me what the weather will be like a hundred years from now? Puh-leeze!

Actually my opnion of the movie is that it takes a serious issue and exagerates it to the point of laughabilty and thereby not to be taken seriously. If this mirrors Effle's comments in easily understandable veribage then great. This is not another China Syndrome where the actual event as depicted could actually happen and therefore has a higher degree of a probability. I am not discounting global warming, I just don't see it happening over a time span of a few weeks rather a century or two.

Yeah, thank you, that is what I was saying. IT makes it so that people like Robert can say global warming is all political tripe, and not be laughed off the face of the earth, warming up as it is.

Such a thing as self-fulfilling prophecy, folks. If enough of us think there's little we can do about climate change, then more climate change we'll get, regardless of Hollywood B movies shown at the flooded drive-in theatre. But the realist in me says it'll take many more real floods, storms, plagues, famines and fires to wake us up to taking responsibility for the real live show we've helped produce.

Well it seems most people suffer from the ostrich syndrome or the not in my backyard mind set. It amazes me the number of people who have the idea that as long as something doesn't touch them or happen to them then they dont'tend to put it out of their mind and not give it a second thought. I wonder if those that were burnt out in the fire storms of last summer have changed their opnions of global warming. Better yet do you think that there are enough people with sufficient grey matter to connect the dots?

I agree with David Suzuki..it's just a movie! If you enjoy disaster flicks, there's a great one going on right now on every TV channel...the rhetoric and uninspired bullshit pouring over the corpse of Ronnie RayGun...one talking head even spoke of "the greatest President of our time"...as if this B-grade cowboy actor hadn't fronted a mammoth assault on truth and headed up some of the most stomach-churning military oppression in history...or has everyone forgotten Iran-Contra and ...ah, what's the use, it's time to worship the dead again, elevate him to the same sainthood as the dead Kennedy's... and any sort of historical accuracy bites the dust or is buried in adulatory crap. You'd think the old warmonger was another Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer... there will be days and days of the same smarmy pap repeated ad nauseum and just in time to give Bush's campaign a much needed boost with Big Daddy Warbucks Bush attending and giving eulogies and...enough to gag a maggot... on the subject of disaster movies, my alltime favourite is "On The Beach", my favourite image is the guy with his race car in the garage, ready to open-er up and drive to death by exhaust poisoning..."not with a bang but a whimper"...

The thought of the world ending in a giant fart. Now that would be just desserts wouldn't it? I wonder what the doomsayers would be able to do with this information. The placard reads....."what ever you do don't light a match"

I took my two sons, ages 11 and 12 and four of their friends (same ages) to the movie. They loved it and we had a great discussion about climate change, what was fact and fiction in the movie, and what they could do personally. These boys also saw Bowling for Colombine -- the result from watching that flick was also a great discussion about guns and violence. We also took them to see The Corporation. My oldest son came out of the movie asking his dad to check the tags on his clothing to see where everything was made. We watched The Ten Commandments and had a discussion about Judaism -- and Charlton Heston! They also encountered their favourite movie line, Moses announcing and brandishing "The rod of God."

Anyone who thinks global warming isn't happening hasn't been paying attention -- the information is out there and it is incontrovertible, just go look for it. The ironic thing is that one of the reaons the media can't be bothered paying attention to global warming is that it is a slow and undramatic kind of disaster, just the weather, changing everything. The amount of denial around this issue contnues to completely astonish me. Instead of making any of the necessary changes to our mad lifestyle, our politicans and the media instead make little bleating noises about the economy -- who wants the best seat on the Titanic? Anyone? The children of our future will have very little to thank us for.

Jude- when I read your posting I thought "Now there is a great parent".

I'm with Hippy Granny and the above who are astounded by the "ostrich syndrome" going on... maybe people need to visit a country where you literally can't go outside without wearing a face mask because the pollution is so thick your throat starts to close up and you have to swing by a clinic and get a shot of vapour and be on your merry way and the heat is sooooooo unbearabe you practically pass out the minute you step outside and nature has been butchered and entire mountainsides and roads swept away in storms because of lack of foresight... well, just because we don't FEEL the effects yet or haven't reached extremes doesn't mean it isn't happening, people.

The movie was corny Hollywood melodrama but yet it presented a theory few have heard about -- "superstorms" -- in a way that any low brow could understand, see, and one can only hope, think about. Nothing wrong with that. It's an incremental battle but every bit helps.