James Cameron to Release Documentary on Climate Change
 

Couldn't decide if this was Avatar-related or not, so I just put it in a place where it would get more views. :P

YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY Trailer | Collider

Trailer.

Watch the first trailer for James Cameron's global warming documentary

io9 article.

I'll be interested to see how he chooses to tackle this. Some people seem to think he's just going to use Hollywood actors to churn out more environmental messages, while the right thing to do would be probably be replace the "stars" with scientists, since the people who have been recording data in ice cores and documenting the loss of glaciers are the real heroes.

Irayo, Raiden, for posting this news here!
I'll be very interested to see this docu-series. Good for JC that he's doing this! And I agree with you that the scientists and other data recorders are the real heroes. :)

While I agree with you on principle I think Hollywood stars are going to be much more effective at getting the message across. I'm not sure how much of the world you've seen, but I know you live in the outskirts of Portland, a known environmentalist stronghold. I live in the middle of Louisiana, we crack the top 5 every year for least educated states. I'm surrounded by uneducated people everyday, it's not their fault they're uneducated, a product of the environment and culture, but they are. Huge numbers of the population have absolutely no concept on what's going on, I can't jump right into carbon emissions if they don't know how greenhouse gases work first, or what carbon is. Even in my university, college students, I have to assert why "the earth getting a bit warmer" can have widespread and varied effects.

Recognizing scientists and giving them screen time would be great, but then that just makes this another run-of-the-mill documentary, something masses aren't keen on seeing. With a James Cameron big budget, and recognizable actors to "lure" people in, I'm hoping it'll get more traction than it would have otherwise.

Agreed, I don't think that JC making his stuff accessible and appealing to uneducated people is selling out.

This.

It needs to be seen by as many people as possible. If it means having people like Arnold Schwarzenegger appealing to the uneducated masses Sarah referred to, then so be it.

Besides, the correspondents list is filled with journalists and scientists, not just Hollywood celebrities. As an example:

Dr. M. Sanjayan (lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy)

Cheers! :)

Yeah, I thought about this after I made the post, and there's really no argument I can provide against it. I just wish that all the researchers who sacrificed pretty much their entire life to live in a coffee mug in front of a lab computer would get some recognition for once.

Also, mongabay posted the story too:

Featured video: trailer for James Cameron's new global warming series

It gives a bit more information about how the documentary will be/was produced; I guess most of the people talking will be ordinary people.

The only thing about it that concerns me is that it seems to be tilting towards a very self-centered view; the documentary seems to be focusing on how humans are impacted, when many thousands of other organisms on this planet are in far greater peril than we are.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

I agree that it's morally wrong to cause widespread and possibly irrevocable changes to the planet just because we can, we're not the only ones that live here, we're supposed to share. There are people that believe this is not the case, and because human's are the most "intelligent," the fittest, we have the right to dictate everything that happens here, that we "won" as a species and this is our prize. I know people who acknowledge man made climate change as real, but believe it is our right to do so. It's actually incredibly difficult to debate with these people, unlike people who are just uninformed, for them after presenting enough information it's possible to change their minds. With this debate, it becomes about what constitutes "right" and "wrong," essentially boiling down to opinion, and becomes an unwinnable stalemate. The only way to combat this is to strike in the one place they care about: mankind. Although knowing climate change is real, they still don't know the specifics, or understand the large scale impact it will have on people. This series' main purpose seems to be addressing this point. I hope so.

It's all about the audience, and JC is really good at capturing a wide audience over lots of demographics. Whatever gets the message to the most people is best.

Yeah, but what about empathy?

If someone can't understand that they cause serious pain and fear if they do something like step on a mouse or cut off a snake's head with a shovel, they need to go to an asylum and stay there, because they're a danger to much more than just snakes and mice.

Killing plants (i.e. cutting down a forest or damaging trees "for fun") feeds back into the same example, because even if the plants can't feel anything, and even if the person argues that we have the right to control ecosystems, destroying plant communities will probably cause animals to undergo the same hardships.

I guess they could still just be stubborn anyway, but it seems to me that this argument would hold up. If you can't understand the consequences of your actions and how they affect other organisms, you've got a problem.

I hadn't thought about empathy towards animals, jumping straight to global warming's effects on humans since I thought it would have the most effect on the audience I was debating with. (I'm now referring to a specific debate I had with a person, instead of hypotheticals.) With debates sometimes it's about getting the most bang for your buck in terms of time, knowing I won't have time to hit on all points, I go straight to what they'll listen to most. Really, sometimes it's most effective to just play the audience.

I don't know if this person would be able to cut off a snake's head with a shovel, I feel like something so concrete like that is much different when it's right in front of them than the ephemeral "polarbears are dying." I also suspect people would eat less meat if they had to butcher it themselves, there's a very strange divorce between our food where it actually comes from today, but that's kind of tangential. I'll keep that in mind though, thanks.

Is it Titanic?