Scientist in USA TODAY about "The Day After Tommorow":phenomena "physical impossible&

[TC4]

This is from USA TODAY, about the new film, "The Day After Tommorow" and how the eco-zealots are trying to make it sound like this is a blue print for how global warming will occure, and why they are wrong:

http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+%27Day+After+Tomorrow%27%3A+A+lot+of+hot+air&expire=&urlID=10526977&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fnews%2Fopinion %2Feditorials%2F2004-05-24-michaels_x.htm&partnerID=1660


'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The stratosphere will become the troposphere when all three laws of thermodynamics are repealed.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.

[carlsbadd]

DUH...it's a movie.

[Johnny Punani2]

Originally posted by carlsbadd
DUH...it's a movie.

DUH...and it's being dishonest and a tool for propaganda. The avg person doesn't realize the things they portray in the movie are impossible. That's what the eco-loonys are banking on.

[Ancalagon the Black]

A movie being used as a tool for propaganda?

IMPOSSIBLE!

[Larry]

OTOH, I seem to recall that, of all the Star Trek films, (a subject close to my heart) the one that's made the most money (a subject clost to Paramount's heart) was Save the Whales.

And really, is this "science" any worse than a scene where somebody gets hit by some magic device that changes his DNA, and he transforms before our eyes into a giant fly, or some such?

[Om]

Not the first movie out there masquerading as "scientifically based" in which the science is pure dreck. Won't be the last. Trick is to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained ... then be sure to avoid the yutzes in the audience who think it's REAL when you run into them at the bar later.

[jbooma]

Nobody knows because we have never experienced anything like this. On MSNBC there is an article saying we are in for some changes the next ten years because we have lost 9% of the artic shelf.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5052363/

[Om]

Saying "nobody knows" is a bit of a cop out. Yes, on the one hand, while one can argue that "anything is possible" ... the extent to which Hollywood goes to stretch "science" beyond any reasonable bounds in order to create good visual effects is just silly.

Saying there are possible unknown weather patterns coming our way is one thing. But taking the worst, most extreme of all possible scenarios---many of them contradictory---then multiplying the potential manifestations of them by 1000 just to make a movie, is another.

This and other movies of this ilk (Armageddon, Space Cowboys) should be viewed for what they are ... full-color animated comic books.

To suggest that they are based in anything resembling real "science" is a misguided exaggeration. NOt saying it's not okay to make movies to make a buck ... but it's not okay for people to swallow the crap their built on without batting an eye.

[jbooma]

Originally posted by Om
Saying "nobody knows" is a bit of a cop out. Yes, on the one hand, while one can argue that "anything is possible" ... the extent to which Hollywood goes to stretch "science" beyond any reasonable bounds in order to create good visual effects is just silly.


I don't believe what this movie has to say. I do think no person really understands how the earth and its climate work. We have no clue what we are doing to our earth, we are just making guesses. To me it is like weathermen, with their experience they can predict certain things, but the last second it all changes. We are discussing something many don't have a clue just try and make it seem like they do.

What we do know is the more the caps melt the higher the water will rise, after that it is just a guessing game, and amazing game though.

[Larry]

Now, if you want an excuse for a lot of CGI special effects, and based on something that's possible, could I suggest Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer?

(Although, the real drama in that story isn't the effects, it's the people trying to recover from the destruction.)

[Soliloquy]

I always thought their "Footfall" would make an excellent movie. It'd be hard to make the aliens (they look like elephants) scary enough, though.

[Kilmer17]

It's a friggin movie.

If someone lets there opinions be swayed by a work of fiction, they were going to vote for Dem to begin with.

:)

[Cskin]

All I know is I'm about half way through with my ark. When I'm done... it can rain for 2 months.... and I'll catch the Tsunami when it crashes up against the Blue Ridge Mountains. Who's with me???

[SkinInsite]

What!?!?! you mean stuff in movies are impossible?

Damn i've been letting spiders biting me for nothing....

[Henry]

It's like saying Remember the Titans was 'based on a true story.' Sure it was, but then again many, many facts were changed to make the story more racially charged and more of a political statement.

That doesn't mean it wasn't a good movie.

I want to see The Day After Tomorrow because I think it looks cool, not because I want to learn more about global warming. Besides, anyone who takes what the makers of Independence Day say as scientific fact isn't smart enough to do anything about it anyway. :)

[McMetal]

This guy is a jack*ss with an obvious axe to grind.

He's using this movie as a platform to attack the liberal environmental lobby. His time would be better spent explaining why global warming IS a threat and what practical steps HE would recommend to reduce its effects.

