10 Huge Disaster Movies That Scientists Called Bullsh*t (And Why)
7. Climate Change Takes Decades, Not Days - The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
The Disaster: What if somebody told you that we were days away from being plunged into a new Ice Age? They would need to have a pretty impressive job title to be taken seriously, and that is exactly what paleoclimatologist Jack Hall has. Still, despite his impressive station, he fails to convince the United Nations or the White House to take him and his new findings seriously, and as icy floods and violent snowstorms begin to rock the States and the rest of the world, Jack finds little comfort in being able to say I told you so. Why Its Bullshit: Weve all heard about abrupt climate change, but this is ridiculous. When scientists in the field refer to climate change as abrupt, they are talking in terms of decades rather than days, and the rate at which the world goes from a bit rainy to frozen solid in The Day After Tomorrow goes against every known law of thermodynamics. Not only is such a quick turnaround in weather impossible, the storms that appear as a result are just as factually inaccurate. It is established in the film that the eye of each storm is cold enough to freeze a man in an instant, with cold air from the top of the troposphere reaching earth at a temperature of -100°C. The first issue with the storms is that the furthest, coldest reaches of the troposphere only average temperatures of -60°C, and never reach double figures. On top of that, the eye of the storm is the area with the lowest air pressure, and so the air would be rising here, not descending from the troposphere and freezing everyone it touches.
