1. That's Really Not How Weather Works - The Day After Tomorrow
Released in 2004, The Day After Tomorrow appeared at arguably the height of worldwide anxieties over global warming. Once a fringe scientific view, or at least one which didn't get much recognition in the press, global warming had finally gained acceptability in vast majority of media and scientific circles (with the notable and continuing exception of Fox News). The 2000s was a time of massive natural disasters which fuelled further interest in the idea, ultimately resulting in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 and the accompanying Live Earth concerts - when rock stars got together to save the planet one last time by ferrying equipment in private jets to football stadiums around the world. The decade needed a film to reflect these anxieties, and The Day After Tomorrow gave it its best shot. But Wait... Despite the good intentions, The Day After Tomorrow probably hindered the climate change argument with its endless list of inaccuracies, which start quite spectacularly when an ice age descends on the entire world in a matter of hours. In reality such an event would take decades or even centuries to really take hold, and it could never be so severe. If the Greenland ice sheets ever melt the results would be disastrous but not quite as apocalyptic as shown in the movie. Rather than 200m waves which engulf America in one sweep, there would be a gradual rising of sea levels over time, but that's not quite as glamorous, is it? Also the shutdown of the gulf stream that the film posits is completely speculative. There's very little scientific evidence to suggest such a thing could occur. Obviously the scientific inaccuracies in this film created some pretty dramatic moments, but this is only achieved by dispensing with reality altogether - surely not what the film-makers should have had in mind. Which other scientific inaccuracies have you spotted in supposedly sound films? Share your finds below in the comments thread.
