Havenīt seen the movie yet, but CNN has a section where it dissects the rights and the wrongs of the apocaliptic vision shown in it.
In some they are right, in others itīs just wishfull thinking.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/27/day.tomorrow/index.html
Click on the "Gallery-The day after:Could it happen?" for it.
In the movie, it is all condensed into just a few weeks, but obviously it would take way longer for it to happen.
If the planet continues to warm up, not only will the ice caps melt, it will also cause the water temperature to rise, even if just a couple of degrees. And that rise in temperature will cause all the methane trapped beneath the ocean floor to loosen and rise to the surface and then to the atmosphere. This methane hydrate is kept in stasis by the huge pressure and low temperature on the ocean bottom, turning it into the solid form. But scientists have already noticed that in some places that methane is already escaping the ocean floor, due to temperature change, turning the solid methane back into its gaseous form. And as methane is a very powerfull greenhouse gas, it will grow into a vicious cycle. The more methane released, the hotter it gets, and thus even more gas gets released. Scientists say the switch has been pulled, and that thereīs no turning back.
http://www.geology.iastate.edu/gccourse/ocean/methane.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/meth27.shtml
Assuming all that methane is released, the planet might experience something in the likes of a natural nuclear winter.Eventually, after all sorts of gas get released into the atmosphere, it will create a barrier for sun light to penetrate, causing the planet to suffer extensive cooling, an ice age even.
This ice age would last for as long as it would take for all those gases to get reabsorbed and recycled, either on the ice caps, or on the ocean (if we still have one).
Thereīs even a theory wich states thatīs what happened in Mars.
So yes, itīs something worth getting worried about. Of course all this will take a long time, and with a little luck we will have found a way to colonize other planets, or if we are really really lucky we find a way to reverse the process...
But for the process to be reverted, people have to start giving a fuck about it, and somehow that just isnīt happening. Itīs easier to keep sucking the planet dry of its fossil fuels and dump all the byproducts into the atmosphere and the oceans.
The thing is, if there was some quick tragic change in climate, people would get scared and start doing something! But because the climatic changes are constant but slow, people will just get acostumed to them. They will say " i saw hurricanes and floods all my life, itīs a natural thing", yet they forget that our great grandfathers never saw such things before. Too slow to notice, but too fast for confort!
I think people will only start moving their asses when blizzards start hitting L.A., and hurricanes start hitting Europe...
:rolleyes: