The American Daunting. (pt.2) Global Climate Change

Even though Mr. Al Gore will never read my blog, I feel I owe him as well as others an

apology. I recently posted on facebook that I thought Al Gore was nothing but a Global

Warming alarmist who has stretched the science only to get more people on board. The

truth is, I was wrong about Al Gore and he was wrong in his documentary, An

Inconvenient Truth. Looking at more recent studies of Climate Change, one would see

that the effects from warming and deforestation have been acting much faster then

estimates in his film.

Biodiversity is facing a serious problem. This problem, known

mainly as Global Warming, is backed up by an overwhelming scientific consensus. The

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is open to all member countries of the

United Nations (UN) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). There are at

present 194 nations all in agreement with the anthropogenic cause to climate change.

In an IPCC article they state...

Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and of

reactive gases such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon

monoxide and hydrocarbons, which lead to the formation

of secondary pollutants including aerosol particles and

tropospheric ozone, have increased substantially in response to

human activities. As a result, biogeochemical cycles have been

perturbed signifi cantly. Nonlinear interactions between the

climate and biogeochemical systems could amplify (positive

feedbacks) or attenuate (negative feedbacks) the disturbances

produced by human activities.

The amplifying (positive feedback), is warming caused from the emissions of greenhouse gases and deforestation. The attenuating (negative feedback), is cooling caused by the secondary pollutants from aerosol particles. If it wasn't for the negative feedback the warming effect would have come at a much greater speed and we would have already seen a warming of a couple of degrees.

The conclusion that global warming is mainly caused by human activity and will continue if greenhouse emissions and deforestation are not reduced has been endorsed by more than 75 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. NASA Goddard Institute, the American Meteorological Society, International Union for Quaternary Research, and the Australian Coral Reef Foundation to name only a few. I am sad to report that this overwhelming global consensus towards anthropogenic warming does not reflect the number of the American population that do.

In November, 2009, Rasmussen found that a majority of Americans, about 52% do not believe there is such a broad consensus among scientific organizations. This is bad news considering over 25% of the human co2 emissions are caused by our industries and automobiles. We are in need of governmental leadership to make regulations to put industry on the right path but if the people of this great nation are not behind it, rarely any politician will act for fear of losing their next election. Corporations survive by profit and if these energy producers do not see the consumers lining up demanding clean energy they will not act on it. We the people seem to only care about renewable energy when oil prices soar and no government or corporation seems to want to jump in on our irrational whims. So what can we do if people will stay ignorant to the science?

Other then educating people about the effects and global scientific consensus about climate change, we can show them another benefit to switching to green energy. As I stated in part one of this blog post, we are in a global recession. Our economy is now coming back from the brink but unfortunately it has remained a jobless recovery so far. The US, known for it's leading edge in innovation needs to step up once again and begin it's groundbreaking work into a new era of sustainable green energy. Which would create new jobs. This may seem contradictory considering the main known reason for clean energy is to reduce our greenhouse gases, but the proverbial looks have been deceiving.

Oil, natural gases and coal are not only a problem because it speeds up global warming but it has been funding the oppression of middle easterners for many decades and there is also an enormous demand for fossil fuels coming from developing nations across the globe.

The purchasing of our major resource, petroleum, have come from petrodictatorship countries that consume all the money and leave it's people in impoverished conditions. These countries have also been known to supply money, weapons and military training to terrorists groups who have a deep seeded hatred towards the west. It is a moral imperative for us to step away from our dependence on these countries for our addiction to their resources. They are oppressing their people from the freedoms we enjoy here and causing a greater imbalance between our two very different worlds. This can breed hatred towards the countries of the west which in turn can expand the number of members in terrorist groups who are trying to destroy our very way of life. We need to find a way to stop funding oppression and our own destruction.

Due to the quick and overwhelming surge in GDP within developing nations, many of their citizens are climbing the ladder of progress to the middle class. Nations such as China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa have been on a steady incline of wealth after they each on their own time opened up their markets to free trade. This globalisation, though criticised often for political gains here in the US, has been a good solution to poverty in the rest of the world. More people are consuming products and living successful lives across the globe then ever before. This is the main reason energy costs in the US have been getting higher and the problem will not stop as the demand grows. The problem is that their has been a exponential demand for fossil fuels, as well as meat, paper products and plastics which all have a major impact on our environment. Now more then ever, deforestation is taking a severe turn for the worst and fossil fuel demand is much higher causing more greenhouse gases to escape into the atmosphere. This too should be a wake up call for Americans concerned about climate change, but 52% of us are not concerned about it as a real science.

