- 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)