When it comes to our environment, just like our kids, we should always err on the side of caution. Better to go too far with the emissions restrictions, etc. than not far enough. We have an obligation to future generations not to make partisan decisions based on commerce or industry.

Get back to the lab, Poindexter. Politics and science make dangerous bedfellows...

[Johnny Punani2]

Originally posted by McMetal
This guy is a jack*ss with an obvious axe to grind.

He's using this movie as a platform to attack the liberal environmental lobby. His time would be better spent explaining why global warming IS a threat and what practical steps HE would recommend to reduce its effects.

When it comes to our environment, just like our kids, we should always err on the side of caution. Better to go too far with the emissions restrictions, etc. than not far enough. We have an obligation to future generations not to make partisan decisions based on commerce or industry.

Get back to the lab, Poindexter. Politics and science make dangerous bedfellows...

I think you need a head check. The guy is an arse for exposing the lies in a movie that was made for political reasons? Of course you have no problem with the eco people 'mixing politics and science'. hypocritical don't you think?

It's also kind of difficult explaining global warming as a 'threat' when it has not even been proved. My question is if there is soooo much overwhelming proof of global warming why are people to believe in it having to resort to lies?

It's been politics and science all along metal...

http://www.henrypayne.com/pages/articles/122197KyotoVoodoo.html

Kyoto's Voodoo Economics
December 21, 1997
By Henry Payne
Copyright 1997 Scripps Howard News Service

Washington, DC - "Americans will pay the same or less for health-care coverage that will be the same or better than the coverage they have (today). That is the central reality," declared President Clinton in 1993 as he unveiled the cornerstone of his first term, the redesign of American health care.

"A fantasy," responded Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., whose colleagues agreed.

This month the president announced the cornerstone of his second term, an international climate treaty to head off global warming. Like health care, the proposal was accompanied by voodoo economics. "If we do it right," he declared, "protecting the climate will yield not costs but profits, not burdens but benefits, not sacrifice but a higher standard of living."

Once again, the president is talking fantasy.

Celebrating the Kyoto treaty signing, Vice President Gore proudly announced that the United States would slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to 7 percent below 1990 levels in order to prevent what Gore sees as an "environmental holocaust."

Just 7 percent below 1990 levels. Simple, right?

What Gore left unsaid is that the Clinton administration has already quietly reneged on its 1993 commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. Since 1990, U.S. emissions have increased nearly 10 percent.

The obstacle is economic growth. As the economy booms, emissions rise. In modern times, according to the Department of Energy, CO2 emissions have dropped only twice _ during the recessions of 1981-82 and 1990-91. The 1981-82 recession, the deepest since the Great Depression, reduced CO2 emissions by 8 percent.

The DOE projects that the United States would have to chop its CO2 emissions by a whopping 41 percent from projected levels over the next 15 years to comply with the Kyoto treaty. The effect would be severe economic dislocation _ some economists think the coal industry would have to be shut down, for example _ and key senators are already declaring the treaty dead on arrival.

Treaty advocates like Gore claim that cutting CO2 will bring an economic boom driven by new, clean technologies. But those technologies have not been tried because they are substantially more expensive than existing energy sources.

Environmentalists applaud Europe's recent reduction of CO2 emissions as evidence that industrial nations can meet Kyoto's goals. But an important factor has been France's near-total conversion to nuclear power.

The nuclear alternative no longer exists in the United States, thanks to many of the same forces behind the Kyoto treaty. After the incident at Three-Mile Island in 1979, a campaign of environmentalist demagoguery and sensationalist news coverage all but destroyed the U.S. industry, and just this spring Clinton's Nuclear Regulatory Commission withheld approval of the first nuclear facility proposed since 1979, a fuel processing plant in Louisiana.

Worse than Gore's myths about alternative energy sources is his disengenuousness about how to combat global warming. Gore's closest scientific advisers tell him that Kyoto's emissions reduction goals _ though severe _ are not nearly severe enough. The Kyoto treaty achieves the worst of two worlds: It demands substantial economic sacrifice but will do nothing to solve the problem of global warming.
David Rind, a NASA atmospheric scientist and a key Gore science adviser, says that CO2 emissions must be cut 50 percent _ not 7 percent _ below 1990 levels to prevent the climate catastrophe that he and Gore foresee.

But the treaty's biggest flaw is that it sets out to solve a problem that may not exist.

