Day After Tomorrow.... A Few Thoughts

We watched Day After Tomorrow again yesterday. I'd forgotten that the global warming meeting at the beginning of the movie was in New Delhi, India -- where it was unseasonably cold and snowing a bit. Interesting seeing that part again now that there is unseasonably cold weather in India this year...

Of course the movie is very dramatic, with the mega worldwide storm thing happening and all. How likely is it for an ice age to hit in weeks? Also, are the super cold cells in the movie (looking like hurricanes but super cold and over land instead of over ocean) something that has ever happened in history?

I don't know much about how quickly the last ice age hit. And I think there were many years of things leading up to the final critical point. The real question is how near are we to that critical point? The balance of fresh water vs. salt water in the Atlantic is changing. And what about the Pacific? The Gulf Stream tends to be what scientists focus on, at least in America and Europe. Even in this movie, while they did mention Russia and Asia briefly (they actually did a scene in Tokyo near the beginning of the movie) and there were the tornadoes in L.A., there wasn't any discussion of freshwater effects on the Pacific. Maybe things are harder to figure out for that ocean because it's so much larger, and a different shape than the Atlantic.

I commented to L that the height of snow in parts of the movie would bury the farmhouse, and he replied that NYC being coastal they probably had it worse than places further inland. True enough, but I also remember a photo of my dad from when he was a kid. Standing outside a second-story window on snow that had drifted against one side of the house, in a non-coastal town in Maine. So, one doesn't have to be living during an ice age to have some of these concerns! But it's true enough that our area is somewhat protected against the worst of many storms, with the Berkshires catching a lot of it. Thank goodness!

Still, the weather in India and I think some neighboring areas this year does give one pause for thought.