Excellent points, Geoff. I too, wonder, if the emphasis on doom and gloom aspects have a paralyzing effect.

I was traveling yesterday and missed the show. So I'll reserve judgment as well.

Hi Geoff — I was on tenterhooks watching, because we really had no idea what the show would be like. At the 2050 mark (1 hour in) I was a little nervous that it was swiftly heading over the top. But I think the producers were really quite smart and thoughtful. While they fully intended to show a worst case scenario (that I've confirmed with two climate scientists is plausible), they did pull back from the doom and gloom brink in two ways. First, they showed about a decade (I think) where we get it right — 2060, we start living differently, both in terms of dramatically cutting emissions and preparing for consequences. But of course, if we don't do that til 2060, that's too late — and so it was in their show. The Greenland Ice Sheet collapses and that's that. But I think the decade of hope was an important touch, and the last 15 minutes were about bringing people back to 2009 and what to do. For a little while, it was the standard stuff — you can turn off the lights, use CFLs… But then it pointed out that while that's important, it's not enough — it will take the action of govts, and moreover the concerted action of govts. And they went back to our wargame and posited what would happen if the outcome of international negotiations (i.e., Copenhagen) were different.

I thought they used an interesting set of conceits to try to visualize a future that is pretty hard to imagine — it was a high risk strategy, and I thought really great. Not for everyone, probably, but really interesting (they basically made it a graphic novel of a fictional future). Very interesting project!