Hollywood Global Warming: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
The Earth's climate is changing. The <s>Anthropogenic Global Warming</s> <s>Climate Change</s> Climate Disruption [[w:Scientific theory|theory]] argues that since the Industrial Revolution, greenhouse gas production (and other human industrial activity) has been increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and increasing the global average temperature with it<ref>The "speed" of this change has been on the order of 1 degree Celsius per century -- which sounds slow, but is more than 10 times the pre-industrial long-term average warming or cooling rate of half a degree C per millennium -- and it may remain so or become as much as 5 degrees C per century in the later 21st century depending on how human industry changes (or [[Head-in-The-Sand Management|doesn't change]], in the worse cases).</ref>. This theory is built on decades of research and collected data; however, controversy remains over who will be affected and how, as most of the negative consequences for humanity will take decades to manifest (e.g. sea level increase, ocean acidification), or interact with complex phenomena that happen already and are not evenly distributed around the world (e.g. a projected increase in intensity or frequency of hurricanes). Thornier still are questions of how to deal with it, and thorniest of all is the question of who will pay for mitigation efforts (or [[Head-in-The-Sand Management|the consequences of a ''lack'' of mitigation]]).
But this trope isn't about [[Real Life]].
'''Hollywood Global Warming''' [[Artistic License Physics|is different]]. In fiction, the effects of global warming are often drastically exaggerated for the purposes of creating immediate drama. Everything within a thousand miles of the tropics becomes an inhospitable desert, with places like Canada, Siberia and Scandinavia becoming the last refuges of humanity. Massive tornadoes, hurricanes and wildfires start striking all over the planet. Absurdly swift rises in the sea level rise are also fairly common, with fictional works frequently portraying a [[Giant Wall of Watery Doom]] flooding all the coastal cities on the planet at once. It's [[The End of the World as We Know It]].
{{noreallife|As mentioned above, real-world climate change takes <s>decades</s> years, not days, and thus doesn't qualify for this trope.}}
{{examples}}
▲== [[Anime&Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Transformers Super God Masterforce]]'', the main effect of the Decepticons' [[Kill Sat]] is to erode the ozone layer. A single shot quickly results in the polar ice caps melting and flooding at the base of the Himalayas. Which is an issue of [[Did Not Do the Research]], because ozone is a greenhouse gas, and destroying it would ''cool'' the earth.
** Although it would greatly increase the rate of sunburn and melanoma, as ozone blocks high energy ultra-violet light coming in from the sun.
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* ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]'' revolves around a sudden catastrophic global Ice Age precipitated by global warming. This concept is [[The Theme Park Version|very loosely based]] on a theory that global warming will disrupt certain mid-Atlantic ocean currents, resulting in a 20-30 degree Fahrenheit temperature drop across much of Europe and North America.
** Note that the theory doesn't predict that it'll happen in only 2 days, nor that it will form super-cooled columns capable of freezing the fuel(!) in a running(!!) helicopter engine.
* The movie of ''[[
* The backstory of ''[[
* In ''[[Soylent Green]]'', the greenhouse effect has led to year-round temperatures in the 90s and 100s, so crops cannot grow and people can only be fed by the Soylent Corporation's processed products, including their [[I'm a Humanitarian|latest]] [[Future Food Is Artificial|innovative]] [[It Was His Sled|product]].
* [[Ice Age|''Ice Age: The Meltdown'']]. Justified, as it takes place at the end of the last ice age, when the Earth's climate was starting to warm.
* The end of the ''Rite of Spring'' segment of ''[[
* The 2017 film ''[[Geostorm]]'' takes place over 2019-2022, and features a series of satellites that are created to control Earth's climate (and neutralize natural disasters along the way), but naturally things go horribly wrong {{spoiler|when they are weaponized to ''de''-stabilize the situation.}}
* This is an [[Unbuilt Trope]] in ''[[The Naked Gun|Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear]]'' of all places, where the plot revolves around evil fossil-fuel company executives trying to replace the President's science advisor - a known environmentalist - with a double who's more in line with their way of thinking.
== [[Literature]] ==
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* Quite well handled in the ''Sands of Sarasvati''. It involves the icecaps of Greenland partially melting into unknown caves beneath the island, causing the entire ice mass to slide on a bed of molten water into the sea, causing a megatsunami that threatens the nuclear powerplants built on the coastlines. It's also written by an actual environmental scientist, and aside from the aforementioned caves, is based on sound science. It helps that it's set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] to escalate the force of global warming, as well.
* [[Philip Pullman]]'s ''[[His Dark Materials|The Amber Spyglass]]'', in which the portal between the worlds created an increase of temperatures that made things harder for the native sentient polar bears. {{spoiler|They are later driven to the Himalayas, and things aren't any better there}}
* Lois Bujold's [[Vorkosigan Saga]] is set far enough into the future that sea levels have already risen; London is protected by a system of barrier walls.
* This is a major background element and plot point of Paolo Bacigalupi's biopunk novel [[The Windup Girl]]. The novel takes place in 23rd century Bangkok, which is actually below sea-level after Global Warming has taken it's toll and only survives thanks to enormous sea-walls and powerful pumps that work throughout the monsoon season. This becomes a plot point when the foreign merchant Carlyle has the only replacement parts for about half the pumps available in his warehouse outside Thailand, which he uses as political leverage. {{spoiler|In the end, it doesn't last and Kanya lets the city drown to save the people of Thailand from foreign influences such as Carlyle.}}
* ''Carbon Diaries 2015'' and its sequel ''Carbon Diaries 2017'' by Saci Lloyd takes place in Great Britain after global warming has caused climate change, and as a result, people are rationed the amount of carbon they can use.
* [[Stephen Baxter]] puts an interesting twist on this in his [[Northland Trilogy]] where global warming and sea level rise causes masses of problems for the stone age tribes that lived in what was to become the North Sea 10000 years ago. This is of course the warming to the current global temperature and sea levels.
* This is the backstory of the world of [[
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* Subverted on ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'', in an episode where the Earth was heating up due to having shifted closer to the sun. (And apparently had stopped rotating, as there was no more night in the city where the characters lived.) A subversion, because the [[Karmic Twist Ending]] is {{spoiler|that it's [[All Just a Dream]] by a young woman whose Earth is ''freezing'' rather than roasting}}.
* The wildlife [[Speculative Documentary]] ''The Future Is Wild'' had a waterworld stage as one of Earth's natural climatological shifts of the millions of years that the show covers. The Global Ocean, like all the other periods, had its own set of weird critters living in it.
* In an episode of ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'', Earl visits a former stoner he robbed (who now lives in a hippie commune), and learns about
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
* This trope is one of the prime features of the Earth sim game ''[[Fate of the World]]''.▼
* In keeping with its [[Cyberpunk]] setting, ''Jump Raven'' takes place in a USA that's been sold off to the highest bidders, wracked by global warming and [[Wretched Hive|militias of street thugs]]. You spend the game in a future New York where it's [[The Night That Never Ends|always night]] and enormous walls have been placed to keep back the ocean.▼
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Sid
** The Planetary Council can also decide to melt the polar ice caps, causing global warming ''on purpose'' (which isn't as nonsensical as you might think, they are [[Terraforming]] Planet after all). You can arrange this in order to flood your rival's coastal cities.▼
* In ''[[Brink]],'' global warming has caused the seas to rise, covering most of the Earth.▼
* In the [[PS 1]] game ''Submarine Commander'', the Earth experienced global warming so fast that the crew of the titular submarine doesn't realize it, and when they surface, it's all sea. The ending is even more absurd: {{spoiler|the inverse, global ''cooling'', happens just as fast, via '''satellite'''. It's so fast that after the final battle, your submarine that took catastrophic damage and was sinking, is rescued by water levels receding so fast that the submarine is stranded on top of high-rise buildings.}}▼
* This is one of the possible consequences of letting your ecosystem become unbalanced in ''[[Spore]]''. You can cause it yourself by running around enemy planets with a heat ray, causing settlements there to undergo [[Critical Existence Failure]].▼
** Curiously, if you reverse the process fast enough after they capitulate, you can preserve the T3 rating of the planet with all the plants and animal.▼
* Global warming is a part of the dystopic backstory of ''[[Frontlines: Fuel of War]]'', with a "super-hurricane" hitting Alaska in 2021.▼
* The [[
* Happens in ''[[
* ''[[
== [[Web Original]] ==
* [[The Onion]] has an article on the melting ice exposing [https://web.archive.org/web/20100314214920/http://www.theonion.com/content/news/melting_ice_caps_expose_hundreds secret arctic villain lairs].
