The Day After Tomorrow Movie. Based On Fact? Who Cares!
The Day After Tomorrow movie (2004) is based on the idea that global warming may shut down thermohaline circulation of the Gulfstream and plunge the Northern hemisphere into an Ice Age.
(Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla). With Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal.)
Fact or fiction? The jury is still out. Some research suggests the Gulf Stream weakens with cooling and strengthens with warming. It was weakest (by ~10%) during the Little Ice Age and at its strongest during 1,000-1,100 yr BP, the Medieval Warm Period (Lund, Lynch-Stieglitz,and Curry, Nature (2006) 444: 601-604). You can dive deep into this topic here if you want.
True or not, the The Day After Tomorrow movie still is a wake-up call to the power of human actions, and global warming is a result of those.
It is also a wake-up call to start living sustainably NOW, in whatever small way you can if we are to avoid othe worst of what's to come.
OK, got that out of the way... But don't worry about that. This is a movie some love and others love to hate. Truth is, in my view this Movie is eminently watchable, though not high on humor.
The movie's story is that after the Gulfstream shutdown, freezing weather, tornadoes, deadly storms and hail lash the Earth. Jack Hall, a climatologist (!) must race to get his son from sub-zero New York city.
How he walks for 40 miles in sub-zero and wild conditions beats me but he does it!
Special effects are stunning: Entire cities are ripped apart, flooded, or frozen. Awe-inspiring tidal waves sweep all before them. The new ice age kills millions. There is a cool (VERY cool) scene where helicopter pilots get snap-frozen as sub-zero air sweeps forward.
Happy ending? How can it be if half the world is frozen stiff?