Thousands of peer reviewed articles: WRONG

Bad remake of a 70's children show: RIGHT

How in the world can we ever have a serious discussion with these people?

S.T. Karnick calls people who warn about the dangers of global warming, "alarmists", but then writes this:

The media whores simply claim that all reputable scientists agree that there's a crisis requiring the absolute destruction of Americans' civil and economic liberties...

That's right: taking steps to limit and hopefully reverse global warming will lead to the absolute destruction of freedom in America. Nope, nothing alarmist about that.

Conservatives have reached such heights of ridiculousness that they are now the political equivalent of, "Land of the Lost." I.e., pathetic in every way. No wonder this clown finds solace in that movie.

How in the world can we ever have a serious discussion with these people?

We can't, and we shouldn't even bother. We should move right pass them, much as you or I would move past the lunatic on the corner gibbering about Martians in his underwear.

Matt Lauer can SUCK IT!!!

To maximize the payoff of the character being right when everyone thought he was wrong, you need to maximize his humiliation at being thought wrong. National TV is quite maximum.

And having the host of of a national TV program in the movie ensures at least he will cover the movie at release, no matter how bad it is.

Can you name a single movie (or for that matter, any story ever told in any medium) where a gradual consensus on a situation is built through the collective weight of many data points over a long period of time? Of course not -- that story is boring.

Movie goers want to see a lone, good-looking, skeptic protagonist bucking the oppressively-enforced conventional wisdom and proving he was right all along. That way we get to see our hero taking dramatic action to avert the catastrophe he is foretelling, or at least get some schadenfreude from seeing the skeptics killed by whatever monster they didn't believe would be unleashed. Totally popcorn-worthy.

When the "lone skeptic who proves the establishment wrong" is such a cliche in our culture, is it any wonder that every group with an axe to grind tries to cast themselves in that role? In the movies they are proven right nearly 100% of the time within the first half-hour. In real life they end up being our constant undercurrent of global-warming deniers, creationists, homeopaths, and psychics, believing that any minute now the plot will pick up and they'll be vindicated.

Remember how ALL Conservatives disavowed ALL Global Climate Change talk for years. Now except for a few of the Flat Earthers they accept it happening but they don't fully agree humans have anything to do with it. Kinda like "the church" disavowing the Earth rotating around the Sun for 600 years and only recently accepting that as true. Perhaps in 600 years they will come around.

ALL Conservatives disavowed ALL Global Climate Change talk for years...and that's a fact.

I love the "director of research" explaining the importance of "bookend" plot devices. You know - especially meaningful in this movie because they come at the

".....beginning....." and ".......the end......"

awesome.

There are powers who benefit from the systematic fooling of people, e.g. "global warming is a hoax" or "evolution is science fiction" or "The US is a Christian nation", that are apparently allied from the Republican party.

Yes, these people would turn the US into a theocracy, like Iran.

Scary, especially when you consider that they're getting better at obscuring truth.

Libertarians = conservatives minus social skills

Mr. Leonard: Interesting take on the nod to global warming skeptics you found within the Will Ferrell film, but then you close your article by casting doubts about global warming? You mentioned the UN report--now several years old--wasn't written by scientists; apparently you haven't read it.

More to the point, what about mentioning the massive number of more recent reports, like the consensus of over 14,000 climate scientists worldwide that global warming is caused by humans and is approaching the point of no return? Many of the "dire" predictions included in the old UN report have sadly been reached far sooner than anyone imagined.

As for those scrappy ole' skeptics, the ones you imply just might have it right? Maybe you haven't stumbled across how most of them were debunked as paid mouthpieces for the oil and coal corporations.

Next time, try doing some real digging before you ruin a reasonably good analysis piece with ill-informed personal opinions.

You are kindly invited to work on your reading comprehension skills.

Hell! Does the thing even HAVE a plot?

I am certain that if the movie did have a plot, that Will Farrell would not be aware of it much less have an idea about it.

The Cowbell was Will Ferrell's zenith.

Everything else is the nadir.

The "sky is falling" climate change/global warming alarmism is the biggest crock of hot air perpetrated on the American people since the Y2K scam. Leonard is right, climate change alarmists are using their scientific bias and ignorance to swindle their politically biased and scientifically ignorant toadies who live on every carbon dioxide falsehood that spews out of Al Gore's CO2 spouting orifice. The fact is climate change is the norm and not the exception, the climate and atmosphere are always in a state of flux both on the short and long terms. We are right now in an post-Pleistocene interglacial warming period that started well before Cro-Magnon was drawing elk portraits in French caves. Those claiming that there is scientific consensus that global warming is bad or evil and ONLY caused by humanity's CO2 emissions, and that the debate on climate change is over, are shameful pseudo-scientific research fascists who are clever enough politically to realize they can get scientifically ignorant fools like Al Gore to fund their bogus research programs, just follow the money trail to these dubious researchers at a university or other government sponsored institution near you. The fact is global warming alarmism proves science in America has been politicized, by progressives, and it's as shameful and scientifically fraudulent a behavior as that exhibited by the creationists who refute evolution. As most climate change alarmists lack any religious beliefs, they are looking for an alternative creed to believe in, and have cottoned on to climate change alarmism as an un-debatable faith-based new-age cult built upon ignorance and paranoia, my, doesn't that sound familiar, sound just like the beliefs of the fanatical disciples of certain religions? No? Self-labeled "progressives" know what the absolute truth is behind global warming, it's only caused by humanities evil CO2 emissions? Progressives would never resort to Cheneyesque fear tactics , to get people all whipped up and frothy over climate change? We need to save planet earth from man? Well, the earth doesn't really need to be saved from man, it was here long before our ancestors crawled out of the primordial slime, and it'll still be spinning and circling around the sun, perhaps as a cinder as the sun becomes a red giant, long after we are gone. The fact is Cap and Trade is a tax that political parasites want to foist on the American and European people, but especially upon the Chinese and Indian people, Asians, to keep them from developing their economies so that they can compete with America and Europe on a global scale. Hey Al Gore and your progressive disciples, how are you going to dictate to 2.5 billion hard-working Asians that they can't have two Japanese or German cars in every garage, and take the jet-setting junkets that you and your global warming cronies are so fond of? These make-nothing, do-no-work political parasites would tax the air that we breath if they were given the chance. The global working man who produces something with his hands ain't no oxygen thief like theses cap and trade tax mongers are. We live on a planet with finite resources, and nuclear wars over these resources are much more of a threat to our existence than global warming is. Population control should be humanity's main priority right now, not taxing the working man even more than he's taxed already, to put some phony thermostat on our climate that probably wouldn't work in any case. If we really care about our fellow man, we'll all stop consuming so much resources so we can share those resources with our fellow earth-bound citizens and this means everyone on planet earth living simple agrarian lives, living like corn, cattle, goat, and chicken-raising "third world" villagers do, but just each having two kids, and getting rid of our arsenals and armies. Either that, or eventually it will be a global fight to the death over dwindling resources, food, water, land, and natural resources like forests, metals and minerals. Hey, we already fight wars over oil.