So with the growing wealth among petrodictators due to our addiction and the excelling demand for fossil fuels from the rapid birth of globalisation we can now say, climate change or not, we desperately need to develop a sustainable energy program in the US. The nation who develops this new green energy technology will be the economic leader of tomorrow. I propose that the US breaks through this arrogant idea that we will always be the world leader by taking a good look around the globe and seeing how other nations are growing around us. Our complacency will be our demise if we do nothing. If we do not develop sustainable energy, some other nation will. It could be China, Japan, India, or the UK but no matter who it is, they will exceed in the global market and have a higher GDP then all other nations buying their ultimate innovation. There have been many books written on this subject such as The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria and Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman and I urge people to buy them and learn about these issues from greater minds then myself.

Are we going to break from our arrogant bubble, see the upcoming problems and develop the green revolution or will we sit around while the rest of the world catches up, only to pass us? It your choice America. I choose we get off our asses and do something for our country, our planet and our future.

The American Daunting. (pt. 1)

We are in a time of financial crisis. I am aware this will not come to any of you with shock. The forecast for the unemployment rate in the U.S. is going to stay at a steady average of 10% for the remainder of this year. The current rate has doubled in the last two years to it's present percentage. On the bright side, Even with a -2.60% growth rate, we continue to stand as the largest economy with a GDP of 22.91% of the world's economy according to the World Bank. Other then it's free market system, one major factor that stimulates the growth of our nation and pushes it above all others is our spirit of innovation.

Students with a craving to learn come from all over the world into the U.S. to be educated in our Universities and study in a diverse range of fields. Around fifty percent of graduate students are immigrants that have been our back bone and becoming more needed in our economy. They are the innovators that are developing new technologies for the U.S. which are producing new jobs in the country. As we are nearing an environmental catastrophe with global climate change and the rapid decline of bio-diversity, we are in need of a green revolution. We need these students more then ever to produce more sustainable products to not only protect life on our planet but to keep the American dream attainable. Science and engineering are what drive our innovation and keep us ahead in the global market system and other developing countries like Brazil, Russia India and China know this. The problem is that naturally born students studying in these fields from the U.S. are in decline. Science, being the underpinning result for innovation, has been under a steady attack by lobbyist groups establishing counter scientific studies to protect their corporations from financial disasters or from religious/spiritual groups who are afraid that human morality is at stake. (I am aware that the decline in the sciences are not wholly attributed to these outside influences but they are of my main concern for this article.)

There is a large consensus on anthropogenic global warming among scientists across the globe. Just look at the articles from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Intergovernmental Arctic Council and many more. There are even 32 different National Science Academies from different countries that came together in 2001 in a joint effort to declare and confirm anthropogenic global warming. All these groups, plus many more are urging governments and it's people to take steps into reducing their carbon footprint. Yet despite all the evidences laid out and the global consensus among the science communities, only 51% of the American population is considered alarmed or concerned about climate change.

This year was the 150th anniversary for the publication of On The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin. He has been considered one of the greatest scientists and thinkers of all time by many in the biological sciences. When one really looks into the science behind evolution, the evidence is enormous. There is more combined evidence for evolution then the majority of well-accepted scientific theories through out the U. S. population. Many try to belittle evolution by saying it is only a theory while not truly grasping what theory actually means in scientific terms. According to Biology-Online, a scientific theory is, "A well tested concept that explains a wide range/of lots of observations." Indeed, the theory of evolution has done just that. For over 150 years since Darwin published his theories, evolution has been tried and tested and has come out stronger every time. Go to any Museum of Natural History and see the numerous amounts of intermediate fossils from many of the species known today. When we discovered the genome and DNA it backed up evolution as well as all biological advances since Darwin'e time. All biological observations from hundreds of thousands of naturalists to scientists around the globe have not discovered one vital mechanism that could not fit into the evolutionary theory. Most biological scientists have been calling it a fact and many other are beginning to heed the call in the scientific community to do the same. However with the plethora of evidence supporting the theory of evolution only 39% of Americans say they accept it as true. If it is merely cause it is considered a theory then maybe some should gander at a short list of other well accepted theories like cell theory, germ theory, atomic theory, circuit theory; even the theory of gravity, and electricity.

