- Hi, I'm Bill Patzert.
I spent more than 50 years
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
studying climate change
and global warming.
Much of what the public really
knows about climate change
and global warming comes from Hollywood.
Today we're going to dissect a few films
and see where Hollywood
gets it right and wrong.
Day After Tomorrow.
Global warming has melted
the polar ice caps.
- We do not act soon, it is our children
and our grandchildren who
will have to pay the price.
- But they got the science wrong.
What we saw in New York
City, the oceans rise,
it's exceptionally photogenic.
But the size is totally unrealistic.
It's too immediate, global
warming gets you slowly.
This instantaneous switch
into a mini Ice Age
over a few days, the
time scale's all wrong.
We're not cooling.
We're warming.
The scientist played by Dennis Quaid
dramatically draws a line across
the center of the United States.
- Everyone south of that line.
- It's not the way it happens.
But there are a lot of
things I liked about it.
Couple of ironic things.
One of them is mass migration
out of the United States.
- [Man] And they are
wading across the river
illegally into Mexico.
- There will be mass migrations
as we look into the 21st century.
In particularly in the American southwest.
Now one of the things
they really got wrong
is one of the least
likely places in the world
to have devastating tornadoes
is southern California.
Day After Tomorrow, they
played for the camera,
not for the science.
Let's give it a C minus.
Our next film is 2012.
Massive solar eruption imacts
of the core of the earth.
Setting off a geologic
catastrophe in the crust,
essentially destroying civilization.
It's definitely a dud.
Global warming has almost no
impact on the earth's crust.
It's a surface manifestation.
These are two different animals.
- [Man] San Andreas fault is shifting.
- Here in California, one
of the big forces of nature
that hangs over all our heads here
is the San Andreas Fault.
It's moving, it's powerful,
and potentially very destructive.
But it's totally decoupled
from climate change.
On a popcorn scale, we're
gonna give it an A plus.
But on a science scale, it's a D minus.
Interstellar really
asks the core question.
As population explodes,
as we change our climate,
as we devastate our ecosystems,
what is the future of
mankind on planet earth?
And it's interesting how they use the past
as a metaphor for the future.
Expanding droughts.
- You didn't expect this dirt
that was giving you this food
to turn on you like that and destroy you.
- Starvation on a mass scale.
- We ran out of food.
The world needs farmers.
Good farmers.
- Nelson's torching his whole crop.
He's saying it's the
last harvest for okra.
Ever.
- The thing that really gets
you is not sea level rise,
it's the lack of water
and the lack of food
due to over-population.
- Six billion people.
Just try to imagine that.
And every last one of them
trying to have it all.
- How does the human race deal with that?
- And if we don't wanna
repeat of the excess
and wastefulness of the 20th century,
then we need to teach our
kids about this planet.
- We're not meant to save the world.
We're meant to leave it.
(inspirational instrumental music)
- There's not a planet in our solar system
that could sustain life.
- Or any nearby solar system.
Big question, great flick, an A plus.
Mad Max, although it
paints a grim picuture
of a post-apocalyptic future,
there's something very
contemporary about it.
- [Man] I am your redeemer!
It is by my hand you will rise
from the ashes of this world!
- The fundamental resource essentially
that sustains civilization,
which is water,
is being controlled by a
megalomaniac who's misogynistic,
totally lacking empathy for
the people that he rules.
There is something really
prophetic about Mad Max.
We see the rise that
dictators across the planet
and resources become
more and more limited,
most of the earth has
turned into a desert.
Now we're seeing that on
a smaller scale today.
- You'll not, my friends,
become addicted to water.
We will take hold of you and
you will resent its absence.
- I'm giving this movie
an A plus on many levels.
Myself, I'd go back and look
at this many many times.
I think the message from all these movies,
we have to be careful who we vote for,
we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels
and onto renewable energies.
This is the home planet.
There is no planet B.
(playful instrumental music)
