You’ve probably seen it. Huge tidal waves crash down the streets of San Francisco, sweeping away terrified denizens on an otherwise normal day. Tornados tear through buildings. Thunder, lightning, rain — and then, to top it off, a brand new ice age!
It’s not an Al Gore campaign speech– it’s the newest disaster flick to put the fear of mother nature into every gullible person in America. It’s called “The Day After Tomorrow.”
But unlike similar ultra-high-budget end-of-the-world movies of recent years — such as “Independence Day,” incidentally directed by the same guy — this one has drawn the ire of every policy wonk from NASA to the Bush administration.
Why? Those formidable two words that inspire groans and eye-rolling and are sure to get you kicked out of the next frat party: global warming.
So what’s the big deal with this particular movie compared to disaster cinema of old?
That darn government is worried it may affect Bush’s re-election campaign. According to many news reports, NASA ordered its scientists in March not to comment to reporters about the film or the off-chance that the world as we know it will meet an untimely end at the hands of those naughty greenhouse gases. They were later permitted to comment.
NASA officials were worried that the movie’s topic and in-your-face tactics would, God forbid, inspire viewers to question Bush’s environmental policies, as if the American people have reached a point where they are completely unable to differentiate between truth and fiction.
(Incidentally, what seems like the bigger disaster in the movie is the subtle thespian stylings of Mr. Dennis Quaid, but that’s a topic for another day.)
Global warming is a lot like the evolution debate: To many people, it’s too politically loaded to look at objectively and too scientific to adequately research in a short amount of time. And the issue has become such a he-said-she-said in the political world that nobody except environmentalists and rabid right-wing environmentalist-haters seem to care anymore.
Until now! Suddenly, global warming is, like, totally fetch!
So, to make it easy, here is what science has proved, courtesy the Environmental Protection Agency Web site:
We know for sure that “human activities” have an on Earth’s atmosphere in that the levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, have increased since the pre-industrial era. We know for sure that the Greenhouse Effect exists; that is, greenhouse gases warm the planet by trapping heat in the planet’s atmosphere, and thus the human-controlled buildup of greenhouse gases contributes to the Greenhouse Effect. We know that the temperature has risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit since the 19th century, and that that increase has slightly reduced snow cover around the world and the size of ice caps, among other consequences.
What is disputed is whether these scientifically proven global warming factors will result in a catastrophic disaster that will end human life on the planet.
You may be asking, then, why the movie features a new ice age while global warming asserts new warming?
The accepted scenario among environmentalists is that water coming from the polar ice caps and glaciers, which would be melted by the increased temperature, would flow into the Atlantic ocean, thus shutting down the Gulf Stream and halting warmth for Europe and parts of North America, according to http://www.commondreams.org, a progressive Web site. What would result, according to some, is either a full ice age that would doom the world or a “little ice age” that would give us harsh winters and droughts.
In short, there are many other pressing issues that would make a whole lot more sense to worry about right now, including war, the misuse of incidental fee funds and who will win American Idol. This movie, and the issues it raises, is just another topic used by the talking heads to scare the pants off the naive.