The Day After - Global Warming

[Tormod]

I have now seen the movie and will moderate my statements above. I plan to write up a longer comment about the movie but don't have the time right now (bedtime for two kids here). Right now, just let me say that the science was non-present in the movie, the characters were stereotypical to the extreme, and the plot rather meaningless. More details later...

Tormod

[Tim_Lou]

i love that movie!!!!!
its one of the greatest movie i have ever seen!

...the USA is always damaging this world... it is a capitalistic world, ppl with lots of money keep wasting water, food.... while the 3rd world is suffuring greatly.

i think it is kind of like we push all the problems to the 3rd world... as time pass on, the one who finally suffer is us...

[shintashi]

i do believe that we will experience a severe climate shift in the next 5-11 years. It will be caused by a polarization exchange between north and south poles, which will interfere with our magnetosphere. While we might not see any mile wide tornados in California, we will see Aurora Borealis lights in the night sky as far south as oregon and kentucky, and for a brief period of time, fluctuations of similar phenomenon at even lower meridian points.

We will also experience droughts the likes of which the world has forgotten, and geomagnetic earthquakes, which themselves, while not expressing plate tectonics in the lesser scale, will represent the disturbance of the magnetic core in the greater scale, causing a number of magma eruptions to escalate, then die down.

From the models I've seen,and derrived, there will be "zones" where the south and north poles nullfy completely, which will be widly in flux. In areas such as these, ecoterrorists might claim that "the ozone layer" is disapearing due to "green house effects". This would be false. The cosmic background radiation will damage the atmosphere in areas where the magnetosphere is in flux, and especially during a solar wind/flare, however, this itself will not be a permanent catastrophy, and will mostly likely pass in 20 years or less, after the poles have realigned south-north.
If the poles do switch in the next 5-11 years, - which I DO expect to begin to become evident (as opposed to the 50-200 year model conservatives have given you, if at all) then do not be decieved by panic supression media, nor its apocalyptic adverse. THey would have you believe that while millions more will die from earlier signs of cancer (in say, 5-10 years instead of 10-20), there will not be any truly dangerous immediate effects in the long run. THEY ARE WRONG.

Pockets of death will encompass the earth, entirely randomnly, by all accounts, (unless the Earth simulator gets a major upgrade in japan). In random areas, heat waves will kill tens of thousands in a matter of days, across europe, north america, australia, and south parts of Argentina and Africa.

The alteration of the ionization may also tamper with sattelite feed, electircal and power grids, (to a lesser extent) cell phone and wireless net signals (to a greater extent) and one of the more horrible things that people have forgotten. There will be "pockmarks" in our magnetosphere in a state of flux. Unfortunately, our magnetosphere contributes heavily to deflecting not only solar flares, but also meteors, comets, and the like. We still have our atmosphere to burn some stuff up, but I do not know for sure if that will still be sufficient. My estimate is that in those "pocket areas" some random rocks may be sufficient to destroy homes and nieghborhoods, and occassionally a larger population.

I do not know if the HAARP experiment can resolve, slow down, or accelerate this problem. I do not know if the radiation innoculation in production right now will be sufficient, and if not, if it will be ready to be so, by the time the mess gets really bad.

In a worst case scenario... well, You've seen the big cold ice age movie, but many of you might have forgotten that other doomsday movie " CORE". only one problem: there is no such thing as "unobtanium".

[Frogon]

I've seen the movie, and it was interesting, however the ending, well it just plain sucked. : )

But, Popular Science did an article on the "theory", or whatever you want to call it, thats in the movie, and (after a few pages) they explained how it worked, and it actually made sense. The movie doesn't explain too much, because somebody in the movie theature might want entertainment...

"According to this theory, global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions will melt the ice at the North Pole, which will then warm the Atlantic current, making Northern Hemisphere temperatures drop precipitously and bring about a new ice age within hours."

Well, Popular Science interviewed a person who knew a lot about this, and he said the range was 10-20 years, I think they forgot something: ITS A MOVIE. People don't want to sit there and watch 10-20 years and then it happens, they want it right now.

[oblivion]

Global warming = fact.

movies like "The day after tommorow" = false.

[Bo]

I also saw the movie 2 days ago (so according to mister letterman this is the right time to write about it? ) and to my surprise i really liked it. True there is a stupid story; It sounds very strange that the world is about to be distroyed and the main researcher leaves for his son... and the wolves where really unnecessary. But the global change is visually and conceptually brought very well. As for my ideas about climate change: Yes it is real and yes it will happen but no we cant predict what and when. Our climate is something with approximatly infinite variables. All these variables interact to form a quasi-stable state. If you just alter one variable you have no idea how this works out for the overal stabillity. in general in systems like this resonances can occur; so one huge change wouldn't have to change anything, while a very small perturbation could spoil the complete equilibrium. I guess you can think of it as a lorenz attractor (see e.g. http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/lorenz/ for nice visuals, but hardly an explanation, or see http://www.zeuscat.com/andrew/chaos/lorenz.html which has some more explained) -Bo

[Tormod]

I wrote that I would comment on this movie later so I guess it's about time now.

