Science

Scientists explain why killer weather in film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is fiction

Contact for Interviews:    
Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273

Washington, D.C., May 12, 2004The upcoming movie, The Day After Tomorrow, depicts the cataclysmic events that supposedly would be triggered by global warming induced climate change.  Under the tagline Where will you be?, The Day After Tomorrow shows harrowing images of New York City covered in snow and ice, the Sydney opera house being consumed by a mammoth tidal wave and Los Angeles being destroyed by tornadoes.  Unfortunately, the blockbuster fails to employ sound science to back up the special effects. 

Scientists around the world have begun to question and counter the scientific facts depicted within the movie.  Attached is a list of scientists that are available to reveal the truth behind the science fiction of The Day After Tomorrow.  The movie is scheduled for release on Memorial Day weekend, May 28th:

Dr. David Legates, Director, Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware
(302) 831-4920
legates@udel.edu

Dr. Ian Clark, Professor, Isotope Hydrogeology and Paleoclimatology, Department of Earth Sciences (Arctic specialist), University of Ottawa
(613) 562-5800
idclark@uottawa.ca

Dr. Madhav Khandekar, Environmental Consultant, 25 years with Environment Canada in Meteorology
(905) 940-0105
mkhandekar@rogers.com

Dr. Robert Balling, Director, Office of Climatology at Arizona State University
(480) 965-7533
robert.balling@asu.edu

Dr. Robert E. Davis, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Virginia, Editor of Climate Research, Chair of the Committee of Biometeorology and Aerobiology of the American Meteorological Society
(434) 924-0579
red3u@virginia.edu

George Taylor, Faculty Member at Oregon State Universitys College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, State Climatologist of Oregon
(541) 737-5705
taylor@coas.oregonstate.edu

Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Enviro-Sci Host
www.techcentralstation.com
(202) 546-4242
sbaliunas@techcentralstation.com

Dr. Christopher Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario
(519) 661-3649
essex@uwo.ca
 
Dr. Ross McKitrick, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, B.C., Coauthor of the Canadian bestseller Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming
(519) 824-4120 x52532
rmckitri@uoguelph.ca
 
Dr. James J. O’Brien, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor, Meteorology & Oceanography, Director, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University
(850) 644-4581   
jim.obrien@coaps.fsu.edu
 
Dr. Pat Michaels, professor of Environmental Science, University of Virginia, State Climatologist of Virginia
(434) 924-0549
pjm8x@Virginia.EDU

On May 3, the Cooler Heads Coalition hosted a Capitol Hill briefing entitled “The Impacts of Global Warming: Why the Alarmist View is Wrong.” The event allowed four leading experts to discuss the specific scientific research that has been done in their four particular fields: severe weather events, rising sea levels, tropical diseases, and mass species extinctions.

Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar, who recently retired from Environment Canada after a 25-year career as a research scientist, and who recently edited a special issue of the international journal Natural Hazards on extreme weather events, presented his views concerning the lack of connection between severe weather events and global warming. Khandekar specifically examined heat trends from Canada, thunderstorms and tornadoes in North America, and monsoons in Asia. He concluded that there has not been an increase in severe weather events and that the likelihood of increased incidences of extreme weather events in the next ten to twenty-five years remains very small at this time.

Professor Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University and past president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, delivered an amusing and enthusiastic presentation examining sea level change. He pointed out that what has been predicted by computer models is not backed up by empirical evidence. Satellite measures, for instance, show no change in sea level over the past decade, which has led him to write in a peer-reviewed journal, “This implies that there is no fear of any massive future flooding as claimed in most global warming scenarios.” Much of the supposed rise, it seems, has actually been a shifting of the amount of water from one area of the globe to another.

Nor is Professor Morner worried about island nations drowning. He and his team did an exhaustive investigation of the claim made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean are at risk from sea level rise accelerated by global warming. He found considerable evidence that the sea level in the islands has fallen over the past 30 years, and that the islands and their people survived much higher sea levels in the past.

Next, Paul Reiter, a professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris who specializes in the spread of vector-borne diseases, demolished the common claim that warmer temperatures play an important role in the spread of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. Reiter gave a brief historical excursus of the prevalence of malaria (or ague, as it was called in earlier centuries) in England during the Elizabethan Age, in Washington, D. C., and other northern climates during the Little Ice Age. Reiter remarked that the largest outbreak of malaria in the twentieth century occurred not in the tropics but in the Soviet Union in 1923-25, when there were more than 16 million cases and 600,000 fatalities. This figure includes 30,000 deaths in Archangel, which is above the Arctic Circle.

