Just came back from "Day After Tomorrow" SO UNREALISTIC!!!

[Delano]

In the movie, the president is a disengaged numbskull (okay so far) and the VP is an environmentally hostile white-haired jerk (okay again), but in the end, after all the disasters, the VP (who has now become president after the idiotic death of the idiotic Bush-er, president) learns his lesson, and starts to care about humanity and the environment.

Sorry, but even if a billion people froze, Cheney wouldn't change a BIT!

[Fight_n_back]

1. Good point!

He shouldn't have changed until he saw all the Whos on Whoville singing carols even though they had no toys.

[MikeG]

2. Did people cheer when the idiotic president died?

[Delano]

4. It was kind of a non-event.

An underling just walked in and told the VP matter-of-factly, "The president didn't make it"


It was a pretty good flick overall. Better than Godzilla, about as good as ID4 (which really dragged in the 2nd half).

[Kool Kitty]

6. They didn't show him getting frozen.

funny, though, how the Cheney-like VP survived and the Prez didn't? Guess he got moved from his hidey-hole and sent to Mexico first, leaving the Prez to get there after, and he got caught in the storm. Do you think if this was a real-life occurrence, that Cheney would be saved and W would have to wait 'til it was too late? (Cheney being the "brains" of the outfit, I mean.)

[SmileyBoy]

3. I just saw it, and I don't know bout you, but I liked that part.

Maybe I'm just not as cynical as you...:shrug: I agree that the science involved was pretty unrealistic, but in the end we gotta realise it's just a freakin' movie. An entertainment piece. It doesn't necessarily have to be 100 percent realistic. Look at Van Helsing, fer chrissakes...

[Delano]

5. Did you read the post?

My (tongue in cheek) gripe was about "Cheney's" conversion to the good side. Sorry, but I think Cheney's just plain evil.

The silly pseudoscience didn't bother me at all. It was funny how EVERYONE in the movie watched local Fox stations, EXCLUSIVELY.

[SmileyBoy]

7. I noticed that too, RIGHT AWAY.

I guess because it's a 20th Century Fox flick, they can only cater to their bosses in regards to the script.:)

[Delano]

8. Yeah, but remember when they used to have fictional stations in movies?

That is no more, in the days of product placement and tie-ins..

[SmileyBoy]

9. It seems more realistic with Fox on the tube in the movie than with...

...a made-up TV station. Seeing that in the movie put the image of my city's Fox affiliate (KVRR) in my head. It makes for a more realistic connection.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. All the "pseudoscience"?

Many, many critics of this movie have been talking about all this "pseudoscience" it contains.

I haven't seen it yet (I'll probably see it after the weekend), but I am quite familiar with the premise. I've been talking the movie up here since last October. The only "psudoscience," if you could call it that, is the speed with which the new ice age comes on.

Even so, slow the events of the movie down and stretch them into five or ten, or even twenty years. That's a realistic scenario for an ice age started by a thermohaline circulation failure. If you do a Google search on the keywords THERMOHALINE WALLACE BROECKER, you'll get back to the original works on the subject. Prof. Broecker, at Lamont-Doherty Earth Lab at Columbia U., is still alive and kickin', and doing research on this subject.

A quick-freeze ice age coming on in two months is quite far-fetched, but abrupt climate changes are well known and documented in the fossil -- and historical -- records. The climate events that started and ended the last mini-ice-age (called the Younger-Dryas period, about 8500 years ago) took place in less than five years each. All of the twenty-some major glacial periods in the last 2,500,000 years started quickly. The minor ones probably did, as well.

It can make for good entertainment, but it better make for some popular dialog on what is happening to our planet, or we might end up in a bad way even as we proclaim that what is happening can't be happening because it's "pseudoscience".

--bkl

[Whitacre D_WI]

18. Well, there's the rub.

The only "psudoscience," if you could call it that, is the speed with which the new ice age comes on.

That's a pretty big lump of pseudoscience. Sunny and warm one day, ice age the next. The problem is, there might be some fencesitters who see this movie and then decide "oh, the environmental movement is just a bunch of silly science-fiction whack jobs -- let's go dump some crude in the river!"

It's like the boy who cried wolf. There are serious environmental concerns that need to be addressed. From what I understand (haven't see it), this movie doesn't address them; and may end up turning people off from addressing them.

[Dogmudgeon]

19. I'm not sure that would happen

People who are scientifically literate enough and who are interested in the problem would have no difficulty with learning that the movie compressed the events for the sake of drama. A few here and there might think that the movie is "proof" that environmentalists are fools, but these people are mainly going to be the convinced anti-environmentalists to begin with.

A whole new chunk of the public will be exposed to the prospect of abrupt climate change by this movie. A compelling case can be made that human activity is either causing global warming, or has substantially added to it and is catalyzing climate change. I think that all remaining challenges to the general idea died, ironically, in the days after 9/11/2001 when all commercial aircraft were grounded in America. The weather patterns were abruptly changed, and while few people noticed, the meteorologists were greatly impressed.

Then there's the possibility that the changeover could happen in a few months' time; no one really knows, although the best estimates we have from studying the effects of previous climate changes is that they happen over a period of about a decade. The less of an oceanographic change that is required, the faster the changeover will occur. It's mainly the oceans that slow down heat transfer, and if only the surface water is involved in the system, the "climate flip-flop" actually could conceivably be as quick as it is shown in the movie.

Of course, if there is intelligent life in the universe, it could conceivably want to take our planet over, destroy the White House, run Mac OS as its control system, and be vulnerable to cigar-smokers.

The odds are that when the climate changes, it will take place over about a decade's time. It won't be as dramatic, but in the long run, it will be as destructive.

