This is a great essay on climate change more than a movie review. Still, fundamentally the movie works because it gets at the bitter truth of the Climate Crisis.
We see it coming, yet we seem incapable of doing anything about it.
Even when you can see catastrophe about to hit, what can you do with that knowledge?
I can tell you exactly what's going to happen over the next four years. The timing is approximate but I think this is what's coming.
Very few people understand what's been happening to the climate system. It's not getting a lot of press yet but warming has accelerated during the last seven years.
We have been monitoring the Earth's albedo level for the last 20 years using satellites. Unfortunately for us all the analysis of the data indicates that our situation has substantially worsened. This paper in the Geophysical Research Letters/Vol 48, issue 17;
Earth's Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine pub. Aug 2021
Concludes, that by 2017 the decline in the Earth's albedo doubled the rate that the Earth was warming. We are warming up twice as fast as we were.
It quantifies how much of an effect this change in albedo is having. By 2017 it had reached 0.5 W/m2 (Watts per square meter). That doesn't sound like much, until you realize that the effect of all our GHG pollution in 2017 was 0.6 W/m2.
Bottom line, by 2017 the decline in the Earth's albedo doubled the rate that the Earth was warming. We are warming up twice as fast as we were.
Dr. James Hansen wrote last August that;
We should expect the global warming rate for the quarter of a century 2015–2040 to be about double the 0.18°C/decade rate during 1970–2015.
Warming has greatly accelerated in the last seven years and is going to get worse. For the full analysis see:
Living in Bomb Time - 20 : Heat doesn't just happen, where it's coming from and why that matters.
Think about how much hotter it seemed between 2010-2020. Think about the heatwaves, the wildfires, the hurricanes, the deluge storms, the flooding, the ocean heatwaves, the wild swings in temperature, and the droughts. The rest of this decade is going to be at least twice as bad.
Next year, the "La Nina" cooling pattern we are in will peter out. The "El Nino" warming pattern that follows it will make 2016 look mild. 2023 and 2024 are going to be extremely hot. Like "Dust-bowl" hot.
I am using that reference deliberately because it is very likely that multi-focal production failure will occur in the world's agricultural zones. About 80% of the US agricultural area is already in drought conditions. The soils are dry and the water table has been dropping.
The odds of massive crop failures in 23' and 24' are probably as high as 65% at this point. And that's just in the US.
The grain from the Ukraine feeds around 100 million people in the Middle East and North Africa. If that crop is lost next year as well, the likelihood of famines killing 75-100 million people next year is approximately 50%.
Putin isn't invading Ukraine because he's crazy. He's invading because he thinks food is about to get scarce. I think he's right.
This may be the very last "good" year we are going to get. Starting in about 18-24 months it's going to be much hotter and droughts are going to start hitting globally. That's when the shit will really hit the fan.
Now, if you agree with me WTF do you do with that knowledge?
