I'm not sure Mr Powell even WATCHED the film, but no matter. The so- called "review" he gave was ignorant. The reasons why films like TTC and DiCaprio's "Before the Flood" are so important is that the general public does not know how to cut through the distracting noise which Mr Powell's review so exemplifies, and does not care to understand the simple science which makes climate disruption due to human emissions of greenhouse gases a logical necessity.
The claim that this is a "leftist idea" is ridiculous, since the inevitability of climate disruption due to fossil fuel emissions was nailed down at the end of the 19th century, and details worked out by 1938 by Guy Stewart Callendar, with proof.
The argument is easy: (1) Energy is always conserved. (First law of thermodynamics.) (2) Earth receives energy from Sun at high frequencies and radiates it out as heat, keeping energy on Earth in balance. (Black body radiation.) (3) Carbon dioxide has a big an powerful absorption line at the peak of the Earth's heat emissions. Carbon dioxide is a well-mixed trace gas. Effects of such gases do not depend upon their being dominant. Nitrogen, for example, has no such effect, and it's more than 70% of atmosphere. Consequently, carbon dioxide retains some of the energy which would otherwise be emitted in the process described in "(2)". The more carbon dioxide, the greater this effect. (4) The retention heats the atmosphere, and, transitively, the oceans, which, at the higher temperature restores black body balance needed for the equilibrium of "(1)" and "(2)". (5) Human emissions of carbon dioxide are many many times greater than ANY natural source. (6) Effects of variations in Sun, volcanoes, magnetic fields, and the rest are inconsequential and uncorrelated with long run temperatures. (7) Physical calculations and evidence from deep Earth history substantiate the effect.
Finally we KNOW this works the way it does because we rely upon the effect to ENGINEER things, and we do that successfully. For example, if this were not correct, then we could not build semiconductors which operate the circuits in computers, cell phones, and other devices successfully. Moreover, if this were not correct, we could not keep spacecraft in the proper range of temperatures for them to work. So it's not just speculation. We know it works. It has to. And it has zero, zilch, nil to do with politics.
