Image courtesy of Screen Rant
By Sofia Laje, '22
Released on December 24, 2021, Adam McKay’s Netflix movie Don’t Look Up is a satire bearing several stark similarities to our current the climate crisis. While criticized for its unapologetic directness, the movie brings to light myths and controversies aimed at the scientific community.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, Don’t Look Up was one of the most anticipated movies of 2021. The movie follows two astronomers, one a professor and the other a P.h.D. student, who discovers a comet approaching Earth with the force to completely destroy the planet. The two eventually contact the United States government with a plan to stop the comet, but are dismissed and ignored. The tagline for the film, “Based on possibly true events,” makes clear the many real-life parallels in the movie. The film shows how political and media involvement in scientific matters can harm the general public and how social media fosters the spread of misinformation.
Media today allows people to blindly trust sources without vetting their credibility. The perpetuation of misinformation from media outlets and social media has led to the development of common myths about the climate crisis. When asked about how she has seen social media affect the public’s ability to communicate with science as a subject, Stone Ridge Environmental Science teacher Mrs. Casey Robertson says, “I have seen social media both help and hinder science literacy in our society.”
The largest factor within the usage of social media as an educational tool is the “algorithm” feature. This function analyzes what the user responds to and generates or finds more content that matches.
“They keep getting more of what they want. Because of this, users end up mostly only viewing material that is in alignment with their current beliefs and understandings of the world…If people are primarily interacting with science based understandings within social media platforms, it really depends moment to moment if the information they are receiving is held in high regard by the science community," explains Robertson.
The film relays just that, and shows how confirmation bias, in addition to fear of the unknown, impacts the public’s belief and reaction to science.
Common climate myths perpetuated by misinformation and spread through social media include the ideas that global warming is just the heat of the sun, that cold temperatures prove the falsehood of climate change, and that scientists have been wrong in the past so they could be wrong about the future.
These myths, along with many others are disproven when considering the facts provided and tested by scientists. For example, while the sun may have an effect gradually on the climate of earth, it does not explain the recent sharp increase in the global temperature.
According to an article from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), solar activity does not play a very pivotal role in Earth’s climate, and “warming from increased levels of human-produced greenhouse gasses is actually many times stronger than any effects due to recent variations in solar activity.”
According to NASA’s satellites, the sun's energy output has only gone up or down by less than 0.1 percent during the past 40 years.
In addition to educating oneself with trusted sources such as NASA, Mrs. Robertson advises people to “start conversations that are data-centered. This helps to remove emotion that can sometimes hinder effective conversations.”
Mrs. Robertson knows the difficulty of these conversations. She says, “It is important to listen to those disagreeing with the presented data.” In her experience, Mrs. Robertson has found that “people that are discrediting data are normally misinterpreting it.”
While the end of the film shows the worst-case scenario, the steps necessary to avoid the same fate are quite simple. Mrs. Robertson encourages those outside the field of science to validate sources and know which ones are credible. "Anyone can say anything; accepted scientific theories are repeatable, peer-reviewed, and accepted by the larger scientific community. They take time to properly present and test.”