- The storyline begins with a chunk of ice the size of
Scotland falling into the Antarctic sea. It continues, at breathtaking
speed, with hailstones as big as grapefruit battering Tokyo, hurricanes
pounding Hawaii, snowstorms in Delhi and tornadoes whipping through Los
Angeles. New York and London are plunged into a new ice age.
-
- Welcome to the latest Hollywood blockbuster, The Day
After Tomorrow, which depicts climate change as a dramatic series of disasters
sweeping across the world.
-
- The makers insist the film, starring Dennis Quaid and
Jake Gyllenhaal, has its basis in scientific fact, but climate researchers
have questioned the way it represents the speed and manner of climate change.
-
- Critics say the film is seriously misleading and could
cause the public to be become inured to the threat posed by climate change
when they see it being trivialised by the same Hollywood director who made
Independence Day.
-
- But the science adviser behind the movie has hit back
at its critics, arguing that The Day After Tomorrow, due for worldwide
release on 28 May, will do more to raise the public awareness of the greatest
environmental issue of our times than any number of research papers and
documentaries.
-
- Michael Molitor, a former climate change consultant,
said he had already attracted more media interest over his connection with
the film than at any time in 20 years of working on the science and politics
of global warming. "The amount of commentary by climate scientists
on this film has been unbelievable and I find it almost comical,"
Dr Molitor told The Independent. "This film could actually do more
in helping us move us in the right direction than all the scientific work
and all the [US congressional] testimonies put together."
-
- Set in the not-too-distant future, The Day After Tomorrow
is based on the idea that global warming could trigger a sudden and dramatic
change in the planet's climate system.
-
- Roland Emmerich, the film's director, has chosen a sudden
collapse of the Gulf Stream and the huge body of heatit carries from the
Caribbean to the north-east coast of America and Western Europe.
-
- Oceanographers know that the Gulf Stream relies on a
second, deep-water current running in the opposite direction along the
seabed creating a "conveyor belt" driven by the sinking of cold,
salty water in the north-eastern Atlantic, a phenomenon called thermohaline
circulation. But this engine for the Gulf Stream could in theory be interrupted
by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet as it pumps huge volumes of freshwater
into the Atlantic, diluting the salinity and hence density of the surface
water.
-
- "A change in the thermohaline circulation in the
North Atlantic is one of several abrupt climate change scenarios that we
have some familiarity with," said Dr Molitor. "There's some disagreement
about the probability but the fact that that link has been made is quite
accepted. On that level the film is accurate. Where the film departs from
our knowledge is where the changes in the story occur on a timescale that's
probably faster than we expect."
-
- When climatologists talk of sudden changes they usually
mean a period of decades or even centuries, but this is far too slow to
sustain the pace of a Hollywood film, he said.
-
- "No one has ever made any public claims that this
film is completely accurate. This is entertainment," said Dr Molitor.
"The trade-off is between a significantly more accurate film that
would depict a more accurate story that is only seen by a million people,
or a film with a more exaggerated storyline that is seen by 500 million
people.
-
- Other scientists are not convinced. Bogi Hansen, an oceanographer
at the Faeroese Fisheries Laboratories, said that exaggerating the effects
of global warming could lead to a public backlash.
-
- "I don't think it's justifiable because you lose
credibility and people tend to react in the opposite direction when they
find something is not true. They then say 'there's no problem'," said
Dr Hansen, who has yet to see the film.
-
- Other scientists, including Sir David King, the government's
chief scientific adviser, and senior figures in the Met Office have been
invited to a private screening next week in London.
-
- In America, reaction within the scientific community
was initially muted. The New York Times revealed that climatologists at
Nasa, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, had received
an official instruction not to comment on the film for fear of upsetting
the White House, which is famously sceptical of climate change.
-
- Roland Emmerich, who will be interviewed on Sky television
as part of its "End of the World Week" on 17 May, insisted the
fundamental basis of the plot of his film was scientifically sound and
that it served an essential dramatic purpose. "At the core of any
'disaster movie' there always has to be something factual, something real
for the audience to grab onto," Mr Emmerich said.
-
- "What we already know about global warming and climate
change has provided us with a great fact base for the movie," he said.
-
- To emphasise his personal commitment to the environmental
cause, Mr Emmerich has paid $200,000 (£125,000) out of his own pocket
to Future Forests, an organisation that promises to make the film "carbon
neutral" by offsetting the energy used during filming by planting
hundreds of trees.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=519236
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