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The future ... or just Hollywood make-believe?
$125M summer blockbuster disaster movie is causing a storm of controversy in Washington
By BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Scenes of devastation from 'The Day After Tomorrow,' an upcoming disaster flick based on global-warming science.
At $125 million, one of the summer's most expensive blockbusters features multiple hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and snowstorms. That's onscreen.
Offscreen, it has created a firestorm in Washington.
"The Day After Tomorrow," a global-warming disaster flick, has become a lightning rod for criticism of the Bush administration's environmental policies.
The movie stars Dennis Quaid as a paleoclimatologist who feverishly fights to save Earth as noxious emissions turn the green globe into a frigid Ice Age landscape.
The movie's histrionics and dubious science - New York City is flooded and transformed overnight into a polar metropolis - also raise issues of scientific validity and activist filmmaking.
These questions might never have been raised but for an ill-advised E-mail sent by NASA brass to its scientists last month.
"No one at NASA is to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with the film," the E-mail warned. "News media wanting to discuss science fiction vs. science fact about climate change will need to seek comment from individuals or organizations not associated with NASA."
This did not thrill some of the scientists, who leaked the message to the press.
The criticism goes something like this: President Bush pulled out of the Kyoto accords, which sought to combat rapid global warming. He has proposed a 2% cut in spending for research on climate change. And now, faced with a movie that paints a worst-case picture, he is muzzling experts to avoid election-year embarrassment.
Never mind that NASA later relented, allowing its experts to comment on the scientific aspects of the movie.
Environmentalists have rallied around the cause, and the Bush-bashing group MoveOn.org has called the "The Day After Tomorrow" the "movie George Bush doesn't want you to see." There are certainly plenty of scenes that might make the administration squirm. Like a Dick Cheney look-alike vice president who mocks warnings even as all hell is breaking loose. And the flash-freezing of a presidential motorcade.
Interestingly, the making of the film was accompanied by some prophetic climate disturbances.
During preproduction, a hailstorm hit China, killing 25 people. The next month, dozens were killed in Europe in what were called "floods of the century." Just three days after principal photography began in November, 75 tornadoes touched down in the U.S. in one day, killing 36 people.
The film comes after a Gallup poll showed last month that 46% of Americans think Bush is doing a poor job on environmental protection, down from 36% in March 2001, shortly after he took office.
In February, more than 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, signed a report charging that the administration has misrepresented scientific findings on global warming and other issues to support its policies.
The International Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate, and in 2002 the National Academy of Science warned that "greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the Earth system" could cause "large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events."
A group of Sandia National Laboratories scientists recently speculated that such abrupt climate changes could produce massive drought, trigger the spread of infectious disease and collapse economies around the globe.
"The surprises that happen may not be predictable, but it's predictable that surprises will happen," Sandia's Thomas Karas concluded in the group's report.
Six months ago, the Pentagon released a worst-case scenario report that predicted that if abrupt climate change did occur, it would inevitably lead to famine and war.
"The Day After" is more far-fetched than even the most speculative scientific predictions. But environmentalists hope it will become a cause célèbre.
Harvard paleoclimatologist Dan Schrag said he cringed when he heard about the flick. But then he thought again.
"Sure, the science portrayed in the film is grossly exaggerated, but I think the public will understand that it is a Hollywood portrayal. If this raises greater awareness of climate change as an issue, then it may have a very positive impact."
Or it could go the other way.
"Those who deny that global warming is a threat will see this film and say, 'Look, these guys are all in cuckooland,'" said Eileen Claussen, executive director of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "The environmental community will have to find a way to make this work to their advantage rather than against it."
The push has already begun.
When "Day After Tomorrow" premieres in New York on May 24, former Vice President Al Gore, whose 1992 book "Earth in the Balance" warned of the dangers of global warming, will be addressing an environmental rally a few blocks away.
None of this is expected to hurt the film's box office.
As Producer Mark Gordon told the Daily News, "This is not a political movie. It's a big spectacle with a lot of heart. But if you can make a movie like that and give [people] something to think about, it will be all to the good."
En het 2e artikel:
Gov't scientist scenario spookier than celluloid
"'The Day After Tomorrow' bears as much resemblance to climate science as 'Independence Day' does to the possibility of extraterrestrial life."
So says Peter Schwartz, and he ought to know. Schwartz is co-author of a Defense Department doomsday report released in February on the national security implications of abrupt climate change.
In the soon-to-be-released global-warming disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow" - directed by Roland Emmerich of "Independence Day" fame - a hurricane wipes out islands in the Pacific, Tokyo is destroyed by hail, tornadoes sweep Los Angeles off the planet and the Big Apple is frozen to its core virtually overnight.
Don't worry. It's not going to happen. At least not like that.
"It's great fun, but it's a movie," Schwartz said.
But Schwartz's report, by his own admission an absolute-worst-case scenario, is pretty scary in its own right.
If global warming began to boost temperatures in 2010, the report hypothesizes, the phenomenon at first would be dismissed by policymakers.
By 2020, it would be too late.
Ocean effects would have plunged temperatures 5 degrees. Northern Europe would resemble Siberia and there would be massive migration southward. Winter storms would be sweeping Western Europe and the North Pacific. Drought would have devastated key agricultural regions, especially in the Southern U.S. Massive food and energy shortages would trigger famine.
"Humanity," the report concludes, "would revert to its norm of constant battles for diminishing resources. ... Once again, warfare would define human life."
