A Climate of Change

2014, Environment  -   26 Comments
7.88
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Ratings: 7.88/10 from 173 users.

Produced as a prelude to the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Canadian production A Climate of Change relies on the expert insights of several revered scientists to debunk the skepticism of global warming deniers and advocate for greater urgency in preventing further planetary abuse. Armed with easily understandable testimony and clear and concise evidence, the film hopes to put an end to the debate and begin the search for real solutions to an ever-worsening global crisis.

The scientists featured in the film speak to the various aspects of the climate change crisis. Dr. Kimberly Strong, a Professor Physics at the University of Toronto, dedicates her professional research career to the measurement and study of gasses and other pollutants in the atmosphere. Her findings indicate a dangerous trend of ozone depletion.

Dr. John Smol, Professor of Biology at Queen's University, speaks of the changes occurring in the Arctic region. From there, scientists can comfortably predict the global changes to come. What they find in the Arctic is immensely troubling, as ancient ponds and lakes are shallowing at an alarming rate. Richard Peltier, the Director of the Centre for Global Change Science, outlines the dangers inherent in our rising sea levels, which are caused in significant measure by melting ice sheets and warming climates.

Additional experts explain the science behind water contamination, extreme weather conditions, flooding, CO2 emissions, and Canada's own checkered history of environmental advocacy. Each scientists concurs that the entirety of the issue is not solely caused by humans, but further catastrophe can be avoided if our species is willing to take the appropriate steps to act.

The climate change movement has suffered in part by the inactivity of a younger generation that feels overwhelmed and consumed by daily struggles, and helpless in their ability to affect change within such a far-reaching crisis. The film makes great use of statistics and graphs to illustrate the extent of the crisis, but it realizes this alone is not enough to affect real change. A Climate for Change also offers valuable and practical solutions in which everyone can take part. It's not enough to know the problem, the film says. You must also know how you can be a part of the solution.

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26 Comments / User Reviews

  1. Jay

    Why the earth is hotter around the center? It's closer to the sun. You did not mention the influence of the sun flares on the planet's climate...perhaps because man has nothing to do with it.

  2. climatechangemaster

    So many people here who know nothing about "climate change". I should have made this documentary. Easy money. C02 is a pollutant is it? Do you dumb ******* even know what plants eat? Do you id**ts know what happens to plants if you expose them to excess amounts of C02? They grow in bio-mass. Grow the **** up. Wake the **** up. Oh, and the shut the **** up. Cheers!

    P.S. Graphs can be manipulated. Have a nice day :)

  3. Billy Jean

    Most boring documentry ever. Had to do some school work for this and it's absolutely boring. I know the earth is dying and yes I know we need to fix it but I don't really care for the specifics. Also so much for helping climate change with the host smoking and tossing his butts onto the street and stuff.

  4. Michael Lasher

    Yes, CO2 levels are increasing due to burning of rain forests and fossil fuels. Yes, humans affect the environment in VERY negative ways. Yes, human contribution to climate changing is certainly greater than zero. Yes, the oceans and fresh water are being polluted to a horrendous degree due to indiscriminate practices. But this documentary is a joke and poorly done because it says next to nothing about the evidence that average global temperatures have CONTINUED to rise (which they haven’t) over the past 20 years. Instead it wastes your time with images of 100% NORMAL events, like ice melting and storms doing what they have always done and always will. Images of this clown smoking cigarettes and tossing them on the ground and eating at McDonald‘s make you wonder why the hell you chose to watch Irin the first place. Absolute crap.

  5. HombreLobo

    The graphs and animations in this doco really helped get my head around what the climate experts were talking about (demonstrating ozone depletion, CO2 fluctuations, ice sheet movement). It gave insight into what the experts are seeing and what is making them so concerned about climate change.

    The interviews of what regular joes know about climate change was eye-opening. Huge range of responses of what they knew, some very little, some a fair bit, but there is a living in the present type mentality that I am really worried by. Most had other present concerns first. It seems like there isn't a strong enough dialogue with citizens about what these scientists are finding.

    It is interesting the lack of concensus on climate change on the political and citizenry. I do think that most people, when they see the path that we are going down, will act. This documentary may be a good inroad to start this.

    On a side note, I found the host refreshing for a documentary on climate change. He says how he doesn't know too much about climate change, and throughout the doc, he eats MacDonalds, driving everywhere and flicking cigarettes into rivers. What will be our environmental impact if we all continue this regular lifestyle? The methane from meat production, smoking on health, the insanely high CO2 emissions per capita from driving are all things we will have to change if we are to take climate change seriously.
    I've started taking action after reading this book: Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution and the doco: A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity.

