'The Great Warming' Opens in Theaters Nationwide Nov. 3

(Nov. 2) - It doesn't have Hollywood or Al Gore behind it, but the independent film 'The Great Warming' has managed to get a U.S. movie theater chain to show it starting Nov. 3 in about 40 cities.

The film originally aired in Canada about 18 months ago as a three-hour TV series. In contrast to Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth,' the movie does not focus on the evidence substantiating climate change; instead, it explores how climate change is affecting people on four continents -- and how we might slow down the warming.

The film is opening one day before International Climate Action Day. Moviegoers can get a free home energy review by mailing in their ticket stub, according to the film's Web site, which also urges people to take two skeptics to see the film and then post on the site about how it went.

Narrated by Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette, the film begins with the premise that the Great Warming may one day rival the Great Plague and the Great Depression in history books as a huge, society-altering era.

Humans are changing the planet's climate, the film states, and only humans have the power to stop or slow the changes.

The film presents the underlying science -- that there is 30 percent more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than there was in the late 1800s. The primary cause, scientists agree, is the burning of fossil fuels.

As a result, average global temperatures have risen about one degree in the past 100 years. Scientists predict that the warming will accelerate and temperatures could rise 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.

In the short term, we can expect many more days in the 90s and more warming in North America than in other parts of the world. The Atlantic and Gulf coasts could be threatened by too much water (due to melting ice and changing weather patterns); the western states by too little.

One shocking example was that if carbon dioxide emissions in the Los Angeles area steadily increase, temperatures there could rise by 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, potentially causing 100 times more deaths from heat (now they have 10 to 15 deaths per year from heat; that number could rise to 1,000 per year).

Producer Karen Coshof said that before making the film she was unaware of global warming's health impacts. "I was surprised when Dr. Paul Epstein (of Harvard's School of Public Health and Environment) said that in the last three decades we've had 30 diseases new to science."

The film also delves into the political, social and economic impacts of climate change, with segments about how London, Bangladesh, Inner Mongolia and New Mexico are handling climates issues now and planning for the future.

A big question is, How can we slow down the amount of carbon dioxide emissions going into the atmosphere? The film shows many responses, including evangelical Christians who preach switching to compact flourescent light bulbs as part of a "creation care" movement; an architect building affordable, environmentally-friendly housing in Montreal; and college students designing SUVs that get 45 percent better gas mileage than current models.

There's even a company in New Mexico that has created a type of solar satellite dish that produces hydrogen for use as fuel to make electricity.

The film does offer hope, through technological innovation, for a world facing an unstable climate.

But it will be a tough road. Scientists predict that extreme weather will become more common, bad smog days will happen more often, agriculture could become erratic, and sea levels could rise and inundate Miami and New York.

Said Coshof, "All of these things clearly indicate that we should do something about it." 'The Great Warming' has set the challenge and wants society to address it.