On Friday evening we watched a 45 minute British special about global warming that was based on Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”. It was a good show and made us wish we hadn’t missed the very brief run it had in our local theaters. Just for the hell of it Ali jumped on Fandango and discovered that the movie actually was running in one of the smaller theaters in our area. There was a 9 o’clock showing. We looked at the clock and it was a bit before 8. Hey what the hell, we can make it. So we threw on baseball caps and headed out.
This theater was at least 15 years old. It had fewer screens than most new ones but they were also much larger than many of the screens you have in the newer megaplex theaters. Not that we needed the room, by the time the flick started I believe there were 7 people filling the 200 seats.
Despite the small audience, the movie was very compelling. It was basically a film version of the presentation that Al Gore has done across the globe with brief injections of content that added to the film. Wow, everybody really needs to see this. If you are one of those people that believe that we are just cycling through a warm period in history just like the Earth has done forever, you have to see this. Global warming is no joke.
The most dire predictions are that if nothing is done, in as little as ten years we could be beyond the point of no return, meaning the cycle will have swung so far that we won’t be able to correct it. Gore used a line that Churchill said when talking of Nazi Germany and how Europe ignored all the signals that indicated something terrible was on the horizon. He said that they were entering a time of consequences. Consequences that had to be paid as a result of apathy and inaction. The same time is going to be on the table for modern day man if we don’t wake up and realize that we are destroying the very planet we call home, quickly.
Gore spoke passionately about the subject. I didn’t realize that he has been trying to curb global warming since the 70’s. Evidently a college professor of his opened his eyes to the subject based on work he was doing studying CO2 levels in the atmosphere in the 50’s. Even then, he predicted what is coming to fruition today. The movie was filled with disturbing then and now shots of various glaciers throughout the world. It was amazing. The movie was no dog and pony show. He went in depth and explained exactly what is going on and presented it in a way that could leave no doubt on what the cause of this issue is, us. There were a number of charts, graphs and figures that he presented that were staggering.
At one point he showed a chart of the Co2 levels over the last 650,000 years. As you look at the chart you see up and down fluctuation just as you hear about in the media, what looks to be normal swings. However the last 100 years of the chart is hidden. When he reveals it, you see a 80 degree slope, straight up with no fluctuation. The current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere dwarf the prior highs by miles.
A population chart was another scary sight. It showed that it took the world 10 generations to reach 2.3 billion people in population, however in the span of one generation, by the year 2050 (if we make it that long), the world population is expected to almost quadruple to over 9 BILLION people. Yes birth control is a good thing. In the modern era people have become the cockroaches of the planet, reproducing far more than is necessary and in doing so are killing the world. The United states is the biggest roach of all, contributing over 30% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
The 10 hottest years in recorded history have all occured with in the last 14 YEARS, with 2005 being the hottest one ever. Do you think this is a coincidence?
Well the “good” news is the Earth will only tolerate this for so long. As it warms the great ice formations will break up and melt. There is a very good chance that Greenland and part of Antartica will melt and fall into the sea. If this happens, sea levels around the world would rise by 20 feet. Doesn’t sound like much? You should see the graphics of what a 20 foot raise in sea level correlates to on a map. Our house would be underwater. Southern Florida would basically not exist anymore, along with any other low lying coastal regions around the globe. The ice falling into the sea would also dramatically alter current ocean currents causing dramatic shifts in weather patterns, some of which we are already experiencing.
The movie also takes the time to point out how blind the Bush administration is when it comes to this. Gore points out that of the 800+ scientific peer articles about global warming there were ZERO that disputed it’s existence. However the MEDIA articles on the subject were split down the middle 50/50, imagine that. Global warming belief is bad for big business, who cares if it could mean our planet is being trashed?
Gore also points out the lunacy of Bush’s appointment of a big oil executive as head of the Enviromental agency. This same person stepped down after it was made public that he changed a scientific report on global warming to play down the urgency of it before presenting it to the public. The day after he left he started his new job, at Exxon Mobil, disgusting.
I could go on and on about it. But you would be far better served to just see the film and draw your own conclusion. Hopefully it motivates you to act. The next time you fill up your SUV, throw that plastic bottle in the regular trash or you perform any other enviromentally irresponsible act, hopefully you will take pause. Often the difference between doing good or bad for the environment equates to taking a few seconds to do something slightly different. Those few seconds multiplied a billion times over makes a big difference. Go see the movie.
Ali had been complaining that her MP3 player she has doesn’t have enough memory to play more than an hour’s worth of songs so we snagged her an Ipod Nano over the weekend. I never really knew what the fuss was about but I knew everyone had one. Well after playing with it I can sort of see, it is just kinda cool.
What wasn’t cool was getting it to work on Ali’s computer. Her computer also serves as the server for my home network and runs Windows Server 2003. Well I’ve learned several times that just because something runs on Windows XP doesn’t mean it will run the same on the server. I installed Itunes and Quicktime off the CD and it went fine. The app came up and prompted us to upgrade to the latest and greatest version, ok cool, upgrade.
Well all hell broke loose, the upgrade required a newer version of Quicktime. This new version bombed out towards the end of the install but evidently installed far enough that the system thought it was installed. After some failed reinstall attempts I found some blurbs on the net that the latest version of Quicktime did not work with Windows 2003. A newer version that is less compatible than an older version? Go figure. Well after literally a couple hours I finally got to a point where I got the older version to install cleanly and all was well.
The Nano itself is a cool little gadget. The color screen looks great and the wheel navigation is very slick. Ali had fun dumping a bunch of songs on it and even though we had over 500 mp3’s on her system already, she snagged a few more songs off Itunes. She will get her first real world trial of it today when she does her run after work.
The Eagles had their first preseason game last night. It was on NBC. It felt weird having the Monday night football team transplanted intact to NBC. The rest of the NBC crew, Costas, Collingsworth, Sterling Sharpe and Jerome Bettis need to grow on me. I always loved Fox’s crew but with James Brown leaving, I don’t know how it can possibly be as good. Well anyways, the game..
The Eagles looked good early on with the 1st team offense and defense which is most important. The second teamers were not as good. Jeff Garcia did nothing to make me feel good about him being our backup this year. Hopefully that situation improves. I fell asleep in the 3rd quarter and was disappointed to see they lost the game this morning, although in the big picture it means little I suppose. It felt good to have football on tv again and I am looking forward to the Birds getting some payback for the shitty season they had last year. Hopefully it gave them something to prove.
I felt so tired last evening yet I slept like hell last night. It seemed every few minutes I was waking up and readjusting, I couldn’t get comfortable. I bet I woke up at least 20 times throughout the night. I even took a brief nap during the day, something that happens maybe twice a year.
I added a plug in to the blog that allows readers to rate a post. Simply put your mouse over whichever star you think is appropriate (1 to 5 stars) and click. Your rating will be added to the total automagically.
.jpg)
I like having
It basically consisted of about 50 questions that were designed to determine your personality disorders. I whizzed through the questions in about 10 minutes and it spit out that my most dominating trait was obsessive compulsive. I can’t say I disagree with this diagnosis. 
Randall called out the original commentor as a coward for not revealing their identity, however the person did sort of identify themselves by the email address they used in combination with the probability that they are a female (only a female would take offense to it) Even if they were totally anonymous, I wouldn’t care, it’s all about opinions. 