Dimming the Sun Wins Earthwatch Film Award
Image: NOVA Dimming The SunThe Earthwatch Institute presented their annual Earthwatch Film Award to Dimming the Sun, a NOVA/WGBH documentary about climate change.
Dimming the Sun explores the phenomenon known as global dimming, where air pollution is discovered to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth.
Through interviews with climate scientists and other experts, the documentary reveals several theories about the effects of global dimming, including how it is thought to cause disruptions in weather patterns. NOVA explores the positive impacts of air quality regulations and the slowing of global dimming, but reveals that these same regulations may have also served to accelerate global warming, causing many scientists to reevaluate their climate change models.
The award was presented as part of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital with the National Geographic Society. The Environmental Film Festival, which began in 1993, showcases over 100 films from all over the world on environmental topics. Dimming the Sun has also won the CINE Golden Eagle Award, for excellence in film, video, and media arts.
Being recognized at a film festival can greatly increase the prestige of a documentary. While several films on the festival circuit often don't have distribution channels or much of a production budget to speak of, Dimming the Sun already has the backing and credibility of PBS and NOVA, so this award will serve mainly to add a level of prestige and a gain wider audience. And even though The Environmental Film Festival doesn't have the star-studded reputation as that of Sundance or Cannes, it has a large number of international and big name environmental supporters and sponsorship is growing each year. This festival is also a great avenue for films with important topics that might be overlooked or disregarded at other festivals, and it also includes a films in progress feature that serves to give the filmmaker needed feedback and to raise awareness (and publicity) for the venture.
Tags: Climate Change, documentary, Film, Global+Dimming
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March 26th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
I took this one on over at my web site a while back here.
It’s certainly something that deserves a lot more attention. If particulate reduction particularly over the last 30 years helps explain the spike then it really affects the trend lines substantially. Since we are reaching a point of diminishing returns on particulate reduction it would seem the warming due to this anthropologic cause would not be sustainable and the models would need to be adjusted accordingly.
Jimmy
http://rationalenvironmentalist.com
March 26th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Jimmy, you beat me to it.
All the hard work by environmentalists to reduce particulate pollution and it ends up working against them.