Posted on 14-5-2004
Scientists Praise Hollywood's
Global Warning
by Paul Brown, Tim Radford and John Vidal, May 13, 2004, The
Guardian
Hail stones the size of tennis balls are knocking people out
in Japan.
Shortly afterwards it is snowing in India. But that is only
the beginning.
The fuel in the helicopters sent to rescue the royal family
in Balmoral
freezes in flight and within days all those living north of
Washington
have been abandoned by the US military as beyond help of evacuation.
Meanwhile, those from the southern states plead for refugee
status in
Mexico as they flee to the border to escape the cold.
This is a Hollywood blockbuster, which in the tradition of the
disaster
movie plays ruthlessly on the irrational fears of the average
American. It
also has unexpectedly strong political content, and a scanty
relationship
with scientific fact.
But yesterday The Day After Tomorrow won praise from both the
British
research establishment and the environment movement.
The new film, which opens across Britain next week, bizarrely
plunges the
earth into a new ice age as a result of global warming. While
concentrating on New York it incidentally freezes the royal
family to
death in their Scottish retreat.
Among the film's unexpected fans after a sneak preview are the
government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, and Geoff
Jenkins,
head of the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, who both regard
the film's
stunning special effects as good fun and welcome the blockbuster
as
raising public awareness and debate about a vital issue.
Sir David, who recently stirred political debate on both sides
of the
Atlantic by saying that global warming was a greater threat
than
terrorism, said the beginning of the film was particularly realistic
-
both scientifically and politically.
The political content of the film, in which the US administration
is seen
to rubbish scientific theories of global warming and paying
a heavy price
for it, is a double surprise because the film comes from Rupert
Murdoch's
20th Century Fox studio, and has been billed by environmental
groups as a
strongly anti-Bush movie in an election year. The realism Sir
David
praised was where the film's hero, Jack Hall, a climate scientist
played
by Dennis Quaid, seeks to convince a high-powered but sceptical
audience
including the US vice president, that the Gulf Stream is weakening
because
of climate change.
The Cheney lookalike rejects the idea of global warming being
a threat,
and says the US economy is more fragile than the climate.
It is then that the film's grip on science begins to ease. Special
effects
go into overdrive with super-tornadoes in Los Angeles - one
of America's
recurring horror fantasies.
New York suffers in just six days the kind of weather-related
disasters
that could be expected over 100 years of the most severe climate
change.
But Dr Jenkins said: "It is a blockbuster movie. Let us
not be too
po-faced, they need a return on their money."
Millions of people are wiped out in the film which Dr King said
was also
justifiable poetic licence, pointing out that 21,000 people
died in Europe
last summer because of a heatwave linked to climate change.
"There was
little attribution to the cause, man-made climate change, and
little
public response, although it was a very extreme event."
Although fact and fiction are tangled, the main scientific information
in
the film is that the Gulf Stream, which warms the UK climate
by about 5C,
is slowing down and then suddenly stops.
The fact that the Gulf Stream is slowing down is an established
fact but
how fast this is happening and how long it will take is still
a matter of
scientific uncertainty.
Dr Meric Srokosz, from the Southampton Oceanographic Centre,
who has just
been given £20m by the government to find out more about
this potentially
frightening phenomenon, said it had happened twice in the last
12,000
years over a decade and not the six days depicted in the film.
Temperatures had plunged as a result but not as disastrously.
He was
trying to find out if the chances of it happening again were
1 in 10, 1 in
100 or 1 in 1,000.
He rejected suggestions that the hype of the film would damage
the cause
of cli mate scientists and play into the hands of sceptics.
He worked on
the basis that "any publicity is good publicity for the
climate cause" -
mainly because there had not been enough.
The scientists assembled yesterday to comment on the film and
explain the
"real science" said that without the Gulf Stream Britain
could be as cool
as Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.
In the movie, the Gulf Stream - also known as the Atlantic Conveyor
-
switches off, to precipitate blizzards, hailstones, ice storms,
and
widespread instant hypothermia.
In real life, as far as anybody knows, any such switch-off would
take a
decade, and lower the average temperature of central England
by 3 C to 4
C.
This would be pretty uncomfortable. The difference between the
so-called
medieval warm period in the 13th century, when grapes flourished
in
England, and the Little Ice Age in the 18th and 19th centuries,
when the
Thames froze over, was no more than 1 C to 2 C, on average.
Some scientists were not so enthusiastic about the bending of
science. "It
breaks the laws of physics. What is proposed as climate change
is the
opposite of what we think will happen. It's a parable that doesn't
do
anything for me," said Professor Mike Hulme, director of
the Tyndall
centre for climate change research, University of East Anglia.
Dr Jenkins came to the film's defence: "Certainly the basic
process of the
shutdown of the Gulf Stream could in principle happen in the
same way that
it happened before.
"So I think it would be arrogant of us to say: we don't
need to look at
this. We do need to be concerned about the stability of the
ocean
circulation and why that could change in the future."
But for Bill Maguire, head of the London-based Benfield Hazards
Centre,
the value of Hollywood raising the issue only goes so far: "Abrupt
climate
change is a serious business and evidence is accumulating for
global
warming triggering huge changes to ocean circulation. But the
total
destruction of LA by tornadoes? I think not."
Could it really happen?
· A vast iceberg drops off the Antarctic ice shelf
Realistic. Bigger bergs are already breaking off
· The British royal family freezes to death in Balmoral
Unlikely, but the castle is notoriously underheated
· Los Angeles is destroyed by tornadoes
We don't think so, say climate scientists
· A 100ft tidal wave engulfs New York
The Big Apple going under is a disaster-movie staple. Unlikely
in a global
warming scenario
· Three vast, hurricane storms cover the northern hemisphere
Impossible over land, say scientists
· Temperatures plummet 10 degrees Celsius a second, freezing
people solid
Beyond the laws of physics
· The southern US states are evacuated
A tall order in three days
· The US president dies of cold, and his successor apologises
for global
warming
Hard to imagine, even after George Bush made his half-apology
this week
· US writes off Latin American debt to allow Americans
to flee across the
Mexican border
Campaigners have been trying to persuade Washington to forgive
more third
world debt for years, with only limited success. Raised the
loudest laughs
from the audience
· Europe is covered by 15ft of snow, writing off the
entire continent
The UK goes first in an entirely US-centric disaster show. Some
thanks for
our special relationship
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