Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Day After Tomorrow: Liberal utopia
Townhall.com ^ | May 25, 2004 | Ryan Zempel

Posted on 05/25/2004 3:51:50 PM PDT by OESY

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?

In other words, will liberals get their fairy tale ending?

In a word: Nope.

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).

All this to herald the abrupt onset of a new ice age.

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.

Oh, goody.

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).

Which is why they'd better prepare themselves for disappointment.

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).

So what will the public learn in this "teachable moment"?

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?"

Game over.

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.

Maybe liberals get their fairy tale ending after all.

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?

Ryan Zempel is the News & Politics Editor of Townhall.com.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: dayaftertomorrow; filmdisaster; globalwarming; gore; kyoto; liberals; marketingdoomsday
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-28 next last

1 posted on 05/25/2004 3:51:52 PM PDT by OESY
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Senator Kunte Klinte

Al Gore has called the movie "honest fiction," which he meant as a compliment.


2 posted on 05/25/2004 3:52:31 PM PDT by OESY
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY
It's a chance to see tornadoes rip apart Los Angeles, a tidal wave drown Manhattan,

This is a bad thing?

3 posted on 05/25/2004 3:57:37 PM PDT by Klaus D. Deore
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY

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


4 posted on 05/25/2004 3:58:37 PM PDT by oblomov (reluctant libertarian for Bush)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY
Funny how the coming Armageddon of "Global Warming" is anything but warming. No drought, no sand storms, no dry electrical storms.

But it does include the coming of the new ice age, hail storms the size of Volkswagens, lots of rain and storms...ice and snow...lots of ice and snow...

How the hell does all this fit together? Ice ages, global warming...blah blah blah

I am gonna go out and let my trucks idle for 10 minutes, I'm gonna fire up a barbecue even though I don't have any dogs to que, and to top it off I will flush twice... in protest
5 posted on 05/25/2004 3:58:51 PM PDT by antaresequity (This is not the "War on Terror"...we don't fight tactics.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY

I read that they banned the press from attending the party after the premiere Monday night, a move that is usually reserved for movies that totally suck; they don't want to have to deal with the media ready to pounce on the kill.


6 posted on 05/25/2004 4:00:46 PM PDT by hawkeye101 (Why do we park on driveways, but drive on parkways?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY

I've seen the trailers. This movie looks like a modern remake of "Earthquake". Anybody remember "Sensaround"?


7 posted on 05/25/2004 4:01:04 PM PDT by randog (Everything works great 'til the current flows.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY
'Day After Tomorrow': A lot of hot air
By Patrick J. Michaels

As a scientist, I bristle when lies dressed up as "science" are used to influence political discourse. The latest example is the global-warming disaster flick, The Day After Tomorrow.

This film is propaganda designed to shift the policy of this nation on climate change. At least that's what I take from producer Mark Gordon's comment that "part of the reason we made this movie" was to "raise consciousness about the environment."

Fox spokesman Jeffrey Godsick says, "The real power of the movie is to raise consciousness on the issue of (global warming)."

'Nuff said.

Oh, the plot. Global warming causes the Gulf Stream to shut down. This current normally brings tropical warmth northward and makes Europe much more comfortable than it should be at its northerly latitude. The heat stays stuck in the tropics, the polar regions get colder, and the atmosphere suddenly flips over in a "superstorm." The frigid stratosphere trades places with our habitable troposphere, and in a matter of days, an ice age ensues. Temperatures drop 100 degrees an hour in Canada. Hurricanes ravage Belfast. Folks in Japan are clobbered by bowling-ball-size hailstones. If we had only listened to concerned scientists and stopped global warming when we could.

Each one of these phenomena is physically impossible.

Start with the Gulf Stream. Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, knows more about ocean currents than most anyone. He thinks the nonsense in The Day After Tomorrow detracts from the seriousness of the global-warming issue. So he recently wrote in the prestigious science journal Nature that the scenario depicted in the movie requires one to "turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth's rotation, or both."

The stratosphere will become the troposphere when all three laws of thermodynamics are repealed. Hailstones can't reach bowling-ball size because their growth is limited by gravity. Hurricanes can't hit Belfast because the intervening island of Ireland would destroy them.

How do I know so much about a movie that isn't out yet? I've seen the promos, and I've read and reviewed the book upon which it is based, The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. In Strieber's previous work, Communion, he explained that he was told of the Earth's upcoming apocalypse by aliens. And how this knowledge was communicated is much more the purview of an adult Web site than a family newspaper. What's on the movie's Web site is worse — nothing but out-and-out distortion.

It also insists that what is depicted on the screen has already started.

"Did you know," says the site, that there were more tornadoes recorded in May 2003 than in any other month?

I looked up federal tornado statistics, and indeed they're going up, and there was a peak in May 2003. Then I determined the number of radar stations and their type. When our first radar-tracking network was established in the 1960s and '70s, the number of tornadoes rose proportionally, then leveled off until the new Doppler radars came online in 1988. It took a decade to put this system in place, and the number of reported tornadoes went up accordingly.

Then I plotted the number of severe tornadoes. If anything, it's going down. So the flashy Doppler radars are merely detecting more weak storms that cause little, if any, damage.

The Web site also implies that global warming is making hurricanes worse. Christopher Landsea, the world's most aptly named hurricane scientist, has studied the maximum winds in these storms as measured by aircraft and finds a significant decline.

Global warming? Some scientists think climate change strengthens El Niño, the large atmospheric oscillation responsible for a variety of weather — both good and bad. El Niños are known to rip apart hurricanes. So it's more likely that climate change is weakening these storms than enhancing them.

