Urgent: HQ Direction," began a message e-mailed on April 1 to dozens of scientists and officials at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
It was not an alert about an incoming asteroid, a problem with the space station or a solar storm. It was a warning about a movie.
In "The Day After Tomorrow," a $125 million disaster film set to open on May 28, global warming from accumulating smokestack and tailpipe gases disrupts warm ocean currents and sets off an instant ice age.
Few climate experts think such a prospect is likely, especially in the near future. But the prospect that moviegoers will be alarmed enough to blame the Bush administration for inattention to climate change has stirred alarm at the space agency, scientists there say.
"No one from NASA is to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with" the film, said the April 1 message, which was sent by Goddard's top press officer. "Any news media wanting to discuss science fiction vs. science fact about climate change will need to seek comment from individuals or organizations not associated with NASA."
Copies of the message, and the one from NASA headquarters to which it referred, were provided to The New York Times by a senior NASA scientist who said he resented attempts to muzzle climate researchers.
Late last week, however, NASA appeared to relax its stand on discussing the movie. Though she did not disavow the e-mail, Gretchen Cook-Anderson, a spokeswoman at NASA headquarters, said on Thursday that the agency would make scientists available to discuss issues raised by the film.
"We've decided not to proactively speak out on anything related to the movie," she said. "But when asked, we can certainly provide some of our experts to answer questions about the validity of the science."
Several days ago, NASA scientists produced a list of questions and answers about abrupt climate change, but the information has not yet been approved for public release.
"The Day After Tomorrow," from 20th Century Fox, is directed by Roland Emmerich, whose "Independence Day" in 1996 depicted an alien invasion of earth and included such memorable special effects as the White House exploding in flames. The new movie's script contains a host of politically uncomfortable situations: the president's motorcade is flash frozen; the vice president, who scoffs at warnings even as chaos erupts, resembles Dick Cheney; the humbled United States has to plead with Mexico to allow masses of American refugees fleeing the ice to cross the border.
The initial efforts by NASA headquarters to limit comments angered some government researchers.
"It's just another attempt to play down anything that might lead to the conclusion that something must be done" about global warming, one federal climate scientist said. He, like half a dozen government employees interviewed on this subject, said he could speak only on condition of anonymity because of standing orders not to talk to the news media.
Along with its direct criticisms of a Bush-like administration, the movie also could draw attention to a proposed Bush budget cut.
The lead character, played by Dennis Quaid, is a paleoclimatologist, an investigator of past climate shifts, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. President Bush has proposed sharp cuts to the agency's paleoclimatology program, which began under the first Bush administration.
On Friday, NOAA officials said they saw the movie mainly as an opportunity, not a problem.
"Any time anybody can focus on this little agency that nobody ever pays attention to and talk about what we do, that's a good thing," said Jordan St. John, the agency's director of public affairs.
Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which handles policy on environmental issues, said she was "not aware of any White House discussion about this movie with anyone — none at all."
Some leaders of nonprofit environmental groups are also distressed about the movie, though for different reasons. In conference calls and e-mail exchanges, they have said it so overstates the issue — turning a decades-long or century-long threat into one that explodes over five days — that it might cause people to simply laugh off the real questions.
The film's creators said they were puzzled by the concerns of environmentalists. "If they can get their act together, all they need to be saying is the drama of this movie is fictional but the fact is that global warming is real," said Mark Gordon, the producer of the movie.
If environmentalists distance themselves from the movie, they will be squandering a gift, said Dr. Daniel B. Botkin, an emeritus professor of ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"I think it is a good educational opportunity, and that we should treat a disaster movie as entertainment and not get upset that it is a distortion," Dr. Botkin said. "But $125 million on global warming must be a record for publicizing the issue."
UPDATE:
Global Freezing? Do Tell, NASA Says
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: May 4, 2004
NASA has clarified its stance on whether its scientists can publicly discuss the coming disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow," saying that e-mail messages telling employees not to discuss the movie were not an effort to muzzle them.
The movie, which opens May 28, depicts a world ravaged by an instant ice age touched off when global warming disrupts warm currents in the Atlantic Ocean.
The e-mail messages were sent because the filmmakers and NASA never formally agreed to cooperate, Glenn Mahone, the assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, told NASA employees last week.
They "should not be interpreted as an attempt to keep scientists from speaking out on the issue of climate change," he said, adding, "We encourage our researchers to openly answer all appropriate questions regarding the science explored in the movie." (He made the same point in a letter to the editor in The New York Times on Saturday.)
Some government scientists had said the messages were part of an effort by officials to limit discussions of global warming in light of President Bush's call for more research before emissions of heat-trapping gases are curbed.
The initial efforts by NASA headquarters to limit comments angered some government researchers.