  6. said

    The like to be the earner in your devoloped day past to be the green space you can fill to your project the mark to be a newlevel to cray to got another.but fill to next mony how he need to be in the eyees plus Mark be forever the favor for your earth how born your statut with the notion unities system give it his steep for you .
    But another me with us go to give from my & his are be the best schooler to fill to the way his notion to give the help to change the skin the project to another be most sheep and the plus hight level to cknow how much can the defferent gains in the one elment filing the earth in the totle born tomorow the satisfy from all earn be the earth to fill his skin tomorro to the Word people used it in the one steep unities and reduce the way from the futur to be safe and earner time to enjoy with his knowldg and Monument.
    But the relation can give the come as destroy if are be the earth not montioned as well as she talk about his self .
    me return in it as die but if my mind brin give the body how fill the view the plant give the dies his heritage in it best than she can cray the medecin in it in his history.
    If the world cray to the destroy.. The destroy fill to he mind the old steep living room how the world linve old poeple to talk about it .
    Its true to cray to the description to fillthe smile its natural tonot be defined for his steep to change it the crayonce in some steep but to another the world can change if all like to be.

  7. DustUp

    All I ask is don't poison the planet with ...poison. What is poison? Is CO2 poison? Not to lots of plants. Are CHEMTRAILS, GMO, herbicides, pesticides, industrial effluents, nuclear radiation outgasing and dumping, synthetic fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, etc. poison? Certainly, quit dumping that crap. Find a way to make it inert. At the very least plasma burn it before it gets into the environment.

    Contrary to those who bought the Propagan-duh of the GOVT SPONSORED CLIMATE "scientists" all designed to take your power and enact greater control over every aspect of your life, via climate change lies, until you must get a permit to have a barbecue... Do some real science yourself. Go to the coast. Monitor the sea level. "They" have been claiming we would be under water. When you point that out, they then claim the waters are inching up. Have they? Quit believing the bought people and their useful idiots. Measure it yourself. Quit being a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed full of crap, being so called "science.") The only way you will know for sure is to go measure. So how do you do that with tides and lunar phase continually shifting along the calendar, waves, storms, whales peeing, and the earth spinning out of wobbly at thousands of miles per hour (if you believe that nonsense also), enough to rip your head off if you stuck it out the window. ...So don't go outside and actually look for yourself, just measure it like the "scientists" do: Pretend to take data that means something but doesn't, and make absurd conclusions based on "data". Meaning I could easily take actual measurements showing the ocean is rising but it would be inappropriate data even though "scientific." Basing conclusions on it would be wrong.

    How can I say such things when it has been proven? What has been proven? Only that they can fool a bunch of people unwilling to go look at marinas and boat docks with big white and black tide gauges bolted to a piling.

    All that claimed SCIENCE and so called DATA was based on nonsensical computer MODELLING of the climate. Not actual measuring of what one can measure.

    Hats off to those who realize that Chemtrails and HAARP are the biggest dangers to the planet BY FAR than any other at present. Do a websearch for geoengineering watch, check out the govt documents which provide for the spraying and the haarp, its capabilities, then get back to me.

    And where were the interviews of all the real scientists who show legitimate reasons to question all of this climate propaganda?

    Unless you like a diet of aluminum, barium, and strontium; in your lungs and your guts. Maybe you should at a minimum get at least as worked up about GeoEngineering/chemtrails; a real cause of man made weather/climate change.

    Why don't the enviro groups point fingers at chemtrails? Because either they are ignorant dupes or realize that it is their dream come true savior to keep them from appearing the fool for touting "man made climate change" all those years. They get to use the negative impacts of chemtrails and haarp, and blame it on their chosen area of devastation. Bunch of ignorant and/or lying cowards.

  8. phelaen

    Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity today.
    the narrator of this documentary likes the smell of his own farts to much though.
    i think his inflated ego causes climate change too

  9. Southab403

    DAVE
    How could anyone live on one acre of land with no water or food production capability??? Overpopulation is a strain on sustainability. The climate is changing (as it always will). The threat is more about the climate changing faster than ecology can keep up with as people place more and more demands upon a stressed environment.

  10. Mike

    The republicans ruled there for years, and pushed through BS anti environmental legislation. People have finally woken up in Canada. Maybe now they can start repairing the damage. Thank god they voted them all out last year.

  11. CJ Tims

    Yikes! Everyone here is crazy with certainty.

  12. Clayton

    All the problems we face can be solved in a decade with the right education, economic planning, media coverage and most of all the right farming practices!

  13. nica cervo

    just be good to planet earth. it is for us absolutely!

  14. Dirk C Rezelman

    This is a serious subject, requiring a more disciplinede communications approach. Given this the presenter seems to be intent on exhibiting his own hand-wringing, anguished actions (smoking, eating, polluting) as surrogates for serious thoughts about carelessness and habitual acceptance of societal and cultural living patterns. There are of course destructive downsides to all Western technological legacies, easily exploited by `developing nations' demanding hard cash from guilt-ridden`have' states for decreasing their carbon footprints and then using this foreign aid to pad their private wallets, patronize political cronies and give high-sounding environmental posts to close relatives. South Africa, for example with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, gross inequality, regular service delivery violence and riots, dispatched more than 130 `delegates' to the recent Paris jamboree on climate change. They did not camp in tents under the Arc of Triumph, I assure you.

  15. josh millican

    That was awesome ... I'm not pretending these issues dont exist ... In fact they are heavy on my mind .. And it very well might be too late but society can try .. And I wanna be a part of that effort.. I just have to ...

