Snowstorms sweep New Delhi. Hailstones the size of grapefruit batter Tokyo. Plunging temperatures bring chaos to Britain. Manhattan is submerged by a tidal wave. The new ice age has begun.
This, according to the new Hollywood blockbuster The Day after Tomorrow, is the shape of things to come. Our world is going to freeze, not boil. It may sound like science fiction, but the producers of the $125-million film claim their chilling vision is factual.
They are up against a number of leading climate researchers contacted by The Observer, who described the movie’s premise as dangerous nonsense.
”It is highly misleading to suggest we are going to freeze in future,” said climatologist Dr Doug Benn, of St Andrews University. ”Global warming is likely to continue. We should be focusing on real environmental problems, not worrying about sensational disaster stories.”
The science behind The Day after Tomorrow is based on the idea that greenhouse warming — triggered by rising levels of industrial gases in the atmosphere — could disrupt the ocean currents that bring warm, salty water from the tropics to eastern America and western Europe.
The main current, the Gulf Stream, delivers 27 000 times the energy of all Britain’s power stations and keeps the country warm in winter and its harbours ice-free — unlike those of more southerly ports such as Vladivostock.
Lose that protection and Britons would be in serious trouble, as is depicted in The Day after Tomorrow when Arctic meltwaters pour south and obliterate the Gulf Stream. America and Britain are plunged into an ice age.
As scientist Jack Hall (played by Dennis Quaid), battling to save his family from this freezing hell, puts it: ”We are living in a non-stop global meteorological cataclysm.”
The film’s backers insist the scenario is realistic.
”This is science fact, although we have collapsed the time period to make the coming of this ice age happen much more quickly,” producer Mark Gordon told The Observer.
His ice age erupts upon the planet in a few days. Such a transformation would take years — if it ever were to happen in real life. Nevertheless, its supporters say they can already detect worrying evidence of global freezing.
Last week the Office of Science and Technology in Britain reported that four million homes face flooding as a result of climate change, while in Science, a team from the University of Washington, Seattle, revealed that there has been a slowing in the circulation of Arctic currents.
Ice age advocates point out that the strength of the Gulf Stream has dropped by about 20% over the past 50 years, and the current has ”switched off” at least once since the end of the last ice age — about 10 000 years ago.
But most climatologists say it is nonsense to argue that the Gulf Stream is facing destruction.
”It’s very unlikely but we can’t say how unlikely,” said Chris West of the United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme.
West pointed out that even if the Gulf Stream were disrupted this would create a fall in temperature of only about two to three degrees Celsius.
”Given that atmospheric temperatures would have increased by vastly more over the same time period, the overall impact would still be one of general warming with a rise of around six degrees Celsius occurring.”
This view was backed by Benn.
”What these people forget is that if the melting ice caps disrupt the Gulf Stream and lower temperatures, this cooling will stop the ice from melting and the process will grind to a halt.
”When you look at ocean-floor sediments, you see that the world has experienced temperatures far higher than those expected to be triggered by the greenhouse effect. When rises in temperatures occurred there was no sudden drop as the ice age enthusiasts predict will happen this time.”
Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, described the film as the Towering Inferno of climate change and told New Scientist last week that ”it is safe to say that global warming will not lead to the onset of a new ice age”.
Weaver also noted the movie’s budget ”would fund my entire research group for my entire life, 10 times over”. With funding like that, he added, he might even be able to say exactly what will happen to our climate in future. — Guardian Unlimited Â