Climate flick favors fantasy over fact

[papau]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/05/27/weather.movie/index.html

Climate flick favors fantasy over fact
By Michael Coren

(CNN) --<snip> Yet the movie's depiction of the fallout from climate change stretches reputable science to apocalyptic proportions.

<snip>A worse-case scenario over the next 200 years could lead to shifts in historical climate patterns, devastating agriculture in developing countries, says Severinghaus. Flooding from rising sea levels -- depending on the extent of polar melting -- would threaten low-lying islands and coastal cities.

The study commissioned by the Pentagon also suggested that destabilizing effects from rapid climate change could spark wars between developing countries vying for food and fresh water and were "a U.S. national security concern."

<snip>
The biggest schism in the scientific community comes over how to interpret the warming data, but even skeptical scientists concede humans are probably driving some of the rising temperatures.


<snip>But others point out the dire consequences of ignoring the potential for global warming."It's like your house burning down," says Severinghaus. "You don't think your house is burning down, but you go ahead and buy fire insurance."

[RhodaGrits]

1. The house is burning down now, it's a little late to be just thinking

about researching the costs of a fire insurance policy.

[phantom power]

2. A gigantic super-storm seems speculative, but

The atlantic current shutdown, and subsequent climate shifts, are considered to be essentially factual, am I correct?

If this shift happens over 10-20 years, it might be less spectacular than a hollywood movie, but the results will be equally devastating.

[phantom power]

3. Interesting that everybody feels compelled to rant about

how *this* movie is probably not scientifically sound. Get real. It would be big news if Hollywood ever made *any* movie that was scientifically correct. Or even in the ballpark.

But we all have to make REALLY SURE that EVERYBODY knows that *this* movie is not factual.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

4. but Passion of the Christ...

.. was 10000% accurate to even the whisp of Christ's dirty blonde hair!

<wink>

[Kool Kitty]

5. Are you REALLY SURE that absolutely nothing in this

film was factual? Some of the science (re: the change in the Gulf Stream or heat conveyor) is sound. A shutdown or change in the heat conveyor would change the climate.

[phantom power]

7. personally? I think rapid climate change is real

and I think the atlantic current shutdown scenario is real. I even consider the "superstorm" scenario to be possible, but very unlikely.

My position is: even in the far more likely scenario that it happens over 10-20 years, the outcome will be similar, which is to say devastating. Billions would die.

[Boomer]

10. Personally, I agree with you

For me, one of the most implausible elements of the film was not the weather scenarios -- it was the assumption that half the population of the United States could be evacuated. Even if there were somewhere they could go, the logistics of that kind of mass relocation are beyond our capabilities. The result of any such attempt would be mass chaos. And even if such an ambitious plan could be carried out, it would take MONTHS, not days, to shift millions of people to another country.

The horror movie sequel to "The Day After Tomorrow" would be the next few years of Americans scrabbling to survive in refugee camps as the generosity of host nations reached a strained end.

[phantom power]

13. exactly. After everybody migrates to mexico, "now what?"

where is the food going to come from for all the survivors? Whatever they grow for food in south america, may not grow anymore, since the entire climate for the region is now changed.

In a way, the super-storm is the most merciful scenario. Billions are killed immediately. In the couple-decade scenario, everyone slowly dies of starvation, or in the massive wars that would accompany fights over dwindling resources, forced migrations, etc.

On the other hand, having a couple decades to adjust allows more time to adapt agriculture.

[Kool Kitty]

12. That's what I believe, too.

And I am afraid that we'll be seeing it in our lifetime. I'm no kid and I don't feel like I missed much, I've pretty much done all I wanted to do. (Except travel to Egypt, but that's not the climate's fault.) I just wish it was about 1,000 years in the future or something. Something other than "closer than we think".

[Dogmudgeon]

6. A Real Global Superstorm

March 10-16, 1993.

If you lived anywhere east of the Mississippi River, maybe you recall the flooding, the ice storms, the blizzard conditions. In Philadelphia, we had about two feet of snow. We had two worse snowstorms since then, but neither were part of a system as large as that mid-March storm in 1993.

It was something the meteorology/climatology scientists call a "Wave-2 storm". The low-pressure cell stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up over the North Pole and down to the Mediterranean Sea, something like 12,000 miles.

This also matched well with the data of a so-called Heinrich Event, a global weather pattern seen during dramatic temperature drops in the climate.

Sure, there was probably plenty of "bad science" in the movie. But what is different about this movie is that so many people are frightened of the public implications of not knocking "the science". Science has become a political football. Why else does our Wise and Courageous Leader talk about "sound Science," "good Science," and "strong Science"?

I haven't seen the movie, but the premise of the return of an Ice Age -- whether a Little Ice Age or a return to the "Stadial" conditions of 30,000 years ago -- is quite well-established "Science". When it happens, it will happen quickly. Maybe not over a period of two or three months, but it could be a nasty five or ten year period for whoever's around.

And, yes, it's not implausible that the process could start right away.

--bkl

[Boomer]

11. The LA tornado scenes were especially chilling...

...since there have been a half-dozen tornado alerts for my county over the past two weeks. I ended up staying late at work one day waiting for the tornado in a county south of my home to move past, and arrived home to hear that another tornado had passed to the north. So watching LA get ripped apart by multiple tornadoes didn't seem so far-fetched.

[hertopos]

8. I just came back from the movie

This movie is not a pure fantagy. It is a reasonable extrapolation of science fact.

Just remember, when Jews became a huge hit, many sharks were killed all of sudden.
I saw 'Legally blond' the other day on cable and I realized it was such a 'anti-liberal pro conpassionate conservative' propaganda movie. ( I was very curious why this movie was so popular.)

This movie is well made enough to make RW very uneasy. Let's put this way the movie theater became rather intensely quiet about half way through. This movie works unless you are predetermined to deny it.

It makes you wonder what 'can' happen if we just keep 'business as usual' attitude.

Hertopo
P.S. For some reason, the holywood story line part worked for me. I even like the ending.

[Boomer]

9. Jews killing sharks? Are sharks kosher?

I also enjoyed "The Day After Tomorrow" -- beyond my expectations, which were admittedly rather low for anything other than the sfx. The character subplots were predictable but managed some funny moments, even some witty political zingers, and the scenes of teen romance were mercifully brief and not too cloying. Overall, the directorial pacing maintained the dramatic tension, riding over the cliches at a fast enough clip that I could ignore them, and interspersed the film with some genuine frissons of terror at appropriate moments.

The sfx of storm cells and humanity under seige from extreme weather were spectacular! Ian Holm was wasted on a small role, but the made the best of it.

Yes, the science was... bent quite a bit to create dramatic moments that would satisfy violence-jaded audiences, but the central premise of a world torn apart and put back together again in a new configuration was all too plausible. And I heard at least a few gasps of surprise that had nothing to do with someone being blown to pieces by machine gun fire (a prominent feature of most of the movie trailers that preceded the feature).