Climate Change Becoming a Real Concern
Natalie & I watched the docu-film "An Inconvenient Truth" for the first time last night. I've been interested in effects of climate change from increasing levels of carbon and other greenhouse gases, and I think that the film did a good job of presenting the issue in a format that most people can understand and identify with. However, I've seen several episodes of the PBS program "Nova" that provided more detailed explanations of the problem.
One of my favorite episodes of Nova addressed the study of air quality levels during the days following September 11, 2001, when all commercial air traffic in the United States was grounded. It offered the scientific community the chance to study the effects of an absence of air traffic on climate. The results were astonishing. Throughout the country, air temperature decreased noticeably in comparison to historical records held for the last 30 years. The conclusion drawn was that air traffic causes a discernable rise in atmospheric temperature. This is due to condensation trails (con-trails) that emerge from the exhaust of jet-powered airplanes. The con-trails act like a blanket that traps heat generated from surface activity or reflected sunlight.
So, I started wondering about how a rise in ocean levels might affect the San Francisco Bay Area where we live. There are a couple of good websites (i.e. Future Sea Level) devoted to the issue, one of which includes a Google Maps "mash-up" that shows the effects of varying increases in the sea-level on the Bay Area. Low-lying areas like Alameda and Emeryville will be inundated with only one-meter rise in sea level. This has led me to believe that purchasing property set upwards from the coast is a wise idea. Such areas include the Eastern sections of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro. The liklihood of such a catastrophe occuring encourages the consideration of environmental factors that have been ignored during times of relative calm. These are basic things, like ensuring protection from flooding, locating reliable sources of drinking water, and establishing contigency plans for transporation through risk-prone areas.
I found "An Inconvenient Truth" to be very informative, though a lot of the material was not new. I agree with the conclusion that businesses and the environment need not be mutually exclusive; however, the businesses that yield a profit might not be the same business currently profiting from the mining of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels. The lobbying powers of these traditional energy providers are the real reasons why fuel-efficient technologies have been slow to develop in the United States.