Patrick Michaels, an environmental scientist working with the Libertarian Cato Institute, says the scientific basis for the new film The Day After Tomorrow is "physically impossible." The Cato Institute has published several studies and commentaries contending that global climate change is bad science. Michaels has written another brief article suggesting that scientists (at least those with whom he disagrees) exaggerate global warming and other threats in order to get funding for their research.
Despite the Cato Institutes ongoing protestations, most scientists who study climate agree that global climate change is a very real threat and to some extent irreversible. Those of us who hope The Day After Tomorrow will inspire viewers to take climate change seriously and explore the complex subject further, however, should note that the filmmakers compressed the time frame for possible abrupt climate change. Though carefully researched, the film is fiction and takes some degree of artistic license. The Pew Center for Global Climate Change has a good reference explaining the science behind the film.








