You’re right that the problem has escalated massively in the last few years. But my opinion is that the problem started in the cave with neanderthal man starting a fire for the first time. This is what separates us from every other creature on the planet: the ability to combust fuel. Good points though.
Oh, and, are you still using the whores group? My comp wouldn’t work with it so I had to leave it.
Journal, Diary, & Blogging / Global Warming is Inevitable
The Metro, the paper found on most buses in Britain, recently published a photograph of a melting iceberg- a familiar but poignant image in today’s ever-warming world. This particular iceberg, however, had a vaguely facial appearance to it- an elongated enclave resembling feminine lips, a distorted, long nose of melting ice, and one long, shadowy eye-like ledge. This crumbling, frozen mass seemed trapped in the centre of the otherwise smooth walls of the iceberg. On the left of the picture, a section of the iceberg wall juts over the space where you’d imagine the other eye to be. Under the arctic sun, a stream of ice water falls from this space, gushing into the freezing sea below.
The paper suggested that the face was that of Mother Nature herself, crying over the damage done to her planet in the short space of time humans had lived on it.
There was, however, one angle not covered by the piece- an issue seemingly unnoticed by the paper and even the United Nations. I thought I should provide that angle. It may have proved too radical, however, as it didn’t make it onto the letters page.
The ‘Tears of Mother Earth’ photograph (3/9/09) was excellent, and another vivid reminder of what we are doing to the planet. However, I doubt humankind will take heed from Mother Nature’s supposed warning. We’ve been powerless to stop our own ravaging of the planet for 1.6 million years- when man first harnessed the power of fire. This was the beginning of global warming- our harmful effect on the planet. The trend cannot be ‘stopped’, as the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon suggested. But it is important that we delay this devastation as much as we can by encouraging the use of more efficient power sources than oil, petrol and wood.
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snarfus reviewed Version 1 -
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Not bad. I’m still not sure what the missing angle is; it’s more your opinion than any particular missing piece. Also, you’re two cents is very brief. You don’t give any examples or evidence for your position; it’s basically “Here’s what I think. The End.”
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Deadsage reviewed Version 1 -
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Ban Ki-moon meant that we could stop escalating the problem, not that we could stop the greenhouse effect completely.
It seems disingenuous to claim we’ve been “ravaging the planet for 1.6 million years.” Earth ravaged us for the majority of that time as just another species of life. We’ve only come to dominate nature through technological advancements and create serious effects on the environment within the last 500 years or so. We’ve only had an effect on the global temperature within the last 100 years, and we’ve done 90% of that damage in the last 40 years.
I agree with your final statement completely. Though I would say “fossil fuels” instead of specifically singling out petrol and wood. What about coal?
jalubcarrey reviewed Version 1 -
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Subject: The title makes Global Warming an inevitable, if uneviable, fact of the future. It’s easy to give up, and spreading a defeatist attitude is not helpful. I do, however, feel that the imagery of a crying earth (we humans are prone to see faces in almost anything, ie. cheese sandwiches and tree bark for instance) to be emotionally driven, not rational.
Substance: I don’t see your point. Again, it’s a defeatist attitude, and one that, according to what you wrote, an opinion shared by the UN Secretary General. Is that true? It would be necessary to read the original article, see the picture and then reread this post to pull all things together into a comprehensible picture. From the blog alone I can only see one point of view, which is that we’re in trouble and there’s nothing we can do about it but cry. . . oh, and try alternative forms of fuel. Try to be more even handed, if that’s possible with this subject. How about, “The ingenuity of human beings may be such that we will end the use of carbon emitting fuels. We have indeed begun with Hydrogen and electric cars.” It’s not spin, it’s the avoidance of cynicism, which is hard for me to avoid as well.
shadow_loveless reviewed Version 1 -
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The description of the iceberg is vivid and lovely, transferring some of it’s imagined majesty into your vision of it.
I feel the explanation is lucid and clear, although its subject matter is rather moot.
“However, I doubt humankind will take heed from Mother Nature’s supposed warning. We’ve been powerless to stop our own ravaging of the planet for 1.6 million years- when man first harnessed the power of fire. This was the beginning of global warming- our harmful effect on the planet. The trend cannot be ‘stopped’, as the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon suggested. But it is important that we delay this devastation as much as we can by encouraging the use of more efficient power sources than oil, petrol and wood.”
This whole bit is written with the sobriety of a revelation, discussing themes that are basically common knowledge, however eloquently you’ve expressed them. Perhaps that is why the paper failed to discuss it.
P.S. Threatening a refund is now how to draw reviews. :8)
music1358 reviewed Version 1 -
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Fine. Nice and clear, simple and effective. Did you know that at a recent world symposium one of the heads of the IPCC admitted that much of the effects claimed to be global warming were in fact natural cycles and that the world faced a global cooling over the next twenty to thirty years? It’s in New Scientist. A bummer cause global cooling is a real danger to mankind.
bravis reviewed Version 1 -
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The only improvement to the writing that I could see was in the letter, so no point pointing it out.
The rest was well written – humorous and clearly expressed.
The subject – love the disdainful tone taken about the paper’s emotive take on the picture.
On your view about delaying the devastation and on global warming being inevitable – I agree with the latter more than the former. The sad fact of the matter is that there is probably very little we can do to stop or even slow down global warming at this stage. We have destabilised things to such as extent that global warming is likely to occur increasingly quickly, and no amount of wind turbines and turning our TVs off standby is going to help. As the ice caps melt, their rate of melting accelerates, and with less ice at the poles, the temperatures there rise even faster; the warming of lakes and melting of permafrost in polar regions is releasing increasing quantities of methane – a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide; changing diets in formerly developing countries raises methane emissions still further due to rising demand for meat; basically we are SCREWED.
The solution to climate change, sadly, is probably not one which seeks to stop the process itself. This may be impossible. More likely it will be one which seeks to manage its effects (although how will we cope with nearly 50% of Earth’s inhabitants losing their homes to rising sea levels?).
Too negative for you? Well hope may come from those visionary scientists working on ways to scrub greenhouse gases from the atmosphere rather than just reducing current emissions. After all, it is the gases that are already there that are doing the damage, not the ones that we’ll put there over the next couple of decades. I find it interesting that Horizon made a programme about some of their ideas a few years ago and the reaction from governments and media was a dismissive chuckling…
“Putting a trillion little mirrors into orbit to reflect the Sun’s rays?! How preposterous!”
“Dumping a mixture of iron and nitrate into the barren oceans to encourage algal blooms?! Are you mad?!?”
And now, three years on, the ideas are being taken seriously. Maybe there is hope after all.
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