Movies

Monday, April 16, 2007

global warming… its caused by us

You may have seen the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” that was put together by a politician.

In it he claims (and shows a graph to prove it) that the CO2 levels are higher than they have ever been - and not just a little, a LOT. It basically looks like an L on its side (___|).

Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies and director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, has a message: “This is not controversial,” he says. “It’s not just a gentle warming. And it’s caused by us.”

He goes on to say, “There is a close association between climate and the level of gases like CO2 and methane.”

We have raised the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a point that is higher than at any time over the past 450,000 years,” McElroy says. “Arguably, it’s higher than it’s been for several million years. Concentrations of CO2 will climb to twice what they currently are by the end of the century. That’s a complete change in the atmosphere.”

People like that claim that its because of this or that - too much cars, too much asphalt, too much methane, etc. What it really is is just too much us.

Here is an estimate of how many people were on the planet earth for some different time periods…

Year Millions of people
-10000 4
-8000 5
-7000 5
-6000 5
-5000 5
-4000 7
-3000 14
-2000 27
-1000 50
-750 60
-500 100
-400 160
-200 150
0 170
200 190
400 190
500 190
600 200
700 210
800 220
900 226
1000 310
1100 301
1200 360
1250 400
1300 360
1340 443
1400 350
1500 425
1600 545
1650 470
1700 600
1750 790
1800 980
1850 1260
1900 1650
1910 1750
1920 1860
1930 2070
1940 2300
1950 2400
1960 3020
1970 3700
1974 4000
1980 4430
1987 5000
1990 5260
2000 6070.

Now, pop those numbers in your graph making program and see what kind of graph it makes.

Why, its an L on its side (___|). Why, its us. We keep exhaling that darned CO2.

I have a solution… we have a little over 6Billion people on the earth… lets whack 2/3 of them. This would take us back to the mid-1900’s in population and destroy that darned leg. Or, perhaps we whack 5/6 of them and go back to the mid 1800’s - surely that would take care of it!

I’m not being serious, of course. But, we need to keep the numbers in relation to reality. Politicians are politicians and will always be politicians, even if they can create the internet and show pretty pictures (or not so pretty pictures) and graphs of the CO2 levels - isn’t that what Ross Perot did, and we didn’t elect his big eared head in 1992.

Anyway, things are not as simple as “car emissions” or “power plant emissions” and people (all 6 BILLION of them) need to understand this. What if, for example, instead of whackin’ them all, we got everybody to hold their breath for one minute a day. That in and of itself would cut CO2 emissions by 1/86400 a day. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that we have about 1000 tonnes of CO2 in the air, it has to help.

And that is provided to you by someone who is not a politician and has no plans of being a politician… so don’t vote for me for nothin… just hold your breath - say, from perhaps 3:05p.m. to 3:06 p.m.?

Monday, June 30, 2003

The pianist

My wife and I watched <a href="http://www.thepianist-themovie.com/">The Pianist </a>on Friday night... (Based on a true story...)

Saturday, June 07, 2003

Matrix Reloaded

My wife and I just finished watching Matrix - Reloaded. I'm going to talk about it in the extended entry. I will be talking about the movie, so if you read this and haven't seen the movie, then your tough luck. (Warning it is long, and apt to get longer.)