Saturday, June 05, 2004
Crying "Second Wolf!"
Every year the big summer blockbusters come out, and 2004 is no exception. This year, the blockbusters include Troy, a retelling of the heroic, er, horrific war between Greece and Troy that was the subject of Homer's Iliad, and the one which could be the biggest blockbuster of them all, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. But the one that is talked about the most right now is "The Day After Tomorrow".
This film is a disaster flick, about what could happen if the changes that humankind is putting to the planet succeed in significantly alter Earth's climate. Scientists have been talking to us about this for years. Humankind's burning of fossil fuels is spewing carbon dioxide into the air. This carbon dioxide absorbs the Sun's heat, but does not release it again to space, causing the Earth to heat up. The record hottest years on record have been in the 21st century and in the 1990s, for instance. If the ice in the Earth melts, for instance, coastal cities worldwide will flood.
The movie shows this, showing a Statue of Liberty surrounded by water. It also shows an F5 tornado in Los Angeles, superfreezes and a "superstorm" that causes an ice age, huge earthquakes and the like. There is a tremendous amount of hype in the movie, so much that people may not get the message on global warming. It is fun to watch, maybe, but there is not much truth in it.
Furthermore, climate change apparently is not the biggest challenge confronting humanity. I conceive of many threats to humanity, such as the coming oil shortage, global warming, terrorism, possible nuclear war, the extinction of species, water shortages and so forth. I visualize this as a series of wolves threatening humanity. The move "Day after Tomorrow" cries "Wolf", and sure enough, there is such a wolf out there threatening us, but it is not the front wolf. The front wolf, the biggest imminent threat, is the running out of cheap oil, which threatens mass starvation and massive power outages throughout the planet. But yet they are crying "wolf", because they are crying "Second Wolf!" In fact, according to some experts, this second wolf will never be a substantial threat to us. I don't think they should have produced the film. I think a film should have come out this year on oil depletion, instead. Please don't cry "Second Wolf!". Thank You.
This film is a disaster flick, about what could happen if the changes that humankind is putting to the planet succeed in significantly alter Earth's climate. Scientists have been talking to us about this for years. Humankind's burning of fossil fuels is spewing carbon dioxide into the air. This carbon dioxide absorbs the Sun's heat, but does not release it again to space, causing the Earth to heat up. The record hottest years on record have been in the 21st century and in the 1990s, for instance. If the ice in the Earth melts, for instance, coastal cities worldwide will flood.
The movie shows this, showing a Statue of Liberty surrounded by water. It also shows an F5 tornado in Los Angeles, superfreezes and a "superstorm" that causes an ice age, huge earthquakes and the like. There is a tremendous amount of hype in the movie, so much that people may not get the message on global warming. It is fun to watch, maybe, but there is not much truth in it.
Furthermore, climate change apparently is not the biggest challenge confronting humanity. I conceive of many threats to humanity, such as the coming oil shortage, global warming, terrorism, possible nuclear war, the extinction of species, water shortages and so forth. I visualize this as a series of wolves threatening humanity. The move "Day after Tomorrow" cries "Wolf", and sure enough, there is such a wolf out there threatening us, but it is not the front wolf. The front wolf, the biggest imminent threat, is the running out of cheap oil, which threatens mass starvation and massive power outages throughout the planet. But yet they are crying "wolf", because they are crying "Second Wolf!" In fact, according to some experts, this second wolf will never be a substantial threat to us. I don't think they should have produced the film. I think a film should have come out this year on oil depletion, instead. Please don't cry "Second Wolf!". Thank You.