Rind admits that 20 years ago, the prevailing view of disastrous global cooling, a doomsday scenario embraced then with the same fervor as global warming now, was "flat wrong." The floods, famines and storms that were supposed to occur this decade from global cooling have not happened.

Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric scientist at MIT and one of climatology's most respected experts, says that what we know of physics _ and what we don't know about climate variability _ does not support the alarmist predictions of global warming. In fact, even as more politicians embrace the global warming theory, more scientists are growing wary of it. Global warming climate models do not match observed climate fluctuations, and many scientists are turning to solar cycles as a more accurate predictor of global weather.

Though hailed as "historic" by environmentalists, Kyoto's outline for an international organization dictating national emission standards raises serious practical problems.

Getting our 50 states to agree on and abide by pollution laws is difficult and controversial enough. Imagine 159 independent and economically competitive nations obeying an international regulatory body! If Ohio and New York cannot agree on the effect of Midwest industrial emissions on Northeast air quality, how can the United States and China ever come to terms on CO2 emission cuts? Assume the the United States does not meet its emission goals in 2012, what international tribunal would dare punish it? And what would the American electorate do if the tribunal tried?

Already, Kyoto has aggravated the enormous divisions between the developed and developing nations on the question of economic growth.

Against U.S. interests, Gore's team agreed to a treaty that does not include the developing nations in emissions cuts. These nations already enjoy the advantage of cheaper labor. Free of the emissions cuts, these nations could also enjoy the advantage of cheaper energy as well. Gail McDonald, a spokeswoman for the Global Climate Coalition, an industry-labor group, argues that high-energy, high-emissions industries like aluminum and steel might move south to Central and South America, taking thousands of jobs with them.

The Kyoto summit had less to do with science than with the rise of the environmental movement in rich nations. Once an effort to clean up the excesses of industrialization, environmentalism has spawned a modern political movement dedicated to remaking society and redistributing wealth.

Environmentalists had little political clout in the mid-1970s when they lobbied to have the polar ice caps covered with heat-absorbing soot as a way of curbing global cooling. Today, the environmental movement is a well-funded, political powerhouse. One of its own, Vice President Gore, is in the White House, green parties are a growing influence in Europe, and fervent disciples populate America's newsrooms.

The bottom line of the Kyoto treaty is that its goals are unrealistic and insufficient to stabilize CO2 emissions on a planet that will add at least 2 billion more consumers in the next 50 years. The Kyoto treaty is not a solution to global warming, but a Trojan horse for environmentalists to phase out fossil fuels and achieve a transition to a post-industrial world in which governments dictate what we can and cannot consume.

[codeorama]

The last time I checked, Bay and Bruckheimer made blockbuster disaster films, like Armegeddon and Independance day, but now that this movie is made, it's for political reasons?

Let go people... let go....

[Ignatius J.]

Originally posted by Kilmer17
It's a friggin movie.

If someone lets there opinions be swayed by a work of fiction, they were going to vote for Dem to begin with.

:)

Did anyone else think:

"the bible?"

no? okay then, I'll go back to my book.

[Johnny Punani2]

Originally posted by codeorama
The last time I checked, Bay and Bruckheimer made blockbuster disaster films, like Armegeddon and Independance day, but now that this movie is made, it's for political reasons?

Let go people... let go....

Have you even been to the website?

[codeorama]

Originally posted by Johnny 'Luscious' Punani


Have you even been to the website?

No, but if they are hyping it as "real", then it is smart marketing. What better than to scare movie goers into thinking "It could happen", exactly the same way that Armageddon and Independance Day were.
There is a pattern, this is the style of those movie makers. Making the movie have an air of truth to it is what will suck some people in.
But I don't believe for a second that this movie was made for political purposes, it was made for MONEY.

[skinzfan4life]

M O V I E? lets say it all together...ITS A MOVIE. I bet 95% of the people who go to watch that movie arent going to say oh man thats all abotu global warming. They could, BUT THEY ARENT...there is no maybe abotu it. The director or company might have had alterior motives but no one who goes and see that is going to be any more or less inclined to fight global warming,

that logic would just be assinine

[Johnny Punani2]

Originally posted by codeorama


No, but if they are hyping it as "real", then it is smart marketing. What better than to scare movie goers into thinking "It could happen", exactly the same way that Armageddon and Independance Day were.
There is a pattern, this is the style of those movie makers. Making the movie have an air of truth to it is what will suck some people in.
But I don't believe for a second that this movie was made for political purposes, it was made for MONEY.

I thought so...

