I was supposed to attend an advance screening of "The Day After Tomorrow" with Granger Morgan, who graduated from Harvard with a physics degree, is a world-class expert in climate change and now heads the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

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It could have been an intellectually stimulating first date for me. But he stood me up.

Despite the opportunity to witness what Hollywood hopes will be a summer blockbuster with a story line that has global warming begetting swift and catastrophic climate change and possibly the end of the world as we know it, Morgan bagged me to attend the eighth annual international conference of the Center for Integrated Study of Human Dimensions of Global Change at CMU.

Yeah, I know, but "The Day After Tomorrow" isn't such a great title, either. And while the movie does have Dennis Quaid and Sela Ward, the science is much, much better at the conference, where the climate in India, regional African parks and salmon aquaculture were on the agenda.

But merely because Morgan didn't get a chance to pre-screen the science-fiction fable that's created as big a buzz in environmental circles as Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" did among Christian evangelicals doesn't mean a guy that smart wouldn't have an opinion or three about it.

"I've been reading a lot about the movie in the popular press and gather [that] it's based in part on what happens when the thermal ocean conveyor shuts down," Morgan said.

Right about there he's losing most of us. But he stopped to explain that the ocean movement he's talking about occurs because very cold, very salty water sinks in the North Atlantic, which prompts warmer water to move northward on the ocean's surface and allows folks in Great Britain and Norway to experience summer without coats and scarves.

"The reason for the different climates in Britain and Labrador, which are at about the same latitude, is this ocean circulation pattern," Morgan said. "Paleo records make clear that circulation has slowed or shut down before. When that happens the climate gets colder.

"The best estimates of oceanographers is that we're 50 to 100 years from stressing the climate system to a degree that might cause that."

But how does the movie get from global warming -- a term that Morgan doesn't use, by the way -- to skyscraper-sized Popsicles in New York City?

The movie begins on the Larson B Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where a small group of climate scientists are doing some experimental drilling when a chunk of the shelf the size of Rhode Island breaks off. The breakup of the ice shelf actually happened several years ago, but the event also signals the movie's break with reality.

In short order those moderating ocean currents grind to a halt and hail the size of grapefruit pelts Tokyo, snow blankets New Delhi and devastating tornadoes turn Los Angeles into Kansas. Or maybe Oz.

"Nobody in the climate change community is anticipating anything like those consequences," Morgan said. "There could be dramatic ecological effects, but tidal waves and 50-foot snow drifts are not on the agenda of anyone who looks seriously at the science."

For example, he said when a sea ice shelf breaks off, as it did in Antarctica, it wouldn't trigger rising ocean levels since most of the ice in the shelf is below sea level and already displacing water. A rise of many meters could occur only if land-based ice covering Greenland and the Antarctic continent were to melt away, as it does in the movie. But that would take many years, not the seven to 10 days covered in this cinematic fable.

"My reading of the literature indicates that's a low-probability event," Morgan said.

He did add that current climate change trends show the Arctic Ocean could become ice-free in 50 to 100 years, which "will do a job on polar bear habitat" and turn the permafrost areas into soggy bogs. But that's not exactly movie material.

A number of environmental groups, while acknowledging the movie's climate change impacts are wildly exaggerated, are hoping it will elevate the problem in the public consciousness.

They hope its buzz will wake up Congress to global warming and foster support for the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, which Congress is expected to vote on this summer.

It also could have the opposite effect, allowing pro-business and development groups and the small minority of scientists who do not believe that climate change has begun to occur to criticize not only the movie's compressed-for-dramatic-effect weather events but also the widely accepted premise that human activities are affecting the Earth's climate by accelerating naturally occurring cycles.

Morgan discounted the film's value in raising public awareness about climate change. He said there's enough to be concerned about without exaggerating the problems.

"I'm a strong proponent of the idea that people in a democracy should have a reasonable understanding of the issues so they can participate in informed decision-making," he said. "But we have no choice. It's a movie and it's out there.

"Whether it's a positive development in terms of developing a rational climate change policy, I'm not so sure."