Inconvenient, Birds kick off, Ipod
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.
Don
A bit long, yes, but a somewhat less a doomsaying view:
Skipping Stones: A Perspective on Global Warming
By G.W. Burrows
June 3, 2005 10:15AM
By evaluating changes in climate or temperature over shortened periods, such as decades or centuries instead of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, we either overestimate or overstate the changes that might or might not be occurring.
The contributions of human activities to global warming is a topic of continuing and intense debate. Unfortunately, the vast majority of articles and reports on the effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide are overstated and exaggerated.
The debate has raged on about the causes and effects of global warming, but the first question to ask is whether global warming even exists.
Certainly it does, because without global warming, the earth would be a much colder place. A good example is our closest neighbor, the moon, where, even in direct sunlight, without an atmosphere there are no molecules to absorb and retain the incoming heat from the sun.
The earth’s atmosphere contains several gases, all of which have the capacity to absorb heat energy in varying degrees. The most common gases are nitrogen, oxygen, water and carbon dioxide. There also are trace gases such as argon, methane and hydrogen, but their concentrations are all much less than one percent.
Periodic changes in temperature give rise to climates that vary widely from polar regions to the tropics. Climate is caused by more than just global warming. The main causal factors of climate change are the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit around the sun, the tilt of the rotational axis and its wobble.
Sun spot activity, ocean currents and albedo (whiteness) also contribute to climate and climate change. The issue that has to be addressed is how much of an effect carbon dioxide has on climate change.
Experts agree that the earth’s climate is primarily caused by the distance from the sun, the shape and changes in the orbit and tilt of the rotational axis. As long as the sun continues to burn, we will be warm. Astronomers believe that the sun is middle aged and we have approximately 4 billion years to go before it turns into a white dwarf.
If you believe mainstream scientists, the earth’s age is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. For the first billion years or so, the earth was a hot and barren place with no oxygen in the atmosphere. Since there was no oxygen, there was also no ozone. But after a billion years, life began to form, the climate stabilized and oxygen resulting from photosynthesis began to occupy the atmosphere.
Since that time, the climate has remained stable and conducive to various life forms. The oceans have never frozen nor boiled. During that time there have been changes in average temperature, sometimes warmer and sometimes colder than our present-day climate.
Climatological studies of ice core samples have shown that about every 100,000 to 150,000 years, the earth goes through a relatively short period of warming followed by a longer period of cooling, including an ice age. The warming period is approximately 20,000 years long and the cooling period lasts about 100,000 years.
During the last cooling period, ice covered the northern and southernmost areas from 45 degrees North and 45 degrees South, to the poles. The middle latitudes remained free of ice, therefore warm and hospitable to most life forms. The last ice age ended approximately 20,000 years ago and the earth has been warming ever since, so it is no surprise to expect that the next ice age is not far off.
Since the last ice age, the climate has warmed about 16 degrees Fahrenheit and the sea level has risen approximately 300 feet. Humans have only been around for about 1.75 million years. The warming and cooling cycles were happening long before human existence.
Even more recently, the last ice age ended and warming began thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Current changes in temperature and climate have been blamed on CO2 production from the industrial revolution, which began only 200 years ago, but numerous reports have compared CO2 atmospheric concentrations over the last 200 years in an attempt to prove the relationship between the concentration of CO2 and the increase in average global temperatures.
So what effect have human activities had on climate? To some extent, quite a lot. Building large cites creates “heat islands,” which cause localized changes in weather. Massive deforestation (for example, in the tropics) causes changes in the hydrological (rain) cycle.
Pollution contributes to changes in atmospheric chemistry; for example, smog and particulates produce haze and ozone as well as other pollutants such as NOX (various nitrogen oxides). Refrigerants are blamed for destruction of ozone.
But what about carbon dioxide? Produced by all forms of combustion and fermentation, CO2 has been the focus of debate on climate change to such an extent that controls on CO2 production have been connected to world economics (Kyoto Treaty) and pollution bartering.
At the present time, carbon dioxide makes up approximately 0.03 percent (or 300 parts per million) of the earth’s atmosphere. In and of itself, that number is small when compared to the other major gases in the atmosphere. For example, oxygen and nitrogen are present at 21 and 78 percent respectively.
To obtain a sense for how much heat carbon dioxide absorbs and therefore contributes to global warming, the following information must also be considered.
• More than 98 percent of all CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by sources other than by man. For example, CO2 is produced by forest fires, volcanoes, fermentation and animal and plant respiration.
• Carbon dioxide does not remain in the atmosphere. It is absorbed in the oceans, lakes and rivers and is used by marine life to produce shells and food. It is also used by terrestrial plants to produce cellulose, sugar and other plant products.
• Carbon dioxide is an essential and beneficial nutrient and is actively involved in a dynamic, not static process.
By comparison, water is present in the atmosphere in amounts varying from a few tenths of a percent in desert areas to as much as 4 percent in humid tropical areas. The amount of atmospheric water content changes dramatically with temperature and air pressure.
Clouds and fog are made up of water and 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water. Approximately 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are added to the atmosphere each day, of which 98 percent is naturally produced.
In other words, only 2 percent is anthropogenic. Around 1.16 billion tons of water is evaporated each day. At any given time, there are 106 billion tons of carbon dioxide and 12.9 x 106 billion tons of water in the atmosphere.
And so the important question is “What do all of these numbers mean?”
First, there is a lot more water in the atmosphere than CO2. Second, the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by human activities is small when compared to the amount of water already in the atmosphere.
Finally we also must evaluate how much heat energy both carbon dioxide and water are capable of absorbing. Pound-for-pound, water absorbs two times more heat energy than CO2. The difference comes from how much vibrational energy the oxygen-hydrogen (OH) bonds absorb than that of the carbon-oxygen (C=O) bonds.
What then can we derive from all of the different information on global warming?
• First, all of the data presented are factual, accurate and generally accepted by the established scientific community noting that many of the absolute numbers vary slightly depending on the source.
• Global warming does occur as a result of all atmospheric gases absorbing and retaining heat energy from the sun.
• Heat also is absorbed by land surfaces and reflected by snow, clouds and other light colored surfaces.
• At any given time, climate is largely controlled by the energy of the sun and the earth’s position relative to the sun.
• The amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human activities (2 percent of 0.03 percent, which is 0.000006 percent) when compared to water that is always present (range of 0.5 percent to 4 percent) is a very small amount.
• Pound-for-pound, water absorbs two times more heat energy than carbon dioxide.
Too often, experts, and even scientists study and report the effects of CO2 on climate in a manner that is similar to the story of five blind men describing an elephant. Each one views the elephant as a completely different being because he doesn’t include the information from any of the others.
The situations with studies or reports on global warming are similar. Unless we consider all of the factors that contribute to our climate simultaneously, we are using an unscientific technique known as data selection, which is inappropriate in thorough and accurate research.
By evaluating changes in climate or temperature over shortened periods, such as decades or centuries instead of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, we either overestimate or overstate the changes that might or might not be occurring. Data selection can be used to verify any reasonable conclusion about climate change.
Because there is a lot more water in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide and because water absorbs so much more energy than carbon dioxide, we should conclude that the effect that these gases have on the warming of the atmosphere is largely caused by water. Man’s contribution, although it certainly exists, is more like throwing a stone into the ocean, real and calculable, but barely noticeable.