When I saw the movie, I too enjoyed the visuals but the story is perhaps the most incredible piece of hogwash I have seen in a long time.

I was simply ANGRY after having seen the movie. In my eyes it is a good example of how NOT to make movies if you want to make a political point. So I think the entire point of the movie is to make a buck on the scare factor and *not* try to make people think twice.

Here is my list of complaints... *SPOILER ALERT* don't read this if you want to see the movie first!

1) Every single important role in the movie is played by *men*. Men make all the decisions. The female roles are all mother/nurse/beautiful student roles. They make no decisions, apart from the nurse's decision to stay behind and wait for the ambulance (which came anyway so there was no life-saving there). Even in the end, when the vide president is told he is now the president, there is a brief glimpse of a woman who is a "mrs senator" or something (and not "senator"). So the *stereotypes* in this movie are so thoroughly old-school that I believe that the director intended it to be this way. The female researcher who is on the hero's team *volunteers* for it (ie, not picked for her skills) and she contributes *nothing* except saying some standard scientific phrases then fetching cups of coffee.

2) The wolves. Yes. It has been discussed to death at IMDB.com. How can they survive the chill when everyone else instantly freezes? Big hole in the movie's logic. And the entire scene boils down to - nothing. Yes, the wolves could have hidden somewhere, but what would they have eaten in the meantime? Frozen rats?

3) The political aspect of the "reversed alien immigrant" scenario was too easy. Here was an excellent opportunity to show how the USA handles immigrants (by fencing them out) but when they need somewhere to go on their own they simply cut through the wires and run to Mexico. I wonder...how can 125 million people (or how many would half the US population be?) POSSIBLY manage to escape to Mexico and live in camps? This entire subplot could have been a good movie in itself, but is lost and makes no sense in the movie.

4) The space station - in some scenes it spins like a rollercoaster, while in the final scene it is completely still. The space station does NOT spin like that. And someone failed to tell the director that if the entire northen hemisphere freezes over...then noone will be able to send refreshments, food etc to the station - nor boost it to a higher orbit (it loses height every day). They would be doomed.

5) The science. Okay - I agree that a science fiction movie does not need to spend 30 minutes delving on the science behind everything. But it should make some of the basic concepts clear. All we see is that the hero can explain the functionality of the Gulf stream and what would happen if it shut down. Like Bo says above there are an endless amount of variables. The Gulf stream is only one of them. When I walked out of that movie I felt LESS enlightened about the problems of global warming than before I saw it. And I really feel that I know a thing or two about the issue.

6) Stupid things. How come a Russian ship ends up RIGHT OUTSIDE the library? And how come they print "Penicillin" in plain English on Russina medicines? How did they inject the penicillin into our poor ailing student (through the nose? I didn't see a hypodermic needle!).

7) Distance - It is highly implausible that the hero and his aides could walk the distance they did in such short time, especially in the freezing environment. And don't you know - as soon as they arrive in New York, it takes about 30 minutes for the helicopters to arrive. So the entire "Hero goes out to save son" is entirely pointless. And...in the end all those survivors go up on the roofs of the skyscrapers. So we must assume that not ONE single communication tool was available during the time it took fro

[Tormod]

Originally posted by: shintashi
In a worst case scenario... well, You've seen the big cold ice age movie, but many of you might have forgotten that other doomsday movie " CORE". only one problem: there is no such thing as "unobtanium".

Now THAT was a FUNNY movie...and completely unassuming, as far as I could tell. Pure "science" fiction without a single shred of scientific value. Loved it!

Tormod

[Tormod]

I forgot to add

11) The movie does show some scenes from India and Japan. Otherwise, it is 100% USA-focused. So not only is USA the worst offender in the climate game, it is also the only country of interest when the world as we know it comes to an end. (But it didn't, of course).

I think someone should make the movie "The year after the day after tomorrow" about how the new climate in Northern Africa causes a surge in productivity and health care and how in fact most of the world's 6 billion people actually survived the sudden ice age and there is no longer a developing world (apart from 125 million US ex-citizens struggling to build big heaters to thaw their homeland). And it should be written by Ben Elton.

Tormod

[FrankM]

The movie fits a few agendas, political and religious. I have a relative that quotes Biblical
prophecy and when something like that movie comes along it conveniently fits into the
warnings about catastrophies. It doesn't make any difference to point out that we already
know about the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) that proceeded it.

Scientists are still sorting through the precusors stored in ancient ice in an attempt to identify
the factors that preceded or accompany a warming or cooling period. There are many sites
that discussed the LIA and MWP, some quite technical. A good general one is at,

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html