Enough of footie talk. Something else.
28th of March will be the day that we are all supposed to shut off our lights to express our support against the global warming. Not really to combat global warming head on, because shutting off our air-conditioners and PlayStations would be much more effective, but just to show, "I care".
Not so long ago, there was a very moving movie made by 'used to be the next President of the United States', Al Gore, titled "An Inconvenient Truth". The breathtaking slides, together with the Century Gothic sans serif fonts, the stunning pictures in between, finished off with his sweet politician talk, was a really effective message to the world, and to me at least. I was so moved that I decided, for my persuasive presentation (in my Professional Communication Skills course), I would be persuading people to stop global warming.
So I did some research, very surface ones, and my lalang just got blown the other way. Perhaps, there is no global warming after all.
No, only an idiot would say global warming is a myth. Global warming is not a myth and it is very true, but saying that we humans are the cause of global warming is in fact the myth.
There is one popular scene in "An Inconvenient Truth" that caught my attention, the scene where Al Gore used his scissor lift to emphasis on how unnatural is the current carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere (the scene was parodied in "The Simpsons Movie"). People at Antartica drilled ice cores to measure carbon dioxide content and global temperatures as far back as 650 thousand years ago, and it showed a pattern of global warming as well as ice ages. However, he pointed out how humans have caused the CO2 concentration to be way off the natural cycle. He, though, interestingly, did not show the corresponding graph of temperature, hinting there might be no direct relation between CO2 concentration and global temperature.
In fact, I find it very hard to believe that current CO2's concentration can actually affect the atmospheric temperature by a few degrees. Mind you, CO2's concentration is still measured in ppm, parts per million. If each person would represent one part of the atmospheric content in a 50000-odd stadium, only 19 people would be representing carbon dioxide. Even the police circumferencing the pitch can simply outnumber them.
Plus, there are so much more gases the we should worry even more. Methane, a gas that is produced by the decay of organic matters - including poop - has around 25 times more potential to cause global warming. Water vapour itself has a heat capacity 500 times higher than that of carbon dioxide. Recent study showed that nitrogen trifluoride, NF3, a gas used in production of microprocessor chips, has a global warming potential 16800 times of CO2.
However, myth or not, it is always good to 'stop global warming'. Part of combating global warming is being moderate in everything, but most notably in energy usage. Saving energy is always good, even if humans never caused global warming. In fact, any form of moderation is always encouraged in Islam and perhaps in all religions. Turning off the fans and lights while no one is using saves electricity, which in turn reduces the burning of fossil fuels at power plants. Even saving water can save energy, because the more water we waste, the more water needs to be treated, hence using more energy. And recycling always helps by making less trees to be cut down.
I don't know if I will turn off my lights on 28th of March, because convincing people the opposite of what Al Gore has convinced the world is quite a monumental (and useless) task. I don't, and still don't, believe that global warming is caused by humans, but the steps that are promoted towards 'reducing the global warming' is always good, so, oh what the heck.
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