By Sue Vorenberg
Tribune Reporter
Four prominent New Mexico scientists sit poised at the press screening of "The Day After Tomorrow," waiting to see who will crack first.
The answer comes in the disaster film's opening three minutes, when scientists, Hollywood division, drill a core sample and accidentally break off an Antarctic ice sheet the size of Rhode Island.
"Pah!" snorted Maya Elrick, a University of New Mexico paleoclimatologist, grabbing her temple and flicking her hand at the screen as actor Dennis Quaid jumps over a widening gulch in the sheet - risking his life to save his data.
Elrick's husband, Mark Boslough, a climate modeling expert at Sandia National Laboratories, is quick to follow suit, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
"What? Maya risks her life for data all the time," he says with a laugh.
The ballyhooed movie about global warming triggering a new and destructive ice age opens today. But from the reactions given by scientists who know global warming better than most, "The Day After Tomorrow" needs a visit to reality - or at the very least, a day or two in a high school science class.
After Elrick's snort, the scientific guffaws continue at breakneck pace through most of the movie.
Football-sized hail in Tokyo, 13-degree temperature drops in the ocean, massive global hurricanes, tornadoes in Los Angeles and air temperature drops of 10 degrees per second draw some of the biggest laughs.
"The most unrealistic thing of all is the time scale," said Tim Moy, a science historian and global warming expert at UNM. "If what happened in the story happened in 10 years, rather than a few days, then maybe some of the bad science could be forgiven."
The premise of the film is based on a real scientific theory. It suggests if too much fresh water from melting ice caps flowed into the saltwater circulation in the Atlantic Ocean, it could shut down global climate patterns and trigger an ice age.
If that were to happen, though, it would happen over decades, not days, according to the theory.
"Of course, in the part of the movie where they show that ocean circulation and explain the theory - that circulation is going the wrong way," Boslough said with a chuckle.
The film's writer, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, also created his own completely improbable theory to flash freeze New York: Massive continental hurricanes form and suck air from the upper troposphere - creating a funnel to the freezing cold air of space.
"That's ridiculous," said Carlos Lopes, a tropical storm and weather expert at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. "I've never seen any theory where that could happen."
Lopes' other gotcha moment was when helicopters were flying through tornadoes in Los Angeles.
"There's just no way," Lopes laughed. "There's no way those massive tornadoes would be there in the first place and there's no way the helicopters could fly in that."
At one point in the film Quaid tells a friend (actor Nestor Serrano) about his argument with the vice president of the United States, played by Kenneth Welsh: "My 17-year-old kid knows more about science than he does."
When asked if her 6-year-old knew more about science than Vice President Dick Cheney, who, like the movie's vice president has also denied the existence of global warming, Elrick laughed.
"Probably so," she said.
"Do you think the vice president in this was picked to look like Dick Cheney?" Moy added. "He didn't have that half-smile, but the rest was dead-on."
The film's portrayal of how scientists work also was inaccurate, Boslough said. For example, Quaid's character has single-handedly made the only accurate computer model of the disaster. In reality, climate models are made by vast teams of scientists.
"Another part was where there was one government guy watching for weather temperature changes in Los Angeles, and he was with his girlfriend and not paying attention to the monitor," Boslough said. "That's absurd - the idea that he's the only guy watching. It's also absurd that every temperature change around the globe is monitored, though."
Despite the unrealistic qualities of the film, all four scientists agree global warming is a real problem that could lead to disastrous consequences. It just will likely take a lot longer than the movie suggests, they said.
"There aren't many scientists in the world that dispute the reality of global warming," Boslough said. "Still there's a lot we don't know about the consequences. There's still a lot of data to gather and analysis to do."
Picking apart the film's science was easy, but watching it was still fun, they all agreed.
"As expected it looked spectacular," Moy said. "It's eye candy. You can watch it and say, 'Wow - that's what New York City would look like if it flash froze in seconds.' "
Boslough said he wouldn't recommend learning science from the movie - or most other movies, for that matter - but putting that aside it was a good drama.
"There were layers to it, and that makes a movie good," he said. "Also there was humor throughout. And the president addressed the nation on The Weather Channel - that was funny."
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