'Don't Look Up?' British Meteorologist shuts down news anchor giggling about climate change
In the 2021 Netflix film Don't Look Up, star Jennifer Lawrence's character – an astronomer named Kate Dibiasky – reprimands two jovial talk show personalities for trivializing the impending impact of a massive comet on the Earth.
"I'm sorry, are we not being clear? We're trying to tell you that the entire planet is about to be destroyed!" Dibiasky exclaims.
"Well, it's, you know, it's something we do around here. We just keep the bad news light," host Brie Evantee, played by Cate Blanchett, responds.
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The movie, which was produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a parody of public disinterest in climate change. Yet over the weekend, a real-life version of Don't Look Up's fictional interview played out on television in Great Britain, mere days before temperatures reached a record 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
"So I see John you're outside enjoying the sunshine. It's not too hot is it?" GB News anchor Bev Turner asked meteorologist John Hammond.
"no, it's absolutely lovely. It's what, 20 degrees [Celsius] out here? It's perfect. But on a serious note, folks, by next week, you can scrap 20 degrees. It could well be 40 degrees," Hammond warned. "I think there will be hundreds, if not thousands of excess deaths next week. The charts that I can see in front of me are frightening. So, we all like nice weather, but this will not be nice weather. This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days. It will be brief, but it will be brutal."
Just like Blanchett's Evantee, Turner was apoplectic.
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"I want us to be happy about the weather. I don't know whether something's happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom, because all of the broadcasts, particularly on the BBC, every time I've turned on anyone talking about the weather they're saying there's going to be tons of fatalities. But haven't we always had hot weather, John? I mean, wasn't the summer of '76, that was as hot as this wasn't it?" Turner said.
"Uh, no, and we are seeing more and more records more and more frequently and more and more severe," Hammon explained. "So yeah some people will hark back to the summer of '76 which was a freak event 40-odd years ago, over 40 years ago. But heatwaves are becoming more extreme. This is yet another one which is coming down the tracks towards us."
Watch below or at this link.
\u201cA clip from Don\u2019t Look Up, and then a real TV interview that just happened\u201d— Ben Phillips (@Ben Phillips) 1658328460
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