June 22, 2004
Kamloops Daily News



It's hard to say which contained more fiction, the movie or
the review of the movie.

The movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is a futuristic portrayal
of what could happen if the north Atlantic ocean currents
were to shut down.  These currents bring heat to North
America and Europe from the tropics.

The premise of the movie is that melting polar icecaps
dilute Atlantic salt water, causing heat-carrying currents
to shut down.  There is scientific reason to believe that
these currents brought us out the last ice age that gripped
North America 15,000 years ago.

The movie review is by Amy Ridenour, President of the U.S.
National Centre for Public Policy Research.  Actually, it's
less of a review and more of an attack on the premise of the
film.   "Hollywood's latest propaganda film laughable," 
says Ridenour's article (Kamloops Daily News June 1, 2004). 
"The extreme scenarios of are supported more by political
ideology than by science," she adds.

She goes on to claim that "what minor warming the Earth
experienced over the past century primarily occurred before
1940, when there were fewer automobiles and power plants."

That would be news to global scientists.  NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies says that the 1990s was the
warmest decade in the last century.  And that decade
surpassed the 1980s which previously held the record.

Just what is it about The Day After Tomorrow that has
Ridenour and other right-wing lobby groups so riled? After
all, it's just another Hollywood movie.  It's not unlike
another film based on global calamity - - the 1998 movie
Armageddon.   In that movie, an asteroid is about to collide
with the earth and wipe us all out. Asteroids and ice ages
don't visit the earth very often but when they do, look out.

The difference between the two movies is that there are no
asteroid politics.  But the politics of global warming are
hot.  Belief in global warming has political consequences. 
It means that maybe it's not a good idea for humans to dump
tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each day.  If
greenhouse gases are bad, then maybe we should slow our
burning of fossil fuels.   And maybe the Kyoto accord is a
good idea.  This kind of thinking starts to undermine the
political mindset that concludes that reckless oil
consumption is good for you.

The U.S. National Centre for Public Policy Research is
prepared to say ridiculous things just to make their point. 
For example,  Ridenour says that  the  "ice sheets in
Antarctica and Greenland are actually growing (from their
website)."  Chunks of Antarctica are actually breaking away.

If the movie is laughable, as Ridenour says, then her claims
are hilarious.  Scientists have been measuring Canada's
polar ice and found it to be 40% thinner than in 1950,
according to the Pembina Institute. 

The effects on Canadians of global warming are not Hollywood
fiction.  Professor David Schindler, from the University of
Alberta, is a leading expert on watershed ecosystems. He has
found that northern Canada is warming faster than the south. 
In Calgary, the average temperature rise since 1970 is 1
degree Celsius.  In Edmonton it's 2.3 degrees and further
north, 4 degrees.

The result is that prairie rivers are drying up.  Glaciers
feed prairie rivers in the summer but they are quickly
melting.  In only 25 years, Glacier National Park will
likely be glacier free.

There are parts of The Day After Tomorrow that I found hard
to believe.  The speed of cataclysmic events was
unbelievable.   Within a few weeks, melting ice caps had
triggered an ice age in the northern hemisphere. 

I thought that the movie's time compression was done for
dramatic effect, but professor Richard Alley says that
spectacular weather changes can happen fast. "The more the
climate is forced to change, the more likely it is to hit
some unforeseen threshold that can trigger quite fast,
surprising and perhaps unpleasant changes," says the
professor of geosciences at Penn State University.

The director of the Day After Tomorrow, Roland Emmerich,
wasn't trying to make a political statement. He primarily
wanted to make an entertaining movie.  "If it provokes
thought, I would be very happy, but that's a lot for a
summer movie," he says.

For me, it did both.  It made me question the motives of the
movie's attackers and I found it very entertaining.

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