Introduction

In May 2004, the Hollywood movie The Day After Tomorrow went on worldwide release. Tens of millions of cinema goers in over a hundred countries saw the movie which, with gross takings of over $500 million, made a large return from its production costs of $125 million. The film depicts an abrupt and catastrophic transformation of the Earth's climate into a new Ice Age, with North America being in the eye of the cataclysm. It plays upon the scientific uncertainty surrounding a so-called ‘tipping point’ in the Earth system: the shut-down of the thermohaline circulation (which carries the warm waters of the Gulf Stream into high European latitudes) in the world's oceans. Set against a background of tidal surges, tornadoes, flooding and hurricanes, the human story in the film is about a climatologist who tries to figure out a way to save the world from these cataclysmic changes in climate, while simultaneously trying to rescue his young son stranded in New York, which has been inundated by a giant tsunami and then enveloped in a mega-ice storm.

Climate change is not a usual subject for a Hollywood movie. Although the film makers acknowledged their exaggeration and sensationalisation of the science, they nevertheless claimed that their portrayal of dramatic climate events could have a major influence on the behaviour of society. They suggested that it might motivate people to do something about climate change before it ‘became too late’.