"It's just another attempt to play down anything that might lead to the conclusion that something must be done" about global warming, one federal climate scientist said. He, like half a dozen government employees interviewed on this subject, said he could speak only on condition of anonymity because of standing orders not to talk to the news media.
Wrong. It's NASA refusing to react to Chicken Little who has no evidence to support his claim. The concept of global weather changes as a result of Man's activities - and hence the subject matter of the film - is to this day speculation. There is no direct evidence that greenhouse effects are in fact the exclusive result of human waste, that periodic global warming & cooling isn't a natural planetary cycle, that the hole in the Ozone Layer is going to kill us all and is the resule of artificial aerosol's and Chloroflourocarbons - speculation, speculation, speculation.
So what DO we know? Well we know the planet's climate is changing slowly, but surely on a global scale.
What causes it? Unknown, but most recent science seems to point to a large-scale planetary process referred to as the Carbon Cycle which is so long-lived that we don't yet understand exactly how it works and how far-reaching the effects are. Biological organisms seem to have an effect on it as do Ocean Currents and seasonal changes with the planet's orbit. Changes occur over centuries and millenia - so in only a couple hundred years' worth of "hard science" it shouldn't be too hard to understand why we don't yet fully comprehend the entire situation - of course any room for speculation leaves the door wide open for doomsdayer's to point and shout, "see! there it is! I TOLD you so!" The fact of the matter is that we're still trying to understand it. For every jerk who jumps up and down about how our automobiles are destroying life on earth is a rational scientist who will tell you actually it has more to do with the volume of bovine flatulence in Germany. It is recognized that natural biological processes such as natural gas waste products and even exhaust gasses from normal respiraiton of the entire animal kingdom indeed has quite an effect on the contents of our atmosphere and that this indeed plays a role in the Carbon Cycle.
So more research is needed before one can conclude exactly what percentage of change is attributable to cigarette smokers, what to cow farts, and what to deforestation, but I can tell you a couple things right now:
1) Automotive pollution is a MINOR contribution to poor air wuality by comparrison to industrial air pollution, especially power plants.
2) Massive, unregulated deforestation of South America's rain forests is a MAJOR problem as it is clear-cutting one of the planet's biggest air filters (aside from Oceania which cover's 70% of the planet's surface, but which is not as efficient at processing air because air passes amongst the trees, but only across the surface of the ocean.
So even if we all started riding bicycles tomorrow as cars are banned on a planetary scale, the problem would not be fixed because the MAJOR contributors to the problem remain unaddressed. Furthermore if we were to all take to electric vehicles and just outlaw internal combustion vehicles the problem would be compounded WORSE because of all the added electric generation required to battery charge cars - the higher workload power plants would be putting out more pollution than the equivalent gas-powered vehicles would have been if left in place.
There are ideas for renewable energy sources, including solar power, but there's not yet an actual workable solution to perform a major infrastructure change in this country, let alone the world. It will have to take small steps to be able to gain footing and that's exactly where that industry is going right now. Large bounds are not possible because of Capitalism: the idea that everything costs money and someone has to pay for it because the government certainly isn't going to foot the bill. The costs associated with massive infrastructure overhaul are astronomical. There is no one commercial venture that could handle it. There is no one government body that could handle it. There is no one with the balls to actually force the change down our throats with cost as no object.
Deforestation needs to be brought under control. There have been many advances in the construction industries of the U.S. and Europe over the past few decades that decreases the use of lumber as a standard construction medium for residential and commercial properties - but implementation has not been wide spread enough to impact the lumber industry. New homes are still being built primarily of wood because it costs less than alternative construction materials. One of three things must happen to reverse this trend:
1) Scarcity of lumber that will drive the cost up higher than that of alternative construction materials
2) Some change in the alternative construction materials industry that will enable them to undersell lumber - nothing short of a miracle at this point.
3) The goverment intervenes by defining a new construction code that requires the reduction of the use of lumber.
If #1 happens we're up **** creek. If #2 happens, well then miracles do happen - but don't hold your breath. #3 would be possible, but would again require that we have that figurehead with the balls to see it through because it's going to piss off a lot of people by increasing costs associated with construction, probably increasing the prices of newly constructed real estate which would have a direct impact on cost of living on a national scale. Even so - it is a viable option to let them be pissed and increase costs for the sake of the planet.
But who's willing to stick their neck out for the sake of the planet? And if this country ever does, who's going to force our will upon the lesser developed nations that rely on primitive industries as part of their basic (and feeble) economies by requiring them to adhere to our more technologically advanced construction code.. "for the sake of the planet." -- For all most people really care, it's just someone else's problem to deal with.
That is an excellent analysis. NASA has some pretty smart people… but they lack certain things. If they pulled that broom out of their ass then they would realize that it is just a movie. Why make a big issue about it? They should stop worrying about a movie and deal with bigger issues that really do harm our planet and not some movie with a fictional plot.
05-06-2004 02:50 AM
