Climate change in popular culture

The issue of climate change, its possible effects, and related human-environment interaction have entered popular culture since the late 20th century.

Science historian Naomi Oreskes has noted that "there's a huge disconnect between what professional scientists have studied and learned in the last 30 years, and what is out there in the popular culture". An academic study contrasts the relatively rapid acceptance of ozone depletion as reflected in popular culture with the much slower acceptance of the scientific consensus on global warming.

Literature

* Arctic Drift (2008) by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler. A thriller involving attempts to reverse global warming, a possible war between the US and Canada, and “a mysterious silvery mineral traced to a long-ago expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage.”

* Fallen Angels (1991) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. Set in North America in the "near future", a radical technophobic green movement dramatically cuts greenhouse gas emissions, only to find that manmade global warming was staving off a new ice age.

* Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007) comprise the Science in the Capital series, a hard science fiction trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Set primarily in Washington, D.C., abrupt climate change causes weather disasters in the US capitol and flooding of the fictional island nation of Khembalung. Main characters are American scientists, politicians, and Buddhist monks.

* State of Fear by Michael Crichton, was released criticizing the Global warming consensus and accusing its proponents of using fear tactics.

Film

* The Day After Tomorrow (2004) starring Dennis Quaid. An abrupt shutdown of thermohaline circulation causes catastrophic climate change, plunging the Earth into a new ice age.

* The Arrival (1996) starring Charlie Sheen. Extraterrestrial aliens attempt to secretly cause global warming and thereby terraform Earth into an environment more suited to their needs.

* Waterworld (1995) starring Kevin Costner. Set in a future world, where the polar ice caps have melted due to global warming and the Earth is almost entirely covered with water.

Television

* South Park spoofed global warming in five episodes: Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow, Spontaneous Combustion, Goobacks, Smug Alert! and Manbearpig.

* Star Trek: The Next Generation had two such global-warming themed episodes:
o Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Déjà Q (1990) - The crew suggests an artificial amplification of global warming using greenhouse gases to counter the cooling effects of dust from the impact of a moon on a planet.
o The Inner Light (1992) - Jean-Luc Picard lives a lifetime on a planet experiencing Global Warming and aridification. Ultimately the climate change becomes serious enough to threaten all life on the planet. This Hugo Award winner is among the 5 most popular out of all 178 episodes in the TNG series.

* The 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon has four episodes dealing with global warming. In Shredder's Mom, Shredder and Krang use a mirror fixed to a satellite to warm up the Earth if the political leaders do not surrender to them. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles get help from General Yogure to stop them. In Northern Lights Out a man named Eric Red in Norway plans to melt the polar ice cap and flood all the coastal cities on the Earth by blowing up underground volcanoes, which will make it "easy" for Eric Red and his gang to take over the Earth. In A Real Snow Job, set in the Alps in Austria, Krang and Shredder use a Zoetropic wave device to melt the worlds' ice, flooding the coastal cities and making the Earth easy for Krang and Shredder to take over. In Too Hot to Handle, Vernon Fenwick's nephew Foster has an invention that brings the Earth closer to the Sun, a "Solar Magnet".

* The 1980s Transformers animated series had at least one global-warming themed episode: "Revenge of Bruticus." There, the Combaticons (a faction of the series' main villains, the Decepticons, created by rebel Decepticon Starscream) use the Space Bridge device to hurl Earth toward the sun, hoping to destroy the Earth and all enemies. The Autobots are forced to help the humans endure the heat while putting aside their differences with the Decepticons in a race against time to restore Earth to its natural orbit.

Comic Books

* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures from Archie Comics. Set in their present (1980s/1990s), but also including time travels to a future, in which New York City is flooded because of global warming and the greenhouse effect.

Related Videos

* From Science to Time to Vanity Fair: Global Warming Becomes a Hot Topic. Lecture given by Amy Gajda, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Law, University of Illinois. February 8, 2007. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/