Lately, when you turn on the television, to what I have deemed as the science channels (History, Discovery, Animal Planet, Nat Geo and the Science Channel) you will notice a flood of pseudo-scientific shows bombarding the air waves. I see more on Bigfoot, aliens, the Loch Ness Monster, and paranormal investigations then I do about history and science. (though I can grasp why the History channel might show some of these since they have been a major part of human history). If they were only on some of the time it really wouldn't bother me. My problem is that these are supposed to be shows about scientific advancements, new discoveries in science and mainly just simply shows about science. These pseudo-scientific issues have a channel, it if called Sci Fi. Consider you've become interested in science and decide to flip on the science channel to be informed on physics, biology or geology only find paranormal investigators tripping over each other walking through dark corridors, holding instruments that can collectively cause some of the other instruments to not work properly chasing around their own imaginations. Now I am not saying there is not any ghosts, though I really do not believe there are, I am saying their instruments are about as flawed as the science they are attributing it to. Ghosts or not, what they are doing is not science. One can not carry around instruments meant to find ghosts when no one even knows what they are physically made of, why they would even show up on instruments, or just simply explain how one is possible to even fit in the scientific model of the universe.

I have selected these three topics, anthropogenic climate change, evolution and pseudoscience because I will have a blog explaining what little I have touched on above in more detail later on.

Human Benevolence On Display

It has been over a week since a 7.0 earthquake devastated the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere. The Republic of Haiti is a Caribbean country that borders alongside the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. The earthquake occurred at 4:53pm Eastern time on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 and has since been in the hearts and minds of the global population. It has been estimated by the International Red Cross that 3 million people have been affected and on the 15th of January, the Haitian Interior Minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime' , anticipates that this disaster would eventually have claimed between 100,000 to 200,000 people. As terrible as the news has been, I am hoping for a moment to focus on the power of the human response to tragedy.

This without a doubt has been a decade of tragedies. Some of them have been intentionally committed by the hands of terrorists who seem to stop at nothing to destroy what they hate. To America, September 11th, 2001 is still fresh in our memories. Though America was hit hard, most of these attacks have been more focused within European Nations. London had a shock of their own on July 7, 2005 when a group of religious zealots placed three homemade bombs crafted of organic peroxide-based devices on three separate underground trains claiming many lives. Then there have been disasters from natural causes that we will never forget in our lifetime. Some would say they have been directly caused by anthropogenic global warming but it isn't easy to label them as such. There was the Asian Tsunamis, New Orleans' Hurricane Katrina, and the tropical cyclone Nargis that struck Burma and many more that have all happened within this decade. One thing that unites these horrific events mentioned is the amount of help the victims received from outside their borders.

Human Benevolence has been on display and it has not gone unnoticed. We have all seen the selfless acts from the men and women who serve in the National Guard, the International Red Cross, and a plethora of governmental and private organizations who have risked their own lives to salvage it for others. Haitians are seeing this effort in action as I type this out. Countless people from many different countries have come to together to raise money, pull survivors from the wreckage and to operate on the injured. Governments that never speak to each other are now working together to help relieve a people who are suffering. And let us not forget the businesses and corporations who have donated their products and services. Corporate entities like Walmart, Bank of America, Kellog, Western Union, Go Daddy, Coca Cola and Amazon have all pledged to donate hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to support the relief effort of the Red Cross. Religious groups from Christian, Muslim, Judaism to humanists are all collectively doing their part as well.

There is a lesson to be learned here. We all have the ability to step aside from what would normally divide us, whether it be politics or religion, to perform the greatest of acts of compassion towards the men and women in such desperate need. Globalization, love it or hate it, if not directly responsible we can at least see it is at least indirectly responsible for this mass coexistence. A century ago, our international relations would not be where it is today. Contrary to popular belief, times really are getting better. More peaceful is our world today in regard to human relations. Sure we have numerous problems ahead of us, but times like this give me hope that we can get the job done. Through tragedy, the human race can come together, and my heart sings it's praises tonight.

Losing My Blog Virginity.

Like a virgin, I am blogging for the very first time. Though I am unsure if the comparison is accurate since I am blogging alone and no one will probably ever read my nonsense. The fact that I am new to the blogosphere remains. I became interested in keeping a blog of my own after receiving an invite from a friend who writes in her Ethical Omnivores blog.

I realized after looking through her posts that there is a great potential to influence others by blogging on subjects I research on my own time. (Some things I do not research happen to be grammar and punctuation so please excuse my blatant ignorance.) The potential I am referring to is the ability to show others that life does not have to be so polarizing. There is more to this world then mere black and white viewpoints. So my vision here is to color your world with the simple words I have learned to use. I will blend the hues of my spectroscopic mind and coalesce them into consonants and vowels to produce organised information that can change the very world that may have been long held on to.

As the title of this blog, My Own Inquiry states, this will also be a learning experience for myself. This is a chance for me to adapt in the information environment that surrounds me. My evolution begins as I write today and the changes will not be revealed till I look upon it later in life.

In my blog, I will make it a point to keep nothing sacred. Let the synaptic dissection begin.