** To some extent, [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/mysterious-ice-buried-cold-war-military-base-may-be-unearthed-climate-change this may actually happen in real life], in the neighborhood of 150-200 years from now. Various Western militaries did build outposts in the ice of Greenland during the [[Cold War]], and they will be exposed when the ice above them melts.
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has run a couple articles listing possible ways that global warming could end the world fairly shortly: [http://www.cracked.com/article_18387_5-ways-world-could-end-youd-never-see-coming.html 5 Ways The World Could End (You'd Never See Coming)] and [http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/4-ways-global-warming-creating-worldwide-horror-movie/ 4 Ways Global Warming Is Creating a Worldwide Horror Movie]. [[Truth in Television]], [[Rule of Funny]], or nonprofessional research tactics? Only the writers know.
* [[Legend of Zelda the Abridged Series|Majora's Mask Abridged]] has a throwaway joke in one episode blaming [[The Wind Waker|flooded Hyrule]] on global warming.
* MRC has published ''[http://www.mrc.org/special-reports/fire-and-ice-0 Fire and Ice]'' essay by Dan Gainor, with a timeline of media alarmism (both warming and cooling) from 1895 on, and juiciest quotes from each period. [[Fleeting Demographic Rule]]?..
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[
* ''[[Chainsawsuit]]'', 13 Feb 2009: [http://chainsawsuit.com/2009/02/13/strip-161/ tries to] ''[[Up to Eleven|outdo]]'' this.
* ''Calamities of Nature'', 11 Jan 2010: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130804021611/http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=322 discussing] the ways of thinking about this.
* ''Luke Surl'', 24 Mar 2010: comics add <s>Heat</s> Fund Raising [http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/1275 Thermometer].
* A ''[[
* ''Science and Ink'' comments on Carbon Dioxide Panic [https://web.archive.org/web/20160322111302/http://www.lab-initio.com/screen_res/nz048.jpg here].
== [[Western Animation]] ==
*
* Parodied on ''[[The Simpsons]]''; Lisa examines a museum diorama of Manhattan which promises to show what the effects of global warming will be "over the next three years"; the city is entirely submerged, with tiny plastic bodies floating around. In an attempt to reassure her, Marge says "Three years is a ''long'' time."
** In another episode the kids go on a field trip to Springfield Glacier, which is reduced to a pathetic hunk of ice floating in a lake. Lisa spends the whole trip ranting about global warming, with the park ranger flatly denying it because "the government's stance on global warming is that it does not exist".
* The ''[[Futurama]]'' episode "Crimes of the Hot" revolves around global warming. A educational film shown at the beginning shows that the solution was to put ice cubes from Halley's Comet (the [[Commonplace Rare|only source of ice]] that doesn't have bugs in them) into the ocean. But when Halley's runs out of ice, a conference is called, where Prof. Farnsworth reveals that the cause of global warming is pollution from robots. So all the robots are lured to the Galapagos islands, where they are to be destroyed. Farnsworth saves the robots and prevents global warming at the same time by {{spoiler|having all the robots vent upward at once, thus moving the Earth further away from the sun}} and solving the problem once and for all.
{{quote|
'''ONCE AND FOR ALL!''' }}
** The "educational film" is actually used in ''[[An Inconvenient Truth]]''. It helps that Gore's daughter is one of Futurama's writers.
** In the earlier episode "Xmas Story", Fry comments that mountain snow is beautiful and glad global warming never happened. Leela responded it did , but nuclear winter canceled it out.
* ''[[South Park]]'' has quite a few [[Anvilicious]] episodes attacking Global Warming in general, and ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]'' in particular. In the episode, "The Goobacks", the unemployed rednecks were talking about how to make sure the future never happens so that the people from the future won't take their jobs. One guy suggested using Global Warming to cause an Ice Age. That idea was shot down since it was idiotic. In the episode "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow", Stan and Cartman destroyed a beaver dam and the resulting flood was blamed on global warming.
