February 2, 2007
Topic: Some Like It Hot
What an interesting week it's been for news. The president of Venezuela was voted into dictator status by his congress, a la Julius Caesar style, strange blinky things placed by the Cartoon Network freaked out people in Boston, the President of Italy publicly apologized to his wife for flirting with other women, and according to a report one-fourth of babies born the old fashioned way are subject to brain hemorrhages.
There is an article on National Geographic's website that claims that (according to an advanced screening of a report forthcoming in the journal Science) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that global warming is “very likely man made.” According to NG's speculation about the nature of this report, the article will say that with 90 percent certainty, global warming is mostly man made. But what does “mostly” mean? I assume that means at least 50.0%. If this is indeed what this report insinuates, this will probably be a media bombshell. Whatever the actual damage is that humans are doing to the planet, I can't believe that people are still considering if human behavior has something to do with global warming. For me the incentive for scientists to lie is not obvious; However, The incentive for large companies that produce environmentally damaging products to lie is more than a little obvious. Maybe that's narrow minded of me, but I think it's also better to err on the side of protecting the world we share.
The scientists of planet earth need to focus on what to do to prevent global warming from wiping out life, most importantly, human life. Birds and Giraffes are really amazing, but I don't think they really care if someday their kids will have to ware a mask to be able to play on the playground. That may be a far-fetched preposterous presumption (that Giraffes wouldn't care), but as a blogger it's my right and responsibility to project my moderately informed opinion into the layer of the internet abyss of interconnectedness known as the blogosphere.
It was last summer (about the time when An Inconvienient Truth came out, which I never saw) that I remember hearing about a “tipping point” phenomena that is quickly approaching where global warming will have crossed a line and the damage done to the glaciers would be irreversible; because all that sunlight being reflected back into space by the white glaciers would be absorbed into the dark blue water where the glaciers used to be, thus heating up the planet and causing the glaciers to melt faster. What can we do? Some would suggest that we develop more environmentally friendly fuels, or build our homes in walking distance of most of our shopping needs so that driving isn't as necessary. But I say the answer lies in Styrofoam cups. Screw the glaciers! Their already history. We have tons of Styrofoam cups used by fast food restaurants going into landfills. Lets combine them it into a large white Styrofoam blanket to cover up the space in the north pole where the glaciers once were. All that useless white Styrofoam, sticky with coke residue, could reflect a decent amount of those solar rays, don't ya think?