--bkl

[Delano]

21. To be fair, the media has been good about informing people...

...about the plausability if this scenario happening over a longer period of time (without the superstorms)...

I don't think even Emmerich wants to believe that the exact scenario in the movie is plausible.

But the more realistic scenarios would make for much more dull movie-going.

[Delano]

20. See the movie. It's chock-full of pseudoscience.

It's based on a book by Art Bell and Whitley Streiber - two peddlers of UFO/paranormal nonsense.

The premise that within 3 days the entire gulf stream could shut down, causing mega-tornadoes in LA, and giant "Superstorms" that suck -150 degree air down from the troposphere into their 50-mile eyes is preposterous. Sure there is a seed of plausibility there, as is always the case with such films - hell there's a seed of plausibility in Godzilla - atomic-induced mutation - that doesn't mean we need to worrry about giant lizards eating our houses.

I'm not denouncing the message of this movie. It's a great message (if made in a rather hamfisted way), but the way the movie unfolds is pseudoscience.

Oh I love how they decide that because "the mammoth was found frozen with food in its mouth and stomach" that meant it had to have been flash-frozen by superstorms...

Anyway, it's a fun flick - enjoy!

[Dogmudgeon]

22. Not to be too trifling, but ...

There's a couple of surprises here.

First, Strieber and Bell did an excellent job in the book, which was called The Coming Global Superstorm. They cited a number of scientific authorities with accuracy, and kept the New Age speculations separate. Just the names alone would not please a Skeptic, but on its own merits, the book was a decent piece of lay scientific writing, and Strieber interleaved a story that became the foundation of the movie.

Superstorms do happen. One that you probably remember hit the entire Eastern third of North America during March, 1993. This storm eventually formed a low-pressure trough that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico across the pole and down to the Mediterranean sea! This is also the storm pattern reconstructed from research on Heinrich Events, the episodes that occur with major climate changes.

The story about -150F downdrafts is quite correct, and has been observed a few times. The air comes from the stratosphere, however. Over the past decade, the stratosphere has been cooling dramatically. It used to be -50F, but now it really closer to -150F in the winter. This is creating a relative temperature inversion. Big downdrafts, which actually happen in thunderstorms and hurricanes, can easily bring frigidly cold air to the surface. I'm sure it's magnified and hyped in the movie, but it's based on known phenomena.

A number of critters have been found flash-frozen, and the downdraft hypothesis is better than most of the other contenders -- not just the Berezkova mamoth, but it analysis of cellular damage determined that Ötzi (the Ice man) was frozen more quickly than a dying man would have been expected to freeze in a snowstorm. The difference between a sci-fi downdraft and a blizzard at that point is negligable -- Ötzi picked a bad day to go for a walk!

I haven't seen the movie yet -- probably Tuesday or Wednesday -- but I'm very familiar with this topic. My interest was first piqued around 1978 when I read an article on Wallace Broecker, a climatologist at Lamont-Doherty (Columbia U). He was warning that an ice age could start in less than a decade based on just the current disruptions he saw in the 1970s, a full two decades before the big northern Gulf Stream current breakdown began a few years ago.

I do think that they stretched it with shutting the whole Gulf Stream down in three days, though. It would take longer than that, but the real mechanism isn't the Gulf Stream per se -- it's the Thermohaline Circulation, which runs roughly opposite to the Gulf Stream. Either way, if you stretch the movie's time frame into five or ten or maybe even twenty years, it should make more sense.

Sorry to run on so long. It's not often that a major movie is made about one's pet ideas! Like most people who pay attention to scientific happenings and advance their own predictions, I've been vindicated by a few things here and there, but this one is especially nice.

--bkl
Pack your long johns.

[Bombtrack]

11. I'm not sure about that. These people can become real "flip-floppers"

when something affects them personally. See the Reagans with stem cell research. I honestly think most of these guys including Cheney are pricks, not evil. I mean, Rumsfeld is actually friends with Ted Kennedy

[fujiyama]

12. Rummy is friends with Teddy Kennedy?

Where did you hear that? I'm not necessarily doubting ya, but I never heard that before.

[Bombtrack]

13. I forget where, but someone in the know. Maybe Al Franken

Maybe Tweety. I forget. It wasn't presented like they were best friends, but definetly friendly. One of them invited the other to some party/gathering. They were in the senate together. Ted is also relatively close to Orrin Hatch.

[ps1074]

14. makes perfect sense to me

I mean after the survivors will vote for someone caring about the environment. If the a**hole doesn't change his mind about it then he will be voted out.

So - a politician changing his mind about an issue is nothing new. Sounds realistic to me. But I am yet to see the movie, so my 2 cents are based on your post only :)

[SheilaT]

15. What I didn't like about the movie

was the formulaic plot lines. Divorced parents, bright but slightly troubled teenage son. Desperately ill child. Heroic Dad (almost) singlehandedly saves son and others.

It actually would have been a far more interesting movie had they made the onset of the ice age take place over the 20-40 years in which it could really happen. Just imagine the choices faced then: Snow and ice moving inexorably, but at about a walking pace, down from the north. Crop failures. Shifting of climate zones (where which crops can be grown). The very real and desperate choices that would be made not in a matter of days, but over months and years.

The reality is there'd be as many people killed in the attempts to evacuate the northern countries and for all practical purposes invade the southern ones as by the snow and cold itself.

Another minor quibble: In the end, when they show the northern continents neatly covered with ice, the reality is that if that much water were tied up in snow and ice, the ocean levels would drop quite a bit, and the continent outlines would be quite unfamiliar.

[Rabrrrrrr]

16. That's right! Unless his oil workers were freezing, and output was down

then he'd threaten to fire them, but that's about it in terms of him actually caring about anyone.

[yelladawg]

17. To be real

It needed more bodies floating in the water to be real.