Posted on 05/27/2004 11:54:11 AM PDT by demlosers
for National Geographic News May 27, 2004
In the new movie The Day After Tomorrow, abrupt climate change plunges the planet into total chaos. As tornadoes rip through Hollywood landmarks and grapefruit-size hail pounds Tokyo, New York City turns into an icy wasteland—all in a matter of days. It may just be a high-octane summer blockbuster, but environmentalists hope The Day After Tomorrow will serve as a wake-up call about global climate change.
National Geographic News spoke with Tom Prugh senior editor at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., and an expert on climate change—to hear what he thought of the movie, which he saw at an advance screening.
So should we brace ourselves for another ice age?
No, I don't think so. The scenario in the movie is fictional. Like some other Hollywood movies that claim to be based on true stories, there's a kernel of truth that is then pumped full of steroids and given cosmetic surgery.
But is global warming real?
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is real, and that it's upon us now. In the last century, the average temperature of the Earth has warmed roughly 1° Fahrenheit [0.56° Celsius]. That means an enormous additional amount of heat energy has been built into the system, and there are serious consequences to that warming.
What role does human activity play in global warming?
The atmosphere of the Earth is like a blanket that traps heat. It keeps the temperature at the surface of the Earth about 50° or 60° [Fahrenheit/28° or 33° Celsius] warmer than it would be otherwise, which is great because it makes the world a pleasant place to live. But humans have been adding to the gases that help trap this heat.
We've been adding to the stock of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by taking coal, oil, and natural gas out of the ground and burning them as fuels. Combined with deforestation, this has added around a third of the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
And what does this do the welfare of the Earth?
If you think of an automobile engine—when you step on the accelerator, the engine speeds up because you're putting more energy into it by increasing the fuel flow, so everything runs harder and hotter and faster. The extremes get more extreme.
That's what's happening with the climate. We're stepping on the accelerator by adding greenhouse gases to the climate and increasing heat energy in the system.
How does climate change manifest itself?
Ocean levels are rising, because water expands as it heats up. Since there is more energy in the system, storms may become more frequent and more violent. Increased incidents of flooding create heavier runoffs and soil erosion. Indirect effects of climate change can also cause entire species to go extinct.
How realistic is this movie?
It has a kernel of truth, although it has been "Hollywoodized." There is evidence that abrupt climate change has happened a couple of times in the last 13,000 years, but it's never happened in a few days, as it does in the movie. That's completely impossible.
What is the ocean conveyor belt referred to in the movie, and what is its importance to the Earth's climate?
It's the system of currents that flows around the oceans of the world and carries heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes. There is evidence that the North Atlantic branch of the current has failed in the distant past—8,200 and 12,700 years ago—causing a great cooling of the climate.
In the movie, the influx of fresh water, caused by the melting of a massive ice sheet, changes the salinity of the oceans, shutting down the Gulf Stream. Could that happen?
In theory, that is realistic. Salty water is heavier than fresh water. When the cold, salty current reaches the northern latitudes and gives out its heat, the current actually sinks and flows back along the bottom of the ocean toward the tropics.
When then there's a lot of fresh water added to that current, it may stop flowing, because it's not dense enough to sink anymore. In the past, retreating glaciers dumped enormous amounts of fresh water very suddenly into the North Atlantic, and the currents stopped.
What about the superstorms depicted in the movie, which form like hurricanes over North America, Europe, and Asia? Are they realistic?
No. Hurricanes form over waters and tend to break up and dissipate when they reach shore. They can't get the energy to keep going anymore.
One of the effects created by the superstorms in the movie is the pulling down of supercool air from the troposphere that freezes people in a matter of seconds. There is nothing that suggests this could happen.
Could another ice age happen?
It's unlikely. Even if there were a continued influx of fresh water that weakened or stopped the North Atlantic current, any cooling effect that might create would be swamped by the warming that would continue to happen in the meantime.
But if abrupt climate change has happened in the past, before the industrial revolution, isn't this just part of a natural cycle that is, in a sense, inevitable?
Certainly the climate has, to some extent, a mind of its own. But that's not to say we're not having an influence on what the climate is, what it does, and how it behaves.
We've taken a great deal of carbon that used to be locked up in the Earth in the form of coal and undisturbed oil and natural gas and released it into the atmosphere. That carbon hadn't been there in the atmosphere for millions and millions of years.
It's simply naive to think that's not going to have an effect on the climate.
So what do you say to skeptics who dispute the seriousness of global warming?
Most don't dispute that the climate is warming and that human activity has a great deal to do with that. Even the most vociferous of the climate skeptics have pretty much stopped saying that global warming is not happening.
Actually, science benefits from having skeptics. They challenge assumptions and arguments and force people to go back and get more data.
Do you think the catastrophic events in the film may be so extreme that audiences may not take the climate change issue seriously?
I hope people will come away with the lesson that we need to be more careful with the climate that we're fooling around with—not that they need to worry about buying property in Mexico because the Northern Hemisphere is going to be locked up in an icebox.
People should have a good time, but I don't think they should take this as a reason to laugh off climate change. I hope this becomes a teachable moment for people and shows that we are doing serious damage to the climate.
