THE TOMORROW THAT WILL NEVER COME

The movie, "The Day After Tomorrow":

"Independence Day was an unashamedly silly film, aspiring to little more than to entertain. The Day After Tomorrow, however, is being touted as carrying a serious message about climate change. Emmerich says 'the threat of global climate change is the only problem big enough to force all the countries of the world to stop fighting and work together to save the planet'.... According to the film's producer Mark Gordon, 'this is science fact, although we have collapsed the time period to make the coming of this ice age happen much more quickly' ..

Statistician Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, [says]: 'If The Day After Tomorrow had no claims to be anything more than another cheesy Hollywood movie with some fabulous special effects, we could happily turn a blind eye to its bogus science.' But, as Lomborg says, 'the film claims to be offering something more than this'.

Summing up the thinking behind this scaremongering, a senior executive behind the film says that it's 'not a documentary, but it's very scary to think that it could be one' ... So is this film the work of an inventive bunch of storytellers out to entertain, or the work of environmentalist crusaders out to debate science? The answer you get from the filmmakers depends on whether they stand to gain publicity from a scientific debate about the film (in which case, it's serious), or whether you're taking them to task over the film's scientific accuracy (in which case, it's just entertainment)....

There is a general acceptance today that assuming worst-case scenarios when predicting the future, seeing people as a problem and the environment as something that needs saving, and characterising the comforts and technologies of modern life as irresponsible, are all correct attitudes to hold. Since these attitudes are not scientific in essence, but political, they can happily find affirmation in a far-fetched film whose science is all over the place."

There is a detailed dissection of the background to the movie here. And Rather Biased notes the dishonest way Dan Rather and CBS have promoted the movie. See also my post of 8th.