The Day After Tomorrow: Liberal utopia

So what will life be like this Saturday -- the day after "The Day After Tomorrow" opens?

Will Bush's reelection campaign be finished and John Kerry guaranteed the presidency, as the Guardian newspaper has predicted?

Will environmentalists seize their "teachable moment", harness a fearful and outraged public, and strongarm Congress into "seeing the light" and resuscitating the Kyoto Protocol?

For the most part, "The Day After Tomorrow" is your typical disaster movie, albeit one that combines virtually every weather disaster you can imagine.

It's a chance to see tornadoes rip apart Los Angeles, a tidal wave drown Manhattan, and giant hailstones devastate Tokyo (the lack of any meteors suggests they had trouble securing Armageddon's copyright).

Oh, yeah -- there's also ice. And snow. Lots and lots of ice and snow. Think Antarctica.

Beyond the "have I seen this before?" scenes of climatic madness and mayhem, however, the movie is premised on the wonderfully politicized topic of global warming.

Liberals have accordingly latched onto the movie hoping to incite panic and force Congress to act -- either by reviving Kyoto or passing the pending Climate Stewardship Act (based on the notion that bankrupting our economy is bound to improve the environment).

One might suspect that the filmmakers themselves are liberal (initial news reports indicate that the Pope is, indeed, Catholic), given that the movie seems to have been tailor-made to accomplish their dubious aims.

In fact, director Roland Emmerich's muse could very well have been atmospheric scientist Stephen Schneider, who stated in a 1989 Discover Magazine interview:

"On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but... On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place... To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."

Fortunately for Mr. Emmerich, whose realm is doomsday fiction, he can discard the whole honesty thing.

Not so for the liberal alarmists hoping to capitalize on the movie, who won't be able to get away with being dishonest (well, no more than usual).

The movie dispenses altogether with trying to make the actual case for global warming (hmmm... sounds like global warming's real-world proponents) and in fact only ties it to our use of natural resources in a moralizing little sermon at the end.

Instead of making a case, the focus is on the alarmists' feared events, which it compresses into a matter of days, making for exciting viewing but laughable science (then again, maybe the movie does accurately reflect today's global warming debate).

It will learn that "Hollywood time is not, obviously, the same as geological time," as Duke University Professor Susan Lozier has put it.

Global warming alarmists waiting to provide the public with their version of "answers" after the movie must first respond to its one overriding question -- "Could it happen like that?"

When faced with that question, they are forced to admit that the movie "greatly exaggerates how quickly climate change can happen" (Harvard's Daniel Schrag) and that such events "would take many, many decades or even a century or more" (Prof. Lozier).

Of course, enquiring minds can always turn to global warming's über-cheerleader, Al Gore, who says that "[i]t's an emergency that seems to be unfolding in slow motion, but is actually occurring very swiftly; not as fast as the movie portrays, but swiftly in the context of human history."

"Swiftly in the context of human history." Just makes you want to run home and call your congressman, doesn't it?

Despite the miserable propaganda failure the movie will be, Bush-hating liberals will still love it -- there are plenty of partisan potshots to keep them happy (I'd recommend conservatives sit this one out).

The most obvious (liberals have never been ones for subtlety) is the valiant, prescient hero's nemesis, who just happens to be a Dick Cheney look-alike VP who tells the president what to do and who has this bizarre concern for the actual economic effect of the "Kyoto Accord" (those money-grubbing conservatives...).

The filmmakers also let us feast on criticism of U.S. immigration policy, repentance for arrogance toward the Third World, the end of western civilization as we know it, and a presidential mea culpa. All in all, an arrogant America humbled.

Just think -- all it would take to achieve a liberal's idea of utopia is the abrupt onset of an ice age. Who says they lack a positive agenda?

If that movie portrays what happens when Global Warming occurs, how the heck can we tell the difference between Global Warming and Global Cooling ? What would be the observable phenomenon caused by Global Cooling ? Hotter weather in the upper Northern Hemisphere ?

James Carvelle:You gott blaze Bill..there's a big wave commin to wipe out America

Bill Clinton: Not a problem James....all my money is offshore

Al Gore:We gotta stop at the Bhuddist Temple so I can get at my money

Hillary:You dumb ass.....don't you have a debit card yet

Janet Reno:Ya hurry Bill...I wanna see the terror....pay perview doesn't come cheap ya know

There is something called the "mid-ocean conveyor belt" that distributes cold highly saline water from around Greenland around the world. Essentially, the cold saline travels along trenches south to Argentina and east to South Africa, where is rounds the cape travels across the Indian ocean, through the Malacas, and into the Pacific, where it heats up and rises to the surface. Supposedly, the route takes about 2000 years. The effect of this is to cool many of the wamer ocean areas, while allowing for the Gulf Stream.
If there is a decrease in the saline content of the North Atlantic, the system will shut down. The effect would be for extremes in weather to occur. Europe and Canada would freeze over, while the tropics would dry out. We would effectively have another ice age. Certain (hysterical) climatologists have postulated that an increase of a few degrees centigrade could cause enough ice to melt for this to occur. I doubt it. It was warmer than today 1000 years ago without an ice age.

Is this Art Bell who wrote this movie the same alien-abduction nutball that used to be on radio before flaking out?

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

They are pulling out all the stops this election. Every device in the propaganda arsenal is being utilized.

It's great, isn't it? Rather than explosions, each shell launched lands with a wet splat.

On the other paw ... Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 83% rating, which is pretty good.

So I'll probably go see it tomorrow. And even if it's bad, watching liberals get their knickers in a twist over a silly science fiction movie should be almost as much fun as watching Christians foam at the mouth over a silly murder mystery called The Da Vinci Code.

"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" has a better plot and more character development.

I did love the CIA agent running through the streets with his parachute dragging behind him, but would also suggest the classically bad 1938 non-PC western with midgets who walked under the swinging saloon doors to establish justice in "The Terror of Tiny Town."

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