Friday 27 December 2013

Warmist filmmaker Randy Olsen trashes Gore's film and "green" documentaries

Warmist filmmaker Randy Olsen trashes Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and "green" documentaries in general:

The Gore movie cashed in on his personality and the question of where he had been in the six years since his failed US presidential bid. The same movie starring any NASA scientist would have lost money.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: That's a bold claim, how can you be so sure?
Olson: Because the movie itself, stripped of its celebrity element, was boring. There was almost no narrative structure to it. It failed to tell an interesting and compelling story.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But Al Gore presented dramatic nature scenes and frightening graphics. Didn't that create attention?
Olson: Maybe if you were one of the hardcore lefties who turned out for it in droves. But if it was so good, why don't you see it re-run on cable the way popular movies are?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But Gore's film drew tremendous attention to the climate problem. Isn't that proof of science successfully communicating?
Olson: It made a ton of money which made some people think that suddenly the topic was unboring. Which produced a spate of climate documentaries that were all boring, and eventually resulted in an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker friend saying to me they all blend together -- all the same shots of melting glaciers, polar bears, carbon emissions ... blah, blah, blah. By 2008 another friend was at a gathering of indy film distributors in which they were saying, "no more environmental documentaries!", there's no audience for them. And by 2010 a producer friend of mine said, "Even the Green Channel doesn't want "green programming." --

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How could the public possibly still be interested in climate research?
Olson: I fear it's too late and that the brand has been ruined, but I hope it's not. The climate crowd did a lousy job communicating. Several reports have itemized the fact that over a billion dollars was spent on climate by the environmental side over the past decade. There is simply no excuse for the failure to communicate.

 Olsen is of course quite right in his criticism, but because he still believes in the religion of climate change/global warming, he rather naively imagines that "professional storytellers" could save the sinking ship:   

What is needed is "Narrative Training" involving partnering with people from the more visceral end -- media people, professional storytellers, actors, etc. As I did with my new book -- partnering with two actors. But academics like to just keep to themselves in their ivory towers. And the boredom continues.

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