Also, I just heard a review of The Day After Tomorrow and that there’s a scene in which Americans are fleeing to Mexico to avoid the “angry weather” and the influx of people becomes so great that Mexico closes their border. Apparently it got a pretty hearty laugh from the audience in L.A.

If you were to have a conversation with me about the movie, I would gladly and calmly tell you where it was wrong and where it was right. From everything I’ve seen most of it is pretty plausible. The only things that are outright science fiction would be the flash freezing and the fact that it happend all in a week (the most drastic simulations I’ve seen give a floor of about 50 years).

Of course enviornmental zealots will start talking about how we need solar power and electic cars and fuel cells and hybrids. Of course, just manufactering a new car causes as much pollution as driving a regular for 8-12 years, so ditching regular cars for hybrids and electric cars is really not a good idea. Not to mention that the lead acid batteries in those vehicles are beyond toxic, and they wear out. And then there are solar panels which also cause tons of enviornmental impact to make and don’t even become energy positive until they’ve been in use for 15 years.

I believe the reason most enviornmentalists are so wacky is that they’re more anit-corporate then they are pro-enviornment. The two best solutions to our energy and pollution crisis are biodiesel and nuclear fission power plants. We have the technology to start implementing these today and it would solve 90% of our problems. The downside is that people like exxon and shell would still be in charge of the biodiesel (they are the only ones who have the infastructure to do something like that) and you need big business and the government to build nuclear power. Of course, that’s never the excuses you hear. It’s always biodiesel is still polluting (which is true, although the net CO2 emission is zero, there is still a little NO2) and nuclear reactors have the radioactive waste problem. Of course neither of the problems they site are actually really bad, and they basically the same problems we have now only orders of magnitude smaller.

Isaac Asimov didn’t actually warn against Robots - His stories enthusiastically supported human intellect and the idea that machines and especially scientific progress is good for Mankind.

The book I, Robot isn’t about robots destroying mankind for fascist reasons, it’s a series of short stories which contain interesting problems all solved intellectually. That movie will suck ass.

some of the best science-fiction stories have their roots in real scientific data, but that doesn’t mean that we should start banning the development of robots because of what Isaac Azimov has warned.

i think it’s a bad idea for environmentalists to use The Day After Tommorroww to promote their causes. the people on the opposite side of the issue already argue that global Warming is Science Fiction- so why should you hold up a sci-fi movie as an example of why we should be worried about it? a really bad idea.

maybe Moveon and Al Gore should spend more time trying to get Farrenheit 911 released in the US.