TheBanyanTree: I'm Awake Now.

[Tom Smith]

Just saw the scariest movie I've ever seen in my life:  An Inconvenient
Truth.  That truth is a monster.  I'm left stunned by both the extent
of
the threat (nothing else really matters) and the magnitude of the
remedy.  My wife Barbara and I are finally on the same side of an issue
though with different motivations.  She wants to prevent polar bears
from drowning, and I'd like to continue breathing (in order to save the
polar bears.)
  
Long before seeing the movie I was uncomfortably aware of the
consequences of too much CO2.  I remember Apollo 13 and the necessity
for the astronauts to improvise a "scrubber" to prevent a fatal buildup
of CO2 in their capsule.  I had watched a NOVA show about the sudden
release of CO2 from an African lake that suffocated all the inhabitants
of a nearby villiage, and I knew that CO2 buildup in certain areas
around Mammoth Lakes, California, was killing trees and occasionally
deer.  A high school science teacher told me about a demonstration he
performed for students in which candles were placed at various heights
in an empty acquarium and CO2 was poured in.  As the CO2 settled to the
bottom and displaced Oxygen, the upper candles flickered and the lowest
went out.

I argued with a friend who believed, like millions of others, (and Big
Oil), that our earth and atmosphere was too big for any effect of man
to
have consequence.  My friend acknowledged that unusually large volcanic
eruptions had altered the earth's climate significantly in the past.  I
tried to imagine just how big a volcano would be created if all the CO2
emitters at any given time were gathered into a cone-shaped pile,
erupting 24/7 for decades..

So, I'm going to join Mike and Julie and devote some meaningfuul
personal effort, daily, for the rest of my life, in the interest of the
air I breathe and the planet I love.

Tom



       
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