The Day After Tomorrow

The movie, The Day After Tomorrow, addresses the issue of global warming. The movie's portrayal of the events caused by global warming was extreme and not very believable. Some of the information is backed up by science but most is completely off the wall and nonrealistic.

The movie cited the cause of the global climate change to be the rise in temperature due to greenhouse gasses. The warmer temperatures caused the polar ice caps to melt, and the increased amount of freshwater in the ocean disrupted the North Atlantic Current. The North Atlantic Current is what is responsible for the warm temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. With the current disrupted the Northern Hemisphere went into an ice age. In real life, the polar ice caps are melting, but at a rate not even close to that of the one represented in the movie. Even if the ice was melting at a quicker rate, the chance that it would throw off the North Atlantic Current is slim to none. Also, there is no way that the ice would melt so quickly that a change that drastic would be made.

Another major issue I had with the movie was its temperature inconsistencies. In the movie, scientists warned people about going outside. They say that if one was to go outside that they would freeze to death. The movie also showed a wooly mammoth which froze to death immediately at the time of the first ice age. These examples were placed in the movie to highlight the extreme temperature and its danger. But throughout the course of the movie, there are points where people are merely wearing a turtleneck and a light jacket. The wooly mammoth is a large animal which was accustomed to low temperatures. If this animal froze immediately than a human surely would, especially if they were wearing nothing more than a turtleneck. Other scenes in the movie show humans frozen to death, and then others are standing there with nothing wrong. With temperatures as low as they were supposed to be in the movie, the people who were still alive would have a horrible case of frostbite. In the movie, there was no frost bite to be seen. The temperature inconsistencies were glaring in the movie and made it seem incredibly unrealistic.

There were also scenes in the movie where the characters are outrunning the freeze. There is no possible way a person could outrun temperature. There is also no way a person could survive temperatures that low. The temperature was so low that everything was immediately freezing, including flags and buildings. There is no way that a human could possibly survive a temperature that low.

There were some other things that bothered me about the movie, such as the isolation of the "ice age" The movie's ice age was specifically isolated to the northern hemisphere. Americans were able to seek refuge from the storm by merely crossing the border into Mexico. So the storm wasn't even isolated to the Northern Hemisphere, or even North America, it was only in the US and Canada. If there was such a drastic climate change, a simple move to Mexico wouldn't ensure anyone's safety.

The ocean played a large role in the unrealistic nature of this movie. The ocean in the movie rose at least 25 ft, if not more than that, in a very short period of time. It usually takes years for the ocean to raise a distinct amount,