Reiter explained that malaria and other “tropical” diseases have more to do with living conditions than temperature. He cited his study that analyzed the Texas-Mexico border, where dengue fever was prevalent in Mexico and rare in Texas despite the similar environmental conditions. The only difference was living conditions. He also emphasized that many of the “experts” (such as physician Paul Epstein, who is not a medical researcher) expressing concern over global warming and tropical diseases are newcomers to the field and have not bothered to master the literature. Prof. Reiter concluded that climate is rarely relevant to the re-emergence of vector-borne diseases.

Patrick Michaels, professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, examined the claim that global warming threatens mass extinction of species. Michaels analyzed recent scientific articles that have been claimed as evidence that rising temperatures are reducing habitats for butterflies, penguins, polar bears, and toads. In each case, he showed that either temperatures were not rising in the specific habitats or habitat for the specific species had actually expanded. Michaels concluded that research has demonstrated that species range is affected by rising temperatures, but not in a way that helps the alarmist case.

The presenters on the panel were generally scathing about the quality of the IPCCs assessment reports in their fields of expertise. For instance, Prof. Reiter revealed that, the nine lead authors of the chapter discussing vector-borne diseases in the Second Assessment Report had published a total of six papers on the subject. The three leading critics of the chapter, including Prof. Reiter, had published over 550 scholarly papers. Prof. Morner has written in a peer-reviewed journal article that the IPCC chapter on sea-level rise represents “a low and unacceptable standard. It should be totally rewritten by a totally new group of authors chosen among the group of true sea-level specialists.”

Hybrid cars are not living up to their advertised gas mileage, claimed a recent article from wired.com (May 11).

John DiPietro, a road test editor of the automotive website Edmunds.com, explained in the article that drivers hardly ever experience the actual miles per gallon advertised by the EPA. Most automobiles would have miles per gallon of approximately 75 to 87 percent of the EPAs rating. However, data from Consumer Reports suggests that the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius averaged well under 60 percent of the EPAs reported miles per gallon when operating on city streets.

Many critics of the EPAs evaluation system point to flaws in the EPAs measurement process. “The [EPA] test needs to include more fundamental engineering,” said John H. Johnson, the co-author of a 2002 National Academy of Sciences report on fuel efficiency standards. He added, “They havent been updated to encompass hybrids.”

The wired.com article concluded, “The inflated EPA numbers have been a public relations conundrum for Honda and Toyota, which are caught between hyped expectations and detracting from one of the cars main selling points better mileage.”

New research from Australias Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting suggests that the Earths self regulating properties in the face of global warming are greater than previously believed. The research implies that rainfall patterns, evaporation rates, and plant growth have been profoundly modified to reduce greenhouse gases within the Earths atmosphere.

According to the Centres scientists, “As the world warms, on average, it is getting wetter rainfall, on average, is increasing.” They also added, “Contrary to widespread expectations, potential evaporation from the soil and land-based water bodies like lakes is decreasing in most places. This is because the world is cloudier than it used to be.”

The scientists explained that the increased cloudiness not only contributes to a reduction of evaporation, but also more effective plant photosynthesis. In turn, the Earth will grow more plant life, thereby reducing the amount of carbon dioxide within the atmosphere. These carbon sinks, particularly “long-lived, woody plants like trees”, change habitats, ecosystems, biodiversity, and the flows of greenhouse gases, the scientists claimed.

They concluded, “Forests, farms, and grasslandshave the potential to absorb more (greenhouse gases), ameliorating climate change. Properly managed, they could buy time for the worlds people to make major reductions in greenhouse emissions.” They admitted that despite the findings, “There is much we still must discover” (The Australian, May 11)

The forthcoming Hollywood movie, The Day After Tomorrow stars Dennis Quaid as an earnest climatologist trying to save the world from catastrophic global coolingbrought on by burning fossil fuels. The special effects are said to be spectacular, but the film is no more realistic than Planet of the Apes.

One of the movies big dramatic elements is that the meltwater from globally warmed polar ice caps has overwhelmed the Gulf Stream, so London and New York are turning into ice cubes.

The last time such a thing happened was 12,800 years ago, when the last Ice Age ended and we had an extra trillion tons of ice to melt. The Laurentide Ice Sheet then covered all of Canada, and the U.S. into Ohio. Similar ice sheets covered much of northern Europe and Asia. There was so much water tied up in ice that the ocean levels dropped 300 feet. Stone Age hunters walked to America across the Bering Sea with dry feet.

