09 May 2004 The Day After Tomorrow

I have a new op-ed out, on the topic of the new global warming disaster movie, and thought I would share an abridged version of it here:

Promoters of the global warming disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow” must believe we were born yesterday.

The film focuses on a global apocalypse. Two hundred and ninety-foot tidal waves surge against Manhattan skyscrapers followed by a quick freeze that leaves Manhattan enshrouded in ice. Dozens of cities get hammered. A tornado levels Los Angeles, five-pound hailstones bombard Tokyo while San Francisco Bay freezes. It’s a New Ice Age.

It’s also the latest brainstorm of German schockmeister Roland Emmerich, best known for “Independence Day” and “Godzilla.”

Those movies were enjoyable examples of the “sky is falling” fantasy genre. “The Day After Tomorrow,” however, is the subject of a multi-million dollar PR campaign touting it as if it were a realistic warning of what could happen if we don’t dismantle our economy to stave off global warming. Yet the extreme scenarios promoted by global warming theory advocates are supported more by politics than by science.

Kyoto was rejected by President Bush because of its draconian economic burdens and because the treaty wouldn’t prevent global warming. There is little scientific evidence documenting the need for a Kyoto-style crusade against climate change, anyway.

Excepting the El Nino year of 1998, since about 1979, the Earth’s temperature apparently has not been increasing. What minor warming the Earth experienced over the past century primarily occurred before 1940, when there were far fewer automobiles and power plants.

The U.S., in any case, is not ignoring climate issues. The U.S. government spent over $3.5 billion on climate change in 2003 alone.

Many of the horrendous events predicted by global warming scaremasters have no basis in reality. Even if global warming were to occur at the fast pace predicted by alarmists, it wouldn’t unleash the New Ice Age predicted in “The Day After Tomorrow.”

Says scientist Andrew Weaver in the journal Science, “it is safe to say that global warming will not lead to the onset of a new ice age.”