I had a friend my age who was one of those techno-geek-loners (which I also qualify for, admittedly). Today, the younger techno-geek-loners generally do OK as software engineers. Unfortunately, the computer revolution hadn’t really begun yet back when my erstwhile friend was in college, so Rick settled for chemical engineering. In those days, computers were big, crude uncool things (such as the IBM 360 and other monsters made by Burroughs and Sperry-Rand) that were only used for accounting, payroll and inventory functions. So it wasn’t surprising that computers didn’t capture Rick’s imagination back when he was making career choices.

Rick eventually moved to Ohio, where he eventually bought a house. He lived there by himself (and probably still does). The place was rather — eh, shall we say sparsely furnished. Interior decoration and meticulous housekeeping were not exactly Rick’s forte. Rick was a good guy with a witty and intelligent air about him, but deep down there was a cloud of Sarte-like anomie hanging over his life.

I visited Rick in Ohio a couple of times before we lost touch (mainly my fault — I was entering my own “eremitic” phase). On a disinspiring Saturday afternoon while Rick and I were trying to think of something to do, I remember him making a comment about feeling down. Rick’s environment would send most people tumbling into clinical depression, but good old Rick was a hearty strain — a pack of cigarettes and couple of beers was all he needed for mental health. Well, actually more than a couple …

Anyway, I asked Rick what was wrong, and he motioned his cigarette toward the TV, where some nondescript mid-afternoon movie was on. He told me that the movie channel had an all-week Dennis Quaid festival underway. I had been reading the paper or something and generally ignoring the tube, but his comment made me pay attention to the cinematic delight in question. After a half hour or so, I started feeling blue too. There was indeed something depressing about watching Dennis Quiad in some cheesy melodrama on a cloudy mid-afternoon. I finally thought of some museum or tourist trap that I wanted to see, and we got out into the light where our moods improved a little. Rick lived outside of Akron in flatland Ohio, so they didn’t improve all that much; the overall surroundings were rather “Quaidian” in themselves.

So, when I read about Quaid’s new movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”, I was reminded of that afternoon with Rick. Yet another pepper-upper by Dennis Quiad. What’s interesting about Day After Tomorrow is that it has gained a cache of respectability by dealing with the all-too-serious environmental threat caused by global warming. As the tornadoes gather and the snow falls, Quaid is finally having his moment in the sun.

The scenario presented in the movie unfolds way too fast, in keeping with Hollywood’s need to pander to America’s 30-second attention span. However, respectable scientists have said that natural temperature trends now under way, exacerbated by industrial atmospheric emissions, could conceivably change ocean currents in a way that triggers a new ice age. (Yes, it seems strange that global warming could start an ice age; but the warming trend could break our ecosystem’s current equilibrium, and when equilibriums are broken, anything can happen). The glaciers wouldn’t arrive all at once, as in the movie; it might take 20 or 30 years before things get noticeably colder. But even 30 years would not be enough time for the human race to adapt. There would eventually be significant drops in agricultural production and mass migrations away from frozen zones and flooded coastlines, which would probably lead to resource wars. Things would get pretty nasty; the world could probably not support 6 billion people any longer. It would certainly endanger the comfortable and generally civilized style of life that about a half-billion Westerners (like myself) have become accustomed to.

It’s hard to believe that Mother Nature would betray us like that. But scientific studies indicate that the history of human civilization has occupied a temporary niche of relatively nice weather. The world climate seems to flip between warm and cold periods, maybe every 20,000 years or so. We’re not necessarily due for a change, but all the carbon dioxide and particulates and other stuff that we’ve thrown up into the atmosphere over the past 100 years or so may be pushing the system into a zone of instability and “phase shift”. The party of human prosperity is still going on, but it may be later than we think.

I thought it was quite appropriate for that notion to be popularized by a Dennis Quiad movie. As to Rick, well I recall that he was a pretty good cross-country skier and a bit of a survivalist (I think he had a gun somewhere in his house). And he just doesn’t get depressed too easily, despite his vulnerability to Quiad’s acting. Rick will probably do much better than I will if the Gulf Stream shut-down occurs within our lifetimes.