The Essay of Truth

The Essay of Truth

In the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” our pal Al Gore made some very bold statements. Among them was “The number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.” This movie happened to take place in 2005, a year which has shown to be a bit of an anomaly. Over the last 30 years it does appear that the number of large hurricanes has increased. The year 2005 was fuel for Al Gore’s self-serving rant, but it does appear that for the most part his claim was accurate. After the year of 2005, the level of hurricanes hasn’t increased any more - in actual fact there have been fewer each year to date. In an “El Ninio” year the waters are warmer; these years are usually predicted to be worse for hurricanes. There is no denying the fact that warmer water increases the power of hurricanes… but the year 2005 was by no means an example of things to come.

Sources: google search – hurricane timeline graph on 11^th hit

Wikipedia – list of category 5 Atlantic hurricanes

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricne/atlantic/

When humanity is faced with a problem there are two things we do: declare war on it, or invent some expensive high tech thing to combat it. It seems that tonnes of new ideas have been produced. One of them is of course the hybrid car, including the favourite of middle-aged women, and one or two other people around the world… the Toyota Prius. Others include those giant wind turbines, hybrid buses, electric trains, and solar panels. Some low tech options are: using the costly bike lanes that prevent parking, walking instead of driving, taking public transit, and carpooling. Although Al Gore likes to exaggerate, it would be a good idea to cut down on carbon emissions.

Lifestyle changes that could be made to reduce our carbon emissions include: getting away from our dependence on cars, and finding a way to be in less of a hurry (so cars are not as needed). Societal values include a high value on cars. Most people would not willingly give up something that has such financial and/or sentimental value. Communities like Vancouver and Sutherland have options for helping to end Global Warming… Vancouver can actually make its transit system better, Sutherland can give prizes to people who walk or bike to and from school, and make people pay to park. Our government’s role in supporting should be to educate us of what is going on, and to enforce major violations of the environmental restrictions that they should set.