Has anybody noticed an ice sheet a mile thick over Chicago recently?  Where did Hollywood get the extra trillion tons of ice to shoot this movie?

The other problem for Mr. Quaids credibility is that the Gulf Stream isnt what keeps Britain warm. Its the Rocky Mountains.

The textbooks say the Gulf Stream is what keeps Britain from being sub-Arctic, but theyre wrong. Theyre based on nothing more substantial than a statement by a U.S. Navy lieutenant, Matthew Maury in1856.

One of the benign offices of the Gulf Stream is to convey heat from the Gulf of Mexico, where otherwise it would become excessive, and to disperse it in regions beyond the Atlantic for the amelioration of the climates of the British Isles and of all Western Europe, wrote Maury.

He wasnt wrong. He just wasnt very right.

The Gulf Stream does carry heat from the tropics to the shores of Britainin fact, 27,000 times as much heat as UKs powerplants generate. The warm current helps keep London 25 to 35 degrees F warmer than Newfoundland, which is at the same latitude.

However, new climate research shows that only about 10 percent of Britains winter warming comes from the Gulf Stream. Half of the rest comes from the Atlantic Ocean itself, which holds heat longer than the land.

The rest of the warming for Britain is delivered by west-to-east winds from the Americas Rocky Mountains.

Dr. Richard Seager, of Columbia Universitys Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, says, Belief in the benign role of the Gulf Stream is so widespread that it has become folklore.  But Seager and his research team used weather data from the past 50 yearsand a powerful computer model to describe how heat is shifted around the globe. They found the key to Britains climate was the warm wind from southern North America. The American wind is forced into a giant meander as it flows southeast around the Rocky Mountains.

This vast kink in the atmosphere circulation helps to explain the winter temperature contrast across the North Atlantic, says Seager. Winds, going to eastern North America, flow north around the Rockies and carry cold air to New York. The southern air flow moves over the American southwest and on to Europe. When the scientists flattened the U.S. topography by removing the Rockies from their computer models, British winter temperatures fell radicallyand the summer temperatures became suffocatingly hot.

The other big problem for the Quaid movie is that even major, abrupt climate change isnt very dramatic by Hollywood standards.

Icelanders colonized their island about 850 AD, and lived through the Medieval Warming (9001300 AD), which had the highest temperatures the earth has seen in 5,000 years. Then they suffered through the chillingly colder winters of the Little Ice Age (13001850 AD) with their winds and storms coming straight from the Polar Ice Cap.

As of 1917, after 1500 years of constant major climate changes, the Icelanders argued they hadnt seen any! They thought theyd just had periodic bad weather. But theres so much bad weather in the good (warmer) phases of the climate cycle that it takes a century of weather data to reliably spot a bad trend. The Icelanders didnt have thermometersor movies.

DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for Hudson Institute in Indianapolis and the Director for Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org).  He was formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State. 

Readers may write him at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421

For Additional Information:
Dr. Roy Spencer, (256) 961-7960
Dr. John Christy, (256) 961-7763
Phillip Gentry, (256) 824-6420

HUNTSVILLE, AL (May 5, 2004) — A new study of global temperature data reports this week the discovery that significant global warming can be found by subtracting from the temperature record more cooling than was actually there.

“You can’t subtract more signal than is there, but that’s what they’ve done,” said Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). “They’ve subtracted more than is actually there.”

The study in question, by Fu et al., is published this week in Nature. The authors claim to find significant atmospheric warming over the past 25 years when cooling that has taken place in the stratosphere during that time is removed from the tropospheric temperature data gathered by instruments aboard NOAA satellites.

The problem, says Spencer, is that the study uses a negative “weighting” function that removes more stratospheric cooling than actually appears in the data, thus creating a spurious warming signal.

“Simply put, this method over corrects for stratospheric cooling,” said Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at UAH and director of the ESSC. “We tried this same technique in the early 1990s but it didn’t work.  Instead, Roy developed a method for accurately removing stratospheric temperatures from the data and we published that in 1992.”

Spencer and Christy were the first to use data from microwave sounding units aboard NOAA satellites to track global temperature trends. Over the past 13 years they have made several corrections to their dataset as different problems have been identified.

The satellite sensors, which have been in service since late November 1978, show a long-term lower atmosphere global warming trend of about 0.08 C (0.14 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade in the past 25 years. This trend has been corroborated by U.S., British and Russian studies comparing the satellite data to temperature data gathered by weather balloons.

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