Climate

Great Britain and in particular London has had the most freakish of weathers this week. One merry afternoon whilst enjoying a tipple of the finest in my local drinking establishment, I noticed the clouds darken and the day turn to night in just a few minutes. The last time that happened, a tornado struck London. This time, it was, rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain. Then multiple lightining strikes within seconds of each other. Hail stones. Is this the beginning of more to come? For all the creative licence the director and producers had of the film "The Day after Tomorrow", through exaggeration they clearly knew how to make a point. Most adults living will have noticed how the weather patterns have changed dramatically over the last twenty five years. I have. First it was the snow, then the sunshine, the lack of rain one moment and then the sheer quantity of the stuff. Droughts in a country that has seen more rain than ever before? For once, I think mother nature is on top of us and I suspect that the political will and economics of this country will be too slow to adapt to the new minor natural disasters we will face. Millions of pounds have already been lost in just a few days of heavy rain. And I still am grateful that at least we aren't as hard up as some other countries which have huge problems with prolonged flooding and drought. I find that although we are experiencing mini versions of them, we can at least appreciate what it is those poor souls have been through.

Climate Change

As some of you know, I believe in saving the planet and I do what ever I can to help renew and reuse resources. I like to reuse plastic bags instead of getting new ones from the shop. I recycle newspapers and magasines and glass bottles and jars religiously. I even on occasions reuse toilet paper.

The popularity vote at the moment as the pace gathers momentum for changing our policies on global warming is for MP's to vocalise there concerns about the environment and what their initiatives are towards changing current policy. Now that I've just re-read that, it sounds like a load of old bull.

What irritates me is that politicians are trying to steer this issue for political gain. Here's another suggestion then. Like the United Nations, I believe there should be a global influencial body setup tasked with effecting anti-global warming initiatives. Decisions to decrease CO2 emissions should be made regardless of a countries economic status. The USA are major culprits as most of their economy seems to depend on oil. Without that the USA would collapse. The smarter people would say that perhaps as the richest nation on the planet, they could invest or take the lead in developing profitable alternative, greener sources of energy. Without sounding like there is a conspiracy behind it all, but what if cold fusion has already been invented. How could someone charge for something that is free? Surely the expense of harnessing this energy would be so negligable that putting resource in developing other great things like ending poverty and increasing education amongst the poor would be the way to go. Take away the cost of something means making a saving. Make a saving, spend it on something else.

Whatever happened to "Africa Aid". The richest countries cancelling out debt for some of the poorest African countries and providing financial aid to bring stability and harmony to the people. Politically driven and therefore a flop.

Scientists are best equipped to realise to the world the consequences of what is to become of our beloved planet and it is for the people as a whole to help counter act global warming. From the literature I have read so far, we have already started walking down that one way road to serious climate change, the question is now, what can we do to slow the effects? There is talk of harnessing nuclear power to provide us with a clean source of energy. I think it may be the only way to go. People whose belief lies in old fashioned idea's of nuclear energy being dangerous have every right to be but have they ever considered just how many years ago Chenobyl exploded. The kind of technology available now is much more sophisticated and reliable. What about terrorist attacks? We all live in a world where terrorism dominates our every lives (thank you Tony Blair and George W. Bush), with this consideration in mind, I would like to think that the builders of the next generation of nuclear power plants would take this into account.

All of the problems we currently face as human beings are closely interlinked. Poverty, education, regional conflicts, starvation, natural disasters, man-made disasters, political struggle, crime. All of these issues have a root cause. The circumstances in which we live in. If we could focus on a common objective then perhaps some of these other issues become lesser ones.

I don't pretend to know about what goes on in the world but I do think that the matters that I have mentioned above won't matter one little bit once our planet becomes our tomb.