This Patrick Michaels article from the Washington Post quotes numerous scientists and experts who dismiss as patent nonsense the theories behind the ecological disaster depicted in the move "The Day After Tomorrow". Al Gore has already touted the film, and the producers defend it as a method of "consciousness raising" on the issue of global warming.
Is a Gulf Stream "failure" that would be sufficient to produce an ice age even possible? Ask MIT's Carl Wunsch, the world's authority on oceanic currents. He's very upset at these silly scenarios and believes they can harm efforts to reduce industrial emissions by subjecting the entire global warming issue to ridicule. (After all, Gore is the pitchman.) Wunsch recently wrote in a letter to Nature magazine that the only way to trigger a Gulf Stream-caused ice age "is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the earth's rotation, or both."
It is hoped by the left that the film will have an influence on the political process. Michaels describes a political scenario that could conceivably result from the film. It's sort of a "best-case" result for warming alarmists. That the film is based on junk science matters little to its creators and promoters. Their agenda is more political than environmental anyway.
Posted by dan at May 20, 2004 03:41 PM