  16. Leto

    Holy smokes some of you pseudo intellectuals really think that playing tha contrarian card with 20% of the information required is enough to bamboozle those of us who have actually studied this with a science based approach???

    JAN DE BOER... You should really re study 90% of the points you made....

    Al Gore was a spokesman for scientists. .. and nothing he said was actually off... he was more conservative than reality as many of the things that the scientists informed him would happen, that he relayed to the public... actually happened earlier and faster than predicted.

    Cap and Trade is a mechanism in order to get carbon cut... it is not the goal to just suckle on a Co2 tax forever. .. it is there to help the massively subsidized hydrocarbon energy products to be dropped faster and renewable adopted quicker....

    The atmosphere of Venus actually reflects more heat away from the planet than it receives. So your multi thousands number is a bit off.

    You are correct that cutting down for rests and desertification is a massive issue, and yet it is another facet of what must be done to fix this systemic and catastrophic issue of AGW...

    It is perplexing how you can see on one hand that issue clearly... but on the other hand try to dismiss the gigatons of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere annually. .

    Anyway Jan not totally picking on you, as at least there are slivers of sense in your thoughts... however there are some blemishes that I could not ignore as I hate to see someone mix the turds of climate denialists in the punch bowl.

  17. Jan de Boer

    There is a climate change. I have no doubt about that. And my opinion is based on a Master degree at a technical university and many years designing and research.
    The main problem in fighting this climate change are the outsiders like Al Gore, who pretend to know the cause without understanding what is really going on and are exchanging cause and result. Add to that all those politicians who are addicted to the tax on carbon dioxide and are wasting that income on their political hobbies.
    First, carbon dioxide is not the cause of the climate change, but only a symptom. If CO2 would be the cause, then the temperature on Venus would be several thousands degrees Celsius, more than ten times higher than it is now, because the greenhouse effect on Venus is more than 250,000 times higher than on Earth. At the same time Venus is nearer to the Sun and gets twice the heat input compared to Earth.
    It is my considered opinion that humanity caused the change by cutting too many trees and by causing an immense desertification. The solution is quite simple: reverse the desertification and start planting trees. We don't need to do research to find out how. The research has already been done by Mr Allan Savory, watch here on TED. his talk “How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change” and the fantastic results he scored. Someone else produced similar results on tree planting, made also a talk on TED, but I don't remember his name. Both solutions will also result in reducing the quantity of carbon dioxide in the air and have the same valuable property that they actually produce financial profit in addition to saving the climate and preventing flooding of various areas, like my own Dutch country.
    Regretfully I'm also convinced that the above will be ridiculed and ignored. The politicians have already silenced all previous protest against blaming CO2 as cause.

  18. Karl

    Serious and complex problems need compelling research, accruate reporting, and equally compelling presentations to move countries and blocks to action.

    We have the research showing significant changes as a result of industrialization. The data are consistent. But explications of those data have been mixed with both over-blown claims, junk science, and outright hypocracy (think Al Gore).

    These types of rhetorical tactics always produce conspiracy theorist who end up denying the causal account due to ad hominems, strawman and genetic fallacies. Like haulocaust deniers, they quickly become immune to data and explication.

    Well-crafted documentaries are needed and this one had some good animations, sat videos, and interviews. But the director may need to watch Frontline e a few more times as he seemed to get in the way of his message, as others have noted.

  19. Dave

    The idea of over-population is absurd to say the least, at present every human could have 1 acre of land in Australia and leave all other countries empty. Greenhouse gas? Chemtrails are the main proponents of this bizarre rise and yet no one is asking questions or telling the governments to stop spraying! We are on a major decline because the ptb are losing their control over us, before long we will all be involved in civil or world war because of new constraints being issued daily into the populace.

  20. Craig

    Advocate of climate change, its a disgrace in many ways. Significant challenges lie ahead. We all have a footprint, but you lost me when this guy presenting it is throwing cigarette butts into the environment and eating Mcdonalds? Not rocket science that eating meat is one of the biggest contributors of green house gases via methane. Ridiculous presentation of a serious topic... :(

  21. Brad

    I wish all climate change deniers would simply challenge the necessity of breathing for say 5-6 minutes, as both arguments are alike in validity. Do some bloody research fools. 5 degree change over last 10 000 years, 1 degree in last 100 years since the industrial revolution took hold. That sum it up for you children?

  22. Neil Wilson

    Why is there music playing ?? I am trying to listen to what is being said

  23. Hans Nötig

    All those ppl who are saying, climat change is not happening are the reason our planet is doomed. What must be wrong in someones head to denie the biggest problem humanity has ever faced!!!

  24. spencer frame

    what a load of crap.... humans are not responsible

  25. docc

    Unless people are willing to understand having children is greedy and understand population growth must be limited to 2 children per mother, we are doomed!!! Without this first step we are just going to be taxed until global civil wars are a standard.

    Or am I the greedy one, by not having kids???

  26. Salva Sanchez

    No mention of the skies being plastered with chemtrails daily that is mixed into jet fuel nor do you mention H.A.A.R.P. technology Weather Modification so, you wasted your time and OUR precious time in the making and presenting this 'video'.