Global warming sparks devastation in film

The screenwriters chose the worst-case scenario for the movie's story line.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A superstorm envelops the globe, sending tornadoes skittering through Los Angeles, pounding Tokyo with hail the size of grapefruit and burying New Delhi in snow.
Brace yourself. After decades spent tackling volcanoes, aliens, earthquakes, asteroids and every other disaster imaginable, Hollywood has turned its attention to one of the hottest scientific and political issues of the day: climate change.
No one is pretending the forthcoming film "The Day After Tomorrow" is anything but implausible: In the $125 million movie, global warming triggers a cascade of events that practically flash-freeze the planet.
It's an abruptness no one believes possible, least of all the filmmakers behind the 20th Century Fox release. "It's very cinematic to choose the worst-case scenario, which we did," said co-screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff.
Nonetheless, scientists are embracing the movie, unusual for those whose stock in trade is fact.
"My first reaction was, 'Oh my God, this is a disaster because it is such a distortion of the science. It will certainly create a backlash,'" said Dan Schrag, a Harvard University paleoclimatologist.
"I have sobered up somewhat, because the public is probably smart enough to distinguish between Hollywood and the real world."
He now hopes the movie will do for interest in global warming what "Jurassic Park" did for dinosaurs.
Film's premise
In the new movie, due for release Memorial Day weekend, global warming melts the polar caps, sending torrents of fresh water into the world's salty oceans. That flood in turn chills a major current in the north Atlantic and tips the planet into a new Ice Age.
Quickly unleashed is every type of violent weather that filmmakers could cram into the movie, directed by Roland Emmerich of "Independence Day" fame. Most were invoked as an excuse to use cutting-edge special effects, Nachmanoff said.
Several scientists who are familiar with the film were charitable, even overlooking the rapidity with which events unfold in the movie. "The science is bad, but perhaps it's an opportunity to crank up the dialogue on our role in climate change," NASA research oceanographer William Patzert said of the premise.
Most, including the filmmakers, acknowledge time had to be compressed to keep the audience's interest. When scientists who study climate refer to abrupt changes, they refer to decades, if not hundreds or thousands of years.
"Fox is not going to make a movie that goes on for 10,000 years," Patzert said.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography marine physicist Tim Barnett, who's seen an extended trailer of the film, said even slower-moving change can cause massive devastation.
Scientists point out that even subtle changes in precipitation patterns can have drastic effects on civilizations unable to pick up and move, wholesale, their farms and cities.
Most scientists agree that climate change is occurring and that human activity -- most notably, the burning of fossil fuels -- has an effect. Debate continues among politicians.
Where Bush stands
The Bush administration withdrew U.S. support for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, it has called for industry to voluntarily reduce emissions and for more scientific research.
Last year, the administration was criticized for ordering a major rewrite of an Environmental Protection Agency assessment of climate change. The revised version deleted references to the health and environmental risks posed by rising global temperatures.
At first, NASA reacted to the movie by ordering government scientists not to discuss it with the press.
The space agency later "clarified" its instructions, saying it did not want to muzzle scientists, some of whom had said officials were trying to limit discussions of global warming because Bush had called for more research.