The future ... or just Hollywood make-believe?
$125M summer blockbuster disaster movie is causing a storm of controversy in Washington
By BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Scenes of devastation from 'The Day After Tomorrow,' an upcoming disaster flick based on global-warming science.
At $125 million, one of the summer's most expensive blockbusters features multiple hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and snowstorms. That's onscreen.
Offscreen, it has created a firestorm in Washington.
"The Day After Tomorrow," a global-warming disaster flick, has become a lightning rod for criticism of the Bush administration's environmental policies.
The movie stars Dennis Quaid as a paleoclimatologist who feverishly fights to save Earth as noxious emissions turn the green globe into a frigid Ice Age landscape.
The movie's histrionics and dubious science - New York City is flooded and transformed overnight into a polar metropolis - also raise issues of scientific validity and activist filmmaking.
These questions might never have been raised but for an ill-advised E-mail sent by NASA brass to its scientists last month.
"No one at NASA is to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with the film," the E-mail warned. "News media wanting to discuss science fiction vs. science fact about climate change will need to seek comment from individuals or organizations not associated with NASA."
This did not thrill some of the scientists, who leaked the message to the press.
The criticism goes something like this: President Bush pulled out of the Kyoto accords, which sought to combat rapid global warming. He has proposed a 2% cut in spending for research on climate change. And now, faced with a movie that paints a worst-case picture, he is muzzling experts to avoid election-year embarrassment.
Never mind that NASA later relented, allowing its experts to comment on the scientific aspects of the movie.
Environmentalists have rallied around the cause, and the Bush-bashing group MoveOn.org has called the "The Day After Tomorrow" the "movie George Bush doesn't want you to see." There are certainly plenty of scenes that might make the administration squirm. Like a Dick Cheney look-alike vice president who mocks warnings even as all hell is breaking loose. And the flash-freezing of a presidential motorcade.
Interestingly, the making of the film was accompanied by some prophetic climate disturbances.
During preproduction, a hailstorm hit China, killing 25 people. The next month, dozens were killed in Europe in what were called "floods of the century." Just three days after principal photography began in November, 75 tornadoes touched down in the U.S. in one day, killing 36 people.
The film comes after a Gallup poll showed last month that 46% of Americans think Bush is doing a poor job on environmental protection, down from 36% in March 2001, shortly after he took office.
In February, more than 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, signed a report charging that the administration has misrepresented scientific findings on global warming and other issues to support its policies.
The International Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate, and in 2002 the National Academy of Science warned that "greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the Earth system" could cause "large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events."
A group of Sandia National Laboratories scientists recently speculated that such abrupt climate changes could produce massive drought, trigger the spread of infectious disease and collapse economies around the globe.
"The surprises that happen may not be predictable, but it's predictable that surprises will happen," Sandia's Thomas Karas concluded in the group's report.
Six months ago, the Pentagon released a worst-case scenario report that predicted that if abrupt climate change did occur, it would inevitably lead to famine and war.
"The Day After" is more far-fetched than even the most speculative scientific predictions. But environmentalists hope it will become a cause célèbre.
Harvard paleoclimatologist Dan Schrag said he cringed when he heard about the flick. But then he thought again.
"Sure, the science portrayed in the film is grossly exaggerated, but I think the public will understand that it is a Hollywood portrayal. If this raises greater awareness of climate change as an issue, then it may have a very positive impact."
Or it could go the other way.
"Those who deny that global warming is a threat will see this film and say, 'Look, these guys are all in cuckooland,'" said Eileen Claussen, executive director of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "The environmental community will have to find a way to make this work to their advantage rather than against it."
The push has already begun.
When "Day After Tomorrow" premieres in New York on May 24, former Vice President Al Gore, whose 1992 book "Earth in the Balance" warned of the dangers of global warming, will be addressing an environmental rally a few blocks away.
None of this is expected to hurt the film's box office.
As Producer Mark Gordon told the Daily News, "This is not a political movie. It's a big spectacle with a lot of heart. But if you can make a movie like that and give [people] something to think about, it will be all to the good."
En het 2e artikel:
Gov't scientist scenario spookier than celluloid
"'The Day After Tomorrow' bears as much resemblance to climate science as 'Independence Day' does to the possibility of extraterrestrial life."
So says Peter Schwartz, and he ought to know. Schwartz is co-author of a Defense Department doomsday report released in February on the national security implications of abrupt climate change.
In the soon-to-be-released global-warming disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow" - directed by Roland Emmerich of "Independence Day" fame - a hurricane wipes out islands in the Pacific, Tokyo is destroyed by hail, tornadoes sweep Los Angeles off the planet and the Big Apple is frozen to its core virtually overnight.
Don't worry. It's not going to happen. At least not like that.
"It's great fun, but it's a movie," Schwartz said.
But Schwartz's report, by his own admission an absolute-worst-case scenario, is pretty scary in its own right.
If global warming began to boost temperatures in 2010, the report hypothesizes, the phenomenon at first would be dismissed by policymakers.
By 2020, it would be too late.
Ocean effects would have plunged temperatures 5 degrees. Northern Europe would resemble Siberia and there would be massive migration southward. Winter storms would be sweeping Western Europe and the North Pacific. Drought would have devastated key agricultural regions, especially in the Southern U.S. Massive food and energy shortages would trigger famine.
"Humanity," the report concludes, "would revert to its norm of constant battles for diminishing resources. ... Once again, warfare would define human life."
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