How Inconvenient... Have any of you seen the relatively new movie An Inconvenient Truth? This movie was recently shown on TV last night, I was playing with my sims when my dad turned it on and I listend fully. I once and awhile leaned back in my chair to see the screen. This movie stunned me. I was so amazed at what we are doing to poor lady Earth! And that my generation would soon have to inherit it and deal with it. Al Gore really outdid himself in this movie, he showed what we could do to stop it, and in the end I asked my dad if we could shift to Green Energy. (eco-friendly energy.) And that we (America), (well, at least some of us) were the country that contributed the LEAST to the problem! This astounded me. He really left an inprint in my mind to do something. Powerful, powerful movie. Anyone else seen it?
LOL, Jazz. I sympathise. See if you can get the chance to see this film as well: The Great Global Warming Swindle (and here)
I haven't seen the movie, but America contributing the least is no surprise to me. Developing countries such as India and China are the biggest polluters now.
... ahem ... pollution is nasty and no-one wants it, of course, but pollution isn't causing global warming. If any human activity is causing the climate to change then the bulk of scientific opinion is behind the emission of CO2 which has a greenhouse effect in the atmosphere. CO2 is produced by burning fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas). The US has been the largest per capita consumer of energy most of which is derived from fossil fuel since early in the 20th century. For most of the 20th Century, the average US citizen used approx 2/3x the energy used by a typical european and 10/20x the energy used by less developed parts. Chine and India and the so-called tiger economies may well have a few megapolises churning out cheap manufactured goods and smelly pollution, but the urban-industrial populations of those areas still uses less energy per capita than 1950s US ... probably less than 1950s europe! More to the point, China may have a population of 1.2 billion, 4 times that of the US but 3.4 of them are still living in one TV villages, actually most of them only have access to a radio ... so the US is probably still using twice as much energy as China (producing 2x as much CO2) Oh and I am not knocking the USA. I like the people, the place and its egalitarianism. Likewise, the Chinese and the Indians. Both have long histories and rich heritages. So it's not helpful for anyone either to duck responsibility or else to glibly accept that it belongs with that fella, there, cos I don't like the cut of his jib. Like I said somewhere else. There's a whole other argument about climate change, fossil fuels and the lack of a clear enemy for the free peoples of the world to hide from. It all started when Margaret Thatcher went to war with the Britain's coal miners, and paid a bunch of scientists to produce a report to show how coal was filthy stuff that was ruining the planet (she had a BSc in Chemistry, the canny lass) ... her plan was to replace coal mines with nuclear power stations, but instead global warming became an issue. After that things got a bit muddled and everyone forgot what the argument was all about. All that is left now is a bunch of reports and a coven of scientists who'll say anything (only don't stop them playing with their megalithic computers) for the price of a latte and a danish and all so some cynical people can manipulate us with dodgy graphs misrepresenting even dodgier statistics -- and this is the best bit -- mis-explaining it all so badly (or do I mean so well) that it almost seems to make sense. I'm not happy, am I? I'm gonna take a chill pill ... night night.