* Global Warming was 'solved' by the villain Killface in Frisky Dingo. While he attempted to destroy the earth with a rocket that would drive it into the sun, the rocket instead moved the earth 1 foot away from the sun, effectively undoing global warming permanently. He parlayed this into a failed Presidential run, his slogan being 'I solved Global Warming! Now you can have your factories, and your
* [[Family Guy|It's a snow job/by Obama/and his crew]]
▲== [[Video Games]] ==
▲* This trope is one of the prime features of the Earth sim game ''[[Fate of the World]]''.
▲* In keeping with its [[Cyberpunk]] setting, ''Jump Raven'' takes place in a USA that's been sold off to the highest bidders, wracked by global warming and [[Wretched Hive|militias of street thugs]]. You spend the game in a future New York where it's [[The Night That Never Ends|always night]] and enormous walls have been placed to keep back the ocean.
▲* In ''[[Civilization (Video Game)|Civilization]] IV'', Global Warming is one of the disasters that can strike your larger cities in the late game. The effects of "global warming" in game are bizarre, strike locally and aren't restricted to coastal towns or other locales most likely to be affected by actual global temperature increase. Just imagine a news story about buildings being DESTROYED in downtown ''Denver'' by GLOBAL WARMING and you'll see how strange this gets. The older games treated it more severely, however, with a global meter that tracked pollution output and would do nasty things like raise sea levels, destroying any cities or units on coastal plots, although some of the weird effects might be explained by exceptionally strong storms and such.
▲* In ''[[Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri]]'', runaway pollution can make terrain change, earth sink, and if you don't have a Pressure Dome, the rising water can destroy cities (and units [[Video Game Time|who apparently couldn't escape from the slowly raising water]]). But fear not, because with a Pressure Dome the city becomes a floating city, plus your formers can raise the land, and if you get the Planetary Council to agree, you can launch a solar shade to cool the planet.
▲** The Planetary Council can also decide to melt the polar ice caps, causing global warming ''on purpose'' (which isn't as nonsensical as you might think, they are [[Terraforming]] Planet after all). You can arrange this in order to flood your rival's coastal cities.
▲* In ''[[Brink]],'' global warming has caused the seas to rise, covering most of the Earth.
▲* In the [[PS 1]] game ''Submarine Commander'', the Earth experienced global warming so fast that the crew of the titular submarine doesn't realize it, and when they surface, it's all sea. The ending is even more absurd: {{spoiler|the inverse, global ''cooling'', happens just as fast, via '''satellite'''. It's so fast that after the final battle, your submarine that took catastrophic damage and was sinking, is rescued by water levels receding so fast that the submarine is stranded on top of high-rise buildings.}}
▲* This is one of the possible consequences of letting your ecosystem become unbalanced in ''[[Spore]]''. You can cause it yourself by running around enemy planets with a heat ray, causing settlements there to undergo [[Critical Existence Failure]].
▲** Curiously, if you reverse the process fast enough after they capitulate, you can preserve the T3 rating of the planet with all the plants and animal.
▲* Global warming is a part of the dystopic backstory of ''[[Frontlines Fuel of War]]'', with a "super-hurricane" hitting Alaska in 2021.
▲* The [[Play Station 2]] flightsim ''Lethal Skies'' is set in an [[Ocean Punk]] type setting after melting glaciers have flooded most of the planet.
▲* Happens in ''[[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire (Video Game)|Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire]],'' when the villains' attempt to control weather-based legendaries lead to massive climate changes threatening to wipe out humanity. Since this set of games (and the ''Pokémon'' franchise as a whole) does appear to have subtle environmental messages in place, it may well have been intentional.
▲* ''[[Battle Engine Aquila (Video Game)|Battle Engine Aquila]]'' is based during a war over the 13 remaining islands after the sea level rises.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Apocalyptic Index]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:
[[Category:No Real Life Examples, Please]]
[[Category:Hollywood Style]]
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