Will Godsick and Gordon get their way? They're sure being aided and abetted by MoveOn.org, the liberal advocacy group and billionaire George Soros' policy toy. They've got Al Gore front and center, plumping the film. They've got their Web site using the movie to drum up support for legislation by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, which only failed by 12 votes last fall. There's a huge drought out West, which a New York Times editorial blamed on global warming. The issue is hot enough to influence votes out there.

Remember that humans have slightly warmed the planet some in recent decades, but the correlation between Western drought and warming is zero.

Far be it from me to criticize anyone's freedom of expression. But remember that propaganda can have consequences. McCain's and Lieberman's measure mimics the United Nations' infamous Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which many scientists know will do nothing measurable about planetary temperature within the policy-relevant future. But it will cost money.

This isn't Hollywood's first attempt to scare people into its way of thinking. How about Jane Fonda in the 1979 anti-nuclear-power flick, The China Syndrome?

Twelve days after its release, the accident at Three Mile Island occurred. Despite the fact that it released only tiny amounts of radiation, the politics of that hysteria effectively killed any new nuclear plant.

Analogize the Western drought to Three Mile Island, and you get the idea.

Or how about the 1983 movie The Day After, whose purpose was to strengthen the nuclear-freeze movement. It failed.

The Day After Tomorrow is only one more day than The Day After, and it deserves the same fate. Lies cloaked as science should never determine how we live our lives.

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of the upcoming book, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media. Find this article at this link.

8 posted on 05/25/2004 4:02:51 PM PDT by Paul Ross (From the State Looking FORWARD to Global Warming!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: oblomov
Every device in the propaganda arsenal is being utilized.

Yes, and I hate it.

I happen to LIKE the cheesy (will that start anything?) Hollywood disaster flicks! Call it a weakness, but I've been into Science Fiction since way before it was cool to be there. :)

I don't like the preachy "The Day After" crap, and if this is like that I'll be disappointed. But I'll see it anyway.

Besides, I used to live in LA. To see it ripped up by tornadoes and massive storms is in itself, worth the ticket!

9 posted on 05/25/2004 4:07:25 PM PDT by kAcknor (That's my version of it anyway....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Paul Ross
I have always like Art Bell, and I have always like disaster movies. I will go see the movie. That doesn't mean I buy into the "Coming Global Superstorm". But temperatures of the Gulf Stream have been fluctacting (sp?) and weakening. That could spell problems for England and Europe.

But I am of the opinion that Solar cycles and other factors explain the rise in global temperatures. Green House gases produced by mans activities ae not the problem. (Except locally, ala pollution)...

But like I said I will watch it like I watched Independence Day and Armageddon and Earthquake and all the other disaster movies. I predict the public will view the movie for what it is--entertainment loosely based on facts.

10 posted on 05/25/2004 4:16:35 PM PDT by abigkahuna
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: abigkahuna
Do us a favor, and wait for the DVD. Or, at least wait until it's sinking faster than its premise.

The highest and best thing we can do with this movie is to ignore it. No protests, no nothing. Look what protest did for Mel Gibson's movie.

The same goes for Moore's piece of trash if it ever gets here.

11 posted on 05/25/2004 4:19:24 PM PDT by hunter112
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: OESY

I'll rent the DVD because I'm a special effects geek.

Other than that, it's entertainment, an escape for a few hours. It's no different than Harry Potter. This is not a plot that will allow/force us to examine ourselves.

Anyone who takes this movie seriously probably soiled themselves at "The Blair Witch" and probably spent months in abject fear and utter terror of the water after "Jaws".

This is the dems' "Passion"...


12 posted on 05/25/2004 4:30:21 PM PDT by baltodog (There are three kinds of people: Those who can count, and those who can't.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY
Feb 2004 : Are we NOW witnessing the end of the Gulf Stream as we know it ? Keep an eye on the map at the end of this page : the reds (getting always more intense) - because the blues follow with a gap - updated twice a day
13 posted on 05/25/2004 4:33:04 PM PDT by Truth666
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY

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


 

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

14 posted on 05/25/2004 4:50:24 PM PDT by Fintan (Seriously...does my hair look all right?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Paul Ross
Fox spokesman Jeffery Godsick???????

Who on earth are these people with such names?

I notice such handles among the libbos more and more often. Has anyone else noticed this over the recent years?

Feminists named "Mankiller" come to mind. The names mean something. They're trying to tell us who they are.

Mr. Atomic Vomit

15 posted on 05/25/2004 4:52:04 PM PDT by Atomic Vomit (The Bering Sea - where God rules man and always will. Go to http://www.volcanicfishermen.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: OESY

Let me guess: every cultural/artistic monument in the world will be hit, with computer-like precision.


16 posted on 05/25/2004 4:55:18 PM PDT by Paul Atreides
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OESY

It seems as though the hype for the movie barely mentions its being based upon a book by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, the latter of whom claims to have been abducted by aliens, implanted with an alien device, and tracked now wherever he goes by creatures from Alpha Centauri or some such place. That puts the "global warming" fairy tale in perspective.


17 posted on 05/25/2004 4:56:44 PM PDT by gg188
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Klaus D. Deore
It's a chance to see tornadoes rip apart Los Angeles, a tidal wave drown Manhattan

After people in the red states see this movie I get vision of people there running around spraying freon cans in the air and lookin to the sky yelling "COME ON! COME ON! DAMM IT!"

18 posted on 05/25/2004 5:33:02 PM PDT by tophat9000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: abigkahuna

I predict that it will be a regular on Mystery Science Theater...good for many laughs.


19 posted on 05/25/2004 5:34:24 PM PDT by KnutCase (Annihilation eliminates the need for military prisons)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: OESY

The movie stinks.

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


20 posted on 05/25/2004 5:55:17 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Drug prohibition laws help fund terrorism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-28 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson