The Inconvenient Truth

I am really freaked and worried about my future.....correction about all our fututres and that of mankind and our planet in general. The reason being that i saw The Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore's Oscar winning documentary - last night. It was very chilling and if all the data shown in it are true, it wont be long before all of mankind would have to search for a new home in the vast realm of the universe. My respect for Al Gore has increased after seeing his flawless and heart-felt presentation in this documentary. The animations shown in the movie/documentary are easy even for laymen with school level knowledge to understand. I commmend and applaude his earnest effort in trying to do something useful.....he seems to have given this presentation in at least a 1000 cities all over the world.

This documentary deals with the global warming issue which is enroute to becoming man's ultimate nemesis if nothing is done about it. Some of the data shown in it is of the never before seen kind except in the academia. The graphs on CO2 emissions and their relations with temperature are beautifully illustrated and their extrapolations into the next 50 years sends shivers down your spine regarding the consequences. In the words of Wiston Churchill, The Age of Procastination & Delay is long gone and we have to face the Age of "Consequences".

Countless pictures show the retreat of glaciers in places starting from the northern edge of the U.S.A to the Italian Alps, Switzerland, Mount Kilimanjaro and the Arctic and Antarctic Shelves. Sadly neither is India spared......On my trip to Uttarakhand a week back, all we heard were reports of glaciers retreating at alarming rates, snow not falling as thick as before, and so on. The Government has restriceted the entry of people to the Gaumukh region of the Katling Glacier from where springs the Bhagirathi river (which goes on to become the Ganges at Deoprayag an joining with the Alaknanda river) as the people and pollution is making the glacier retreat even faster. Such reports are quite heartbreaking....to think the spellbounding views and glimpses we had the fortune of witnessing a week back might not last the turn of this century!!!!

Some really astonishing facts were revealed. For example, Polar bears are drowning (yes you read right, drowning) because they grew tired after swimming almost 60 miles and still ot finding substantial ice shelves for their survival!!!!!!! Also the military was coaxed by Gore to realease the fact that submarines are able to surface very easily at numerous places right through the ice. The implication being that the ice accumulation is 3.5 feet or less because otherwise, they cant surface. Scientists cant fathom how one portion of the ice caps has retreated by about 30 feet in the past 5 years!!! That is way beyond even their prediction taking projected values of global warming into account!!!

Its almost like the Earth itself breathes. Since most of the landmass and vegetation is in the Northern Hemisphere, during our summer, the plants perform photosynthesis and CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere and its value and the atmosphere goes down (seen quite plainly on plotting a graph). In our winter as the leaves fall and decay all the CO2 is released back drastically increasing the amount in the atmosphere again seen very clearly in a graph. So its almost like in the course of a year, the Earth breathes in and out CO2. Makes you feel like Earth is living too.....

And its heart stopping to note that if any substantial portion of those ice caps breaks or if the whole of Greenland melts, sea levels worldwide would rise by a whopping 20 feet! MOst of the coastal areas are going to be submerged and Netherlands will be wiped clean off the map......Also the effect on the different currents that permeate all the oceans and seas will completely stop working or be thrown into havoc. At this rate global warming will destroy the earth as we have known it (in fact, its already doing that) and soon deem it even unfit to live. Where do we go then?? Where should we look for a new place that can be called home??

Surprisingly, India's emissions are relatively lesser compared to China US and even Japan taking into consideration our population levels.....Though of course thats no reason for us not to start changing our the way we live our lives and push for reforms that would reduce the carbon footprints of everyone in this country. The one thing thats encouraging to see is that of all the new 'clean' technologies and emission reducing measures are collectively used, there are signs that our emission levels could drop to levels lower than those in the '70s. That seems like the way forward and it wont happen until each one of us does our bit to reduce the carbon footprint. I would like to request everyone who reads this to take out the time from your busy schedules and see this documentary for the sake of our future generations and the only home we have got - Our Earth - if not anything else.


P.S. A carbon footprint is a "measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide".