Glee in shaming climate-change deniers

The newest entry in the growing list of global-warming documentaries opens, horror-movie-style, with dramatic footage of lightning storms, floodwaters, wildfires, and drought-strangled fields, as though weather itself were something new and terrifying.

The statistics come later, suggesting that extremes of weather are, in fact, occurring more widely and frequently, and that they're the result of human activity. But, to grab your attention, the film starts with scare tactics.

What? You were expecting a calmly reasoned argument from a film called Greedy Lying Bastards?

There actually is plenty of sober, and sobering, evidence presented to support the film's thesis that (a) climate change is real, (b) it's our fault, and (c) a bunch of bad guys have prevented us from getting a handle on it. It's that last part, alluded to in the film's title, that is the film's bread and butter.

Filmmaker Craig Scott Rosebraugh seems to take a kind of perverse glee in hauling out for public shaming the worst offenders among what he calls the climate-change deniers. He's a skinny, deadpan Michael Moore, appearing on camera to figuratively wring his hands, but only occasionally. He doesn't need to. The film's titular villains do a pretty good job of hanging themselves, through evasion, self-serving doublespeak, and baseless assertions.

At the front of the line leading to Rosebraugh's gallows are the Koch brothers, David and Charles, industrialists and conservative activists who contribute heavily to what Rosebraugh calls the climate-denial propaganda machine. Along with such well-known right-wing pundits as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, the film's other miscreants include Jay Lehr of the conservative Heartland Institute, a think tank that once infamously paid for a billboard picturing Unabomber Ted Kaczynski next to the sarcastic words "I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?"

For true believers, the threat of global warming is no laughing matter. Still, Greedy Lying Bastards finds a way to mix a dash of humor with its simmering outrage.

Rosebraugh isn't joking, though. The film's slickness is tempered by its sense of urgency. Greedy Lying Bastards is part infomercial, part call to man the barricades.

Greedy Lying Bastards  *** (out of four stars)

Directed by Craig Scott Rosebraugh. Distributed by One Earth Productions.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 mins.

Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity)

Playing at: Ritz Bourse and AMC Hamilton 24