News from iScience
Waterworld DVDs. Photo by HeyPaul.
There is a distinct possibility that the Interdisiplinary Science department at Leicester will be getting its own group weblog. It’s not certain as there may be issues with the Press Office and problems about branding etc. If all goes well then boffins of various disciplines will be cajoled into writing stuff. Anything which gets Jan’s work to a wider audience has to be a good thing. For example there’s his thoughts on Waterworld.
…Given that this is arguably the first blockbuster global warming movie, the science is quite as characterful as that in The Day after Tomorrow. While the latter plays fast and loose with any and all of Newton’s laws, this one cheerfully tramples over primary school geography. Melting icecaps to drown the whole earth, bar one remaining island? Well, the Greenland and Antarctica icecaps are big, but not that big. About 70 metres worth of sea level, all told and all melted, which will still leave quite enough land to be easily located and terrorised by the Dennis Hoppers of the future.
Even the low rolling countryside of the English Midlands won’t submerge wholly, but will become a wonderfully elaborate chain of archipelagos. Mine own home will reside smugly a good ten metres above the waves; a nook then to be shaded, I trust, by a small stand of palm trees. Just down the road, the offices and labs of the British Geological Survey will nestle in picturesque fashion by the seaside. Nottingham airport, true, will have to be converted to take seaplanes, while at Trent Bridge some slight changes to the rules of cricket might need to be carefully deliberated…
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