Random Recordings of Mental Meanderings

Last night, I went to see “An Inconvenient Truth“, Al Gore’s movie on global warming. While it did not reveal anything really new to me, it did bring many ideas, facts and concepts more clearly into focus. It was a very sobering film. Consider these points:

• Ten of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last 15 years
• The USA puts more CO₂ into the atmosphere than any other nation
• The USA puts more CO₂ per person into the atmosphere than any other country
• There is a more or less direct correlation between temperature and percentage CO₂ in the atmosphere, and there is more CO₂ now than there has been in the atmosphere going back 650,000 years.
• The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
• The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.
• At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.

In my own life, I can see the effects of global warming. When I was a kid in the seventies, it would sometimes snow as early as Halloween, and there would be several inches of permanent snow by Thanksgiving. The snow often lasted until late March or early April, and sometimes we wondered if it would be melted in time for Easter. I remember a couple years in a row, during the early eighties, seeing unmelted snow drifts well into May. Granted, they were large piles of snow, but the fact of the matter is, the snow wasn’t completely melted until May.

Lately, here in Buffalo, we have been considering it lucky to see snow on Christmas. By the end of February, most snow is gone. It’s as if spring starts a month earlier and fall ends a month later than it used to. Summers are warmer, sunnier and drier than they used to be.

Ah, but global warming is a myth. That’s what one would believe, if one watched FAUX News and listened to their foxperts:

• Sen. James Inhofe, who has received over $1 million through his political career from oil and gas interests, electrical utility companies, and the mining industry.
• John Christy and Roy Spencer, who have ties to industry-friendly organizations such as CEI and the George Marshall Institute.
• Former Governor Pete Du Pont of Delaware, who is employed by the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank that receives substantial funding from Exxon Mobil Corp, among others.
• Patrick J. Michaels, is employed by the Cato Institute and has ties to George Marshall Institute: both institutions receive significant financial support from energy interests.

Do you see the pattern here? This is just a small sample, too. Energy interests, who stand to lose money of Americans were to start conserving fuel and energy on a wide scale, prop up anti-global warming interests and the rhetoric they spew – and that’s what it is, rhetoric. An analysis of over 900 peer-reviewed articles had zero articles casting doubt about global warming. But a similar analysis of popular media showed 53% of articles and stories casting doubt of global warming. Why the difference? You get rhetoric in the media, not necessarily facts, and what is said depends on who pays for it. You simply can’t trust the mass media.

Here’s a graphic for you, showing deviation of temperature from a norm in 1943:

Granted, this is only one graphic, but it is pretty clear in what it says: that global temperatures have risen one degree Celsius over the last century. Considering that the atmosphere is made up of several different layers, and is composed of varying elements and molecules, while it would be difficult to figure out how much energy is trapped and causing that one degree rise, I’m sure it is no small amount. Just look at water vapor, for instance, which is approximately 1% of the mass of the Earth’s atmosphere, or 5.1 × 10¹⁶ kg. If it takes one calorie to heat one gram of water one degree Celsius, that’s 51,000,000,000,000,000,000 calories trapped in the atmosphere by water vapor alone. That’s equivalent to 84 billion people who weigh 165 lbs. I’m not going to say that this figure is completely accurate, since it was just a quick calculation. It didn’t take into account any of the other gases in our atmosphere and how they interact with the water vapor in the atmosphere. Still, as simple as this model is, it does serve to prove my point: there’s a lot more heat trapped now that wasn’t trapped in the atmosphere a hundred years ago.

This rise in temperature coincides roughly with the introduction of the automobile. It coincides with the USA’s growth as an economic superpower, powered by big oil and the auto industry. Can a conclusion be drawn there?

I’m not un-American, not by any stretch of the imagination. The USA is the greatest country in the world, bar none. I believe that if people put their heads together, we can figure out not only how to solve this crisis, but also to grow the economy as a result of that solution. America can lead the way. We just can’t allow companies, people and interests who stand to lose from energy conservation mislead us into not doing anything about global warming, so they can continue to make their profits at our expense.

Remember, the car you drive is destroying our planet. Every time you fill your gas tank, you are giving money to people who want you to continue burning gas, so they can make more money off of you. Think about that the next time you fill up. Think about the damage you are causing to the planet. Think about who’s profiting, who you are giving your money to. Then, think about how you can change that, and fix that problem.

If enough people commit to changing how we do things, and combine their efforts, we can change the world. My question to you is, what are you going to do? Take my advice: see the movie. If you know even just a little about the environment, it will cement in your mind what is going on with our planet and what we are doing to it. If you believe the anti-global warming rhetoric, it will most certainly change your mind. Either way, it will be worth the matinee price.

Learn more about the truth of global warming, the problem humans are causing, and get active. Don’t sit around on your fat ass waiting for someone else to do it, because then you remain part of the problem, not part of the solution. Which would you rather be?