Fight Climate Change (Part I)

My greatest take-away fr. GEK 1535 is learning
about the true nature of climate change and just how bad it really is.
For me, the highlight was still watching An Inconvenient Truth
(hey it beats listening to boring lectures).
But overall, it is still a great module if for nothing anything
than learning what really is Global Warming fr. a scientific perspective.

Thanks to it, I have to learnt to debunk facetious statements
abt Global Warming. For instance, consider this statement from
Superfreakonomics which is written by a pretty smart economist.

“When Al Gore urges the citizenry to sacrifice… the agnostics grumble
that human activity accounts for just 2 percent of global carbon-dioxide
emissions, with the remainder generated by natural processes like plant decay.”
- pg 170 of Superfreakonomics

This is true. Yes, we learnt this in the course. However, wad it does not state
that wad natural activities create, they take away. The release of CO2 by
decomposition is balanced by the absorption of CO2 by photosynthesis.
So there is eqm and no net increase.

To the best of my knowledge, humans do not photosynthesize do they?
(Please correct me if I am wrong here).
We simply contribute to CO2, we do not take away.
So any increase muz obviously be due to our activities. We are responsible
for the problem, and we must be part of the solution.

Now I really think tt Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner (authors of Superfreakonomics)
may be brilliant in economic analysis, but they really suck at understanding
how this thing really works. Maybe they need to take GEK 1535.

No wonder they go onto recommend "geo-engineering" slns such as
pumping lotsa SO2 into the stratosphere so that the sulphate
particles can scatter sunlight and reduce global warming.
Anyone with a basic idea of atmospheric chem will tell you it isn't a very
smart thing to do. They insist tho, that it is "cost-effective".
All they know is to calculate the cost without understanding the potential
impact of such actions.

But the worst thing is writing a book which is gonna be widely read and
filling it with misleading statements.This will cause mis-informed ppl to
actually believe their bullshit and walk away thinking tt climate change is
no big issue because smart guys said so.

Not tt I like to nit-pick at economists, but this is another instance of
socially - irresponsible behaviour.
Shame on you guys!!!

In part 2, I hope to reflect upon how each and everyone of
us contributes to the problem and what we might do.

P.S. I think a great start wld be taking GEK 1535 and defending
ourselves against the bull-shit which exists out there.

P.P.S. Lotsa ppl hav already criticized them abt this issue but I tot
this was the time for me to do so cos of the personal relevance
while Im revising 1535.