sbaii

The movie "The Day After Tomorrow" is based on evidence that the melting glaciers are dumping huge amounts of fresh water into the North Atlantic which will stop the Gulf Stream and bring on an ice age. Has anyone heard any predictions about how severe this will be? I have also heard that this climate change will turn off the monsoons so the tropics will become dry. How are people going to survive? All I can see is that there will be a rush for atomic power and that a lot of living organisms are going to die. Any ideas out there?

Manitoumulegirl

Move away from low lying coastal areas and stockpile lots of food and weapons. It's best to do this with a group of like-minded friends. Buy a large farm in Canada somewhere and immerse yourself in the study of growing wheat or corn. Buy lots of warm clothing.

Or you could just go about your life. Unless it was caused by a collision with a giant asteroid or a nuclear war, ice ages don't generally happen over-night. I suggest remaining calm and supporting environmental causes.

braces_for_impact

As a quick aside, that was one of the lousiest movies I've ever seen. :down:

American Humanist

First off, I haven't seen the movie yet but I've seen and heard enough about it to clear some things up.

I've read articles about the reality of this threat in science mags (Discover, Sci. Am.,National Geo., etc.). The thing to keep in mind is that Hollywood cares more about making a movie with overblown special effects than actually educating the public. While a slowdown or even a total shutdown of the ocean circulation pattern is indeed possible based on the evidence of past climatic conditions; the effects wouldn't kick in a matter of days. The would take atleast a decade or two and propibly longer to start to have their full effect. Their effect would certainly be bad but nothing like in the movie. The most devastating effects would be reduced crop yields throughout the northern hemisphere and strain on water supplies in areas which become drier. There would be the changes in weather patterns (Floods, droughts, etc.) to contend with.

sbaii

I'm aware that any ice age would take years although I've heard as short as a decade. And right now no one knows how long it would last. I don't plan to live past 100 so I won't be around in 50 years. But I did wonder if other younger people were considering what to do since an ice age looks pretty likely.

Dark Knight Bob

The shutdown of the gulf stream will not cause armageddon. It will however turn the northern climate in europe to that of canada and alaska.

The whole idea about super cyclones freezing the world is a bit far fetched , and is down to artistic liscense with the movie makers.

And ice age would come about from massive volcanic eruptions, nuclear war, extra terrestrial object hitting earth, global warming becoming accelerated towards an unstable position (reverse runaway greenhouse effect) or some massive problem with the sun and it's production of heat.

The gulf stream brings warm air from the equator up towards western and northern europe.

It's not what scientists would call an ice age, but in human terms it would become a major source of headache or even disaster if it happened without proper preventative measures.

Schneibster

One additional possibility: a change in the Earth's average distance from the Sun could cause an ice age too. Wouldn't take much, IIRC.

Manitoumulegirl

I think a decade is pushing it. Climatology has developed some interesting models to explain past changes in climate. When it comes to the future, however, climatology is still an inexact science - the flap of a butterfly's wing and all that.

Barring such events as nuclear war, asteroids, or a displacement in the earth's rotation around the sun, climatic change is a fairly gradual process. In current scenarios, before you have to worry about an ice age, you'll have to go through the global warming phase. The earth's climate will steadily become warmer (and drier) ultimately resulting in the melting of the polar icecaps. The resulting flooding will innudate many coastal areas. Because of the excess of water which will then be present, the climate will become wetter, there will be more snow in northern and southern regions and this will cause the build up of glaciers which will then start to engulf the land masses. This entire process will take much more than 10 years.

The best defense is a good offense. We need to wean ourselves off our current dependence on petroleum for our energy supply. We need to maked a concerted global effort to halt run-away population growth and deforestation. These are certainly not easy things to do, but we are going to have to do them, regardless. We can begin taking steps now or we can have them forced on us later by depleted oil reserves and famine. Unfortunately, the prevailing attitude seems to be that future generations will have to look out for themselves or that some miracle of technology will save us. Science and technology have accomplished many things, but I wouldn't count on the "check being in the mail", myself.

baron greenback

First and foremost, I really have to caution against using hollywood as a barometer for anything except cultural opinions. And even then, it's a lousy barometer; regardless cultural trends, Jerry Bruckheimer is always going to make Jerry Bruckheimer movies that have nothing in common with Martin Scorcese(sp?) movies.

That being said, I feel this question has potential. I don't think we need to focus on "the coming ice age" the same way we would focus on a new playstation game. We don't know when it would come, if it would definately come, and how severe it would be. What we DO know is what drought, freezing, hurricanes, and in general any unusual, long lasting weather patterns do. Therefore, I think it would be more beneficial if the focus of the topic was shifted away from wondering if a specific disaster is going to occur, toward methods of dealing with natural disasters and inhospitable environments in general. We, as a species, have come a long way in this regard, but as recent disasters have shown us, we have a lot of room for improvement. Also, if we ever hope to survive in the vacuum of space, we definately need to know a lot about survival.

Several countries already have measures in place for dealing with this kind of thing. For this reason, at risk of sounding discriminatory, I strongly disagree with the movie's view that the northern hemisphere would be hardest hit (something, I might add, that wasn't accompanied by any scientific explanation, junk or not). In any natural disaster, the countries with the best disaster relief, farming practices, and resources is going to survive the longest. As is, we've already adapted to cold weather in several environments. Claiming a coming ice age would "doom" us would be like claiming it's difficult to survive in Aspen or Winter Park.

That being said, genetic engineering could solve any food related problems caused by a global drop in temperature within a generation, social problems and ethical concerns aside.