Any particular aspects about the film that you liked?
I liked how it used shots from space to give you a sense of how huge and powerful the climate really is. One of the key lessons of the film is that this is a very big, very complex system that we don't understand very well. Since we're conducting a giant experiment with this huge, complicated, poorly understood system, weird and unexpected stuff is probably going to happen.
I don't think anyone thinks abrupt climate change is likely any time soon, but the probability is not zero.
Do you think the general public appreciates and fully understands the threats that global warming pose?
I hope they understand that climate change is happening now. It's affecting everyone who is alive on the planet, and it will inevitably affect their children and their children's children. I have a ten-year-old son, and I want to do everything that I can do to ensure that the world he grows up in is as wonderful and pleasant as the world we got now.
So what can people do about this problem?
They can do a great deal. If millions of people turn off the lights when they leave the room, it makes an enormous difference on how much carbon winds up in the air. Most people believe their electricity comes from renewable or nuclear power or hydroelectric power, but more than half of the electricity generated in the United States comes from coal.
When you leave the light on all night long, that one act is directly responsible for putting a couple of more pounds of carbon into the atmosphere.
I would urge people to go see the movie. I thought it was a lot of fun. I would also urge them to drive to the movie theater together with a few friends [to conserve gasoline and put less exhaust into the atmosphere] and turn out all the lights in the house before they leave.
""There is evidence that abrupt climate change has
happened a couple of times in the last 13,000 years""
And this was caused by humans too? I think not. How do the eviromental whackos explain that? The earth is not a stable environment, nor will it ever be. And there is nothing that can be done about it.
While it is almost univerally agreed that our burning of fossil fuels has made SOME contribution to global mean temperature rise, it hasn't been determined how MUCH this has occurred.
It would be interesting to note how much of that degree of added rise occurred during the last 30 years which was the time frame of the most man-made carbon dioxide release.
Most people understand that it's a MOVIE!
Algore thinks it's a documentary.
If the ice in the glass is above the water line then the water in the glass would rise. If it was below then the water would not rise.
It was written by Art Bell for Christsakes
It was written by Art Bell for Christsakes
Darn ... I've been telling my wife that, if we wait long enough, the beach will eventually come to the house (as opposed to buying a house on the beach) ... and we live in Central Texas (Fort Hood).
Now I'm going to have to think up something else to keep from having to buy property on the beach for her.
I might be wrong, but I think it is due to the fact that the weight of the volume of water being displaced by the ice cube is slightly more than the weight of the cube itself.
Water has tremendous heat absorbtion properties. I'm no scientist, but I think that w/ global warming, the world's oceans will absorb extra heat before in is transmitted to the airmasses over land.
WTF? Thermal expansion of water is several orders of magnitude too low to produce significant effects on sea level (even if the water were heated all the way down to the abyss, which would require an immense energy input).
If there is a problem at all, it would be caused by the melting of land-based ice caps (the melting of sea ice has no effect whatsoever on sea level -- a block of ice melts into the exact same volume of water it displaced while floating).
Archimedes
Archimedes had to find another solution to determine the metal content of the crown. Archimedes discovered the answer while at a public bath.
He noticed that when he got into the water, it overflowed the tub. By measuring the overflow, he found that the volume-the amount of space a thing occupies-of the spilled water was equal to the volume of his body under water. He realized he could determine the gold content of the crown by measuring the water it would displace against the amount of water displaced by a lump of gold weighing the same as the crown.
The crown and lump of gold would each displace the same amount of water if the crown were solid gold. If the crown contained silver, it would displace more water, since the volume of a weight of silver is greater than the volume of the same weight of gold. With this discovery,
Archimedes leaped from his bath and in his excitement raced naked down the street toward his home, shouting "EUREKA! I have found it!"
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:7CPD_RMH0F4J:library.thinkquest.org/25672/archimed.htm+scientist+bath+rise+water+&hl=en
Cows exhale methane. Methane is not good for humans. We eat cows. Cows taste good. Especially with A1.
PETA doesn't want us to eat cows. PETA says cows are gods gift to nature. Therefore it is logical to say that PETA is responsible for global warming.
Perhaps there are no dinosaurs anymore because the bio-system finally lost so much carbon to fossil deposits that a threshold was breached forcing a radical dimunition of organism mass.
Oh, BTW: One thing never mentioned is that increased CO2 levels cause increased plant tissue growth due to the higher availability of the building blocks (carbon). Thus, the system is self regulating. How much mass did Mt Pinotubo or Mt. St. Helens eject? Are you sure this past cold and wet winter was the result of my SUV? Sure? Really?
They want to debunk the movie with that piece of bogus analysis?
Now I'm going to have to think up something else to keep from having to buy property on the beach for her.
Drive your SUV more, not only does it create CO2 that's good for growing plants and melting icecaps, it also releases a molecule of watervapor for each CO2 molecule as a byproduct which is at least an 80 times stronger greenhouse gas and makes it rain as well.
That way you'll get your beachfront home all the sooner when you all water vapor condenses and fills the ocean instead ;O)
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