Global Warming and the Polar Vortex as explained by Hank Green

Ok so Hank Green is not a scientist. He is however, someone with an abundance of common sense and he has a way of explaining things which means more people can understand them. I like Hank, he's sensible and down to earth and realistic. It's hard to find in a vlogger.

The stuff Hank is talking about is exceptionally relevant to us today, and I have to say I agree with him. I think that the name Global Warming is very deceptive and confuses most people as to what is going on. But I also think that no matter what we call it the majority of people will still not be interested in whatever it is that's actually happening.

The global temperature rising by 4 degrees Celsius overall might not seem like a huge amount. But (to steal an idea from Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour), if your body temperature rose by 4 degrees, you'd be dead. I completely agree with Hank that the weather anomalies are not the way to think about global warming, as they don't give us a realistic view of what's going to happen. His way of thinking about global warming does make a lot of sense and I think it would help a lot of people to actually understand the process of what is happening to the world around us.

This is the kind of thing you should show people to make them start changing how they live

There isn't much that needs saying about this video. Its message and purpose are clear. I just hope that the more people who see it and understand it, the more people who will be willing to change their habits.

The original post was uploaded two years ago and is Midway's last video on vimeo. In the description of this video however, there is a promise of a feature film set to premiere early 2014. Have a look at his other videos - http://vimeo.com/25563376

Deforestation

We all know the saying  that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I hope a global satellite image of the amount of forest the Earth has lost and gained over the past 12 years is worth a lot.

The article below, published by the BBC two days ago, shows the countries who are cutting down on deforestation (please excuse the pun), and those who are allowing it to continue.

 The net loss of forest in twelve year over the globe is 1.5 million square kms. That is the equivalent of losing approximately one England sized chunk of forest every year. That doesn't sound ideal really.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24934790

The Apocalypse - Post 1 - General Grievances

So we ended our two hour seminar today talking about apocalyptic literature, a genre which I am fairly wary of for a number of reasons. (As you can see from the post title, this is not the only time I will talk about the apocalypse. It is a big part of environmental literature and could not possibly be covered in one text post.)

Apocalyptic literature, whether books or films, is always theatrical, fantastical, and downright unbelievable. And this poses a very real problem for environmentalists when the causes of the apocalypse are environmental - e.g. from climate change - as rather than making climate change seem like a realistic possibility, it makes it a horror story which can only happen in a writers imagination.

When you try and define "apocalypse" and get past the religious definitions (I shall return to them in a later post), the OED defines it as "a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm". The problem I have with this definition is that it does not seem big enough. Although it is on a global scale, it is not total, i.e. there are always survivors. Even in Cormac Mccarthy's "The Road" where the entire plant population is wiped out - in itself impossible but for now I will let it slide - humans survive. Or in Stephen King's "The Stand", there is a percentage of the population, however small, which is miraculously immune to the deadly virus which wiped out the rest of the human populous. This is what I mean by making it seem fantastical. These things could happen, it's true, however what could not happen is that people survive. Humans are adaptable, we are survivors, I cannot deny that, but the chance of even 1% of the population being immune to some incurable disease they have never been exposed to is so monumentally tiny that it is negligible. By drawing their inspiration from the almost completely implausible, writers are guilty of making the very feasible fall into the category of dramatic speculation.

Look at the film 2012 as an example. If you haven't seen it - spoiler alert - the whole world floods. This does not lead people to believe that the whole world could actually flood. It does not do this because the idea of that happening to you, to your family and friends is just too terrible. Your mind will not let you think about something so horrific because it is personal, but also because it is too big. It is an idea that we cannot comprehend. It is this same reason that these things are set within our lifetimes and not 1000 years in the future, it's too much for our imagination. But that's another post entirely...

My Mission Statement

I am of the opinion that we are surrounded by environmental crises. Not all are global in scale, some are irreversible, and the majority - if not the entirety - are the fault of humans. Scientists and people more ecologically aware than myself are currently debating whether or not we have reached the tipping point of global warming, the tipping point being the point of no return, i.e. the point where humans have ruined the Earth and its atmosphere to such an extent that there is no way of reversing the damage. This is a reality. The debate is not how many decades we are from reaching this point; it is about whether or not we have already passed it.

The more worrying fact is that there is a large proportion of the population who claim to care about the environment, which have absolutely no idea about the current state of affairs. I cannot claim to be an expert on the subject, but I’d like to think my knowledge surpasses the average persons on this particular subject. This leads me to wonder how much it is that people actually know and care about the environment, but also why they only know or care that much. Is it because there is not enough information on the subject publically available, or is it because the information is not intellectually accessible to many people, or is it simply that there is so much attention paid to it that people stop listening, stop caring, and tune out the constant nagging of the local council to recycle your tin cans and plastic bottles?