Hot enough for ya?
Over the last weekend, I saw the film An Inconvenient Truth, featuring the U.S. President-in-Exile, Al Gore.
Damn, I wish he'd run again. I like him.
Anyway, whether you like Gore or not, this movie is really a must-see. We are heating the earth up, and we are the ones who will live with--or die from--the consequences.
One of the arguments skeptics of global warming often make is that the earth routinely heats up and cools down. Well, this is true. However, the planet is heating up more and more drastically, due to the massive amounts of CO2 (carbon dioxide) we humans are putting into the atmosphere.
The amounts of CO2 now in the atmosphere, due to human activity, are dramatically higher than ever before (we learn this from analyzing the ice core, as well as other geologic science). The earth's temperature directly correlates with the amount of CO2 in the environment; the CO2 captures the radation from the sun, which heats the planet. Of course, we need some of that, but too much is not good for us!
I don't want to wreck the movie, and I'm not really that great at explaining scientific phenomena anyway... but this movie lays out the evidence, dispels the myths the oil companies and others try to feed us, and demonstrates that we really need to make some changes.
But allow me to show just one photo that helps demonstrate the effect of global warming:
This is Mount Kilimanjaro. The yellow lines are where the ice cap was in 1962. You can see how far it's receded. In case you're wondering, that's not normal behavior for this mountain.
So, uh, go see the movie already. Then make some changes in your life.
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I don't suppose that it's too far fetched to believe that the planet has cycles. Cycles of warmer and colder weather, wetter and dryer, etc.
Further, it's rather problematic to attempt to say that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are the direct cause of any global warming, if there is in fact warming going on.
Do you know what consumes most of the CO2 in the atmosphere? It's not trees, or fields of green grass, or even rain forests. It's algae. Simple little single celled plant-like organisms that live in the ocean and every other body of water on Earth. The thrive on C02, sunlight and trace minerals from their environment.
What do you suppose is the practical limitation on the algae population? If you guessed C02, you're right. As C02 levels rise, C02 dissolved in the ocean rises along with it. Algae consumes sunlight and C02, and generates algae carcasses and O2, that stuff that we and our SUVs breath...
Which is a long way of saying that our planet is a self-healing beast, and we need to worry slightly less.
While we're on the subject, did you know that there is an underground coalfield that's been on fire in Northern China for several years now. The fire is so large that it probably cannot ever be doused (until the coal field is eventually gone, I suppose). The point though, is that this single fire produces more C02 every year than the entire western world and all of its industry and sport utility vehicles?
Look it up, you'll be very suprised.
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