Global Warming Film No Disaster for Science
Cites Susan Lozier, earth and ocean sciences

05/12/04
From wire and staff reports
Reuters International Newswire; Voice of America (radio)
Copyright 2004

Washington, D.C. – The new $125-million summer film “The Day After Tomorrow” is getting its first positive reviews – from scientists who say the disaster movie about the onset of an instant ice age will benefit public understanding of climate change even though it badly botches the science behind it.

Scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Harvard University and Duke University have joined a growing chorus of experts who at first dreaded the film but now tentatively embrace it.

In the film, global warming causes the ocean currents to change course, spawning killer weather and rapidly plunging parts of the world into a new ice age.

That type of climate change could happen in real life, says oceanographer Susan Lozier of Duke University, “but it would taken many, many decades or even a century or more.”

Depicting it as happening virtually overnight is “pretty far-fetched,” she said. “It’s like saying someone can run the mile in less than a second.”

Still, she and other scientists believe the movie will benefit science in the long run, by making the public more aware of the possible consequences of global warming, even if they are not as cataclysmic as in the movie.

“The science is bad, but perhaps it’s an opportunity to crank up the dialogue on our role in climate change,” said NASA research oceanographer William Patzert.

Dan Schrag, a Harvard paleoclimatologist, at first feared the film would damage the credibility of climate change research, but says he “sobered up somewhat, because the public is probably smart enough to distinguish between Hollywood and the real world.”

“The Day After Tomorrow” opens on May 28, the traditional start of the summer blockbuster movie season.

Media contact: Tim Lucas, 919/613-8084 or tdlucas@duke.edu