Do me a favor and go to the movie website and read the "Weather Gone Wild" section. I'd love to hear you try and say this movie isn't political now.

http://www.thedayaftertomorrow.com/

[skinzfan4life]

That right it was made for $$$$$, the movie "super size me" is made to influence people, this movie is made to make money, and that what it will do, no one is going to boycott the movie because this "political" message that supposedly exists

[SEF]

Originally posted by Ignatius J.


Did anyone else think:

"the bible?"

no? okay then, I'll go back to my book.

Yup.

[Johnny Punani2]

Originally posted by skinzfan4life
That right it was made for $$$$$, the movie "super size me" is made to influence people, this movie is made to make money, and that what it will do, no one is going to boycott the movie because this "political" message that supposedly exists

Of course money is the main reason for the movie being made. However, they are also trying to sway public opinion with it as well.

[SkinInsite]

In essance the public is stupid and must be spoon feed information lest they form some idiotic opinion.

[skinzfan4life]

Originally posted by Johnny 'Luscious' Punani


Of course money is the main reason for the movie being made. However, they are also trying to sway public opinion with it as well.

True this might be there reasoning behind it but 9.5 out of 10 movie goers wont recognize this, or they would not have until these pests made a big deal out of it.

Come on now, if they didnt say this, would you have watched the film then went out and joined some environmental group? No you would not have thats the point. The movie will be seen as entertainment until other try to make it more then that.

[Kilmer17]

They arent tryiong to sway public opinion any more than every other movie maker and Entertainment outlet is doing. This isnt a Michael Moore Fakeumentary.

I want to see it. The Effects look cool.

[Johnny Punani2]

Originally posted by skinzfan4life


True this might be there reasoning behind it but 9.5 out of 10 movie goers wont recognize this, or they would not have until these pests made a big deal out of it.

Come on now, if they didnt say this, would you have watched the film then went out and joined some environmental group? No you would not have thats the point. The movie will be seen as entertainment until other try to make it more then that.

I hope that is true. However, there are people already trying to make this film into something to "educate" the masses about global warming. The retards at moveon.org are a good example...



Date: Wed, 12 May 2004
From: Peter Schurman, MoveOn.org
Subject: The Movie the White House Doesn't Want You to See


Dear MoveOn member,
On Memorial Day weekend, Hollywood is releasing a summer blockbuster movie that's making the Bush administration very nervous. In fact, they'd rather you didn't see it at all.

Why? Because it's a disaster movie about global warming.

While "The Day After Tomorrow" is more science fiction than science fact, everyone will be talking about it -- and asking "Could it really happen?" This is an unprecedented opportunity to talk to millions of Americans about the real dangers of global warming and expose President Bush's foot-dragging on the issue.

It's also a fun movie to see with friends over the holiday weekend.

So here's the plan: On Memorial Day weekend, grab a few friends and go see "The Day After Tomorrow" -- the movie the White House doesn't want you to see. At the theater, meet up with other MoveOn members to give out flyers that explain, in everyday language, what causes global warming, how Bush's environmental policies could lead us into a real-life climate crisis, and what we can do together to meet this challenge.

Join in today at:

http://www.moveon.org/dayafter/

Please also sign our petition calling on Bush and Congress to prevent a climate crisis, at:

http://www.moveon.org/climatecrisis/

Maybe you've already seen the trailer for "The Day After Tomorrow": tornadoes whip through Los Angeles and Manhattan is frozen over as global warming triggers an Ice Age across North America.

Nearly 20 million Americans are expected to see this movie, with as many as 7 or 8 million over Memorial Day weekend alone. Because the movie capitalizes on our real-life concerns over climate change, audiences are likely to walk out of the theater asking themselves: "Could it really happen?" We'll be there to answer that question with our flyers.

The right wing has already cranked up its PR machine to discredit the movie as "fright flick" propaganda cooked up by climate change conspiracy theorists. Never mind that they're relying on stone-age science, or that they're light-years behind the curve on the public's acceptance of global warming as a real environmental threat.

The news media are already buzzing about our plans. Yesterday, we held a press conference to officially launch the campaign, and stories have already appeared in the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

We can't afford to wait until the day after tomorrow to address the climate crisis. We hope you'll be part of this fun summer campaign to elevate global warming from movie-house thrill-ride to White House priority.

[Nerm]

Originally posted by Cskin
All I know is I'm about half way through with my ark. When I'm done... it can rain for 2 months.... and I'll catch the Tsunami when it crashes up against the Blue Ridge Mountains. Who's with me???

I have had my refurbished oil tanker fully stocked and ready to go since I saw WaterWorld. See ya on the waves!