After a few days in Melbourne I noticed on the flight back that there was severe air pollution extending from Victoria all the way across Bass Strait to Tasmania, a distance of over 200KM. The air could best be described as "smoggy" with a typical dirty brown tinge, similar to the pollution that hovers over our major cities and extended almost to our cruising altitude (over 20,000 ft). After seeing Al Gore on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope, I couldn't help but think that what we're seeing now is the beginning of the end, in Al Gore's words we have around 10 years to act, after that it may just be too late. I doubt that our governments and big business have the will to act and from what I saw I can't help but think that we are in for some very troublesome times.
There is a very interesting progam airing on SPS dateline this Wed night http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php
The death of the Electric car
Must see TV I would say !
I notice that in the news there are reports that the Siberian permafrost is thawing for the first time in 40,000 years, releasing trapped methane (a worse greenhouse gas than C02) in to the atmpsphere. If that doesn't ring alarm bells then nothing will. Glaciers are shrinking all over the world, weather events are becoming more extreme, earthquakes caused by ice breakup in Greenland have increased dramatically every year, how much change do we need before action is taken by our governments.
Mankind faces some real challenges this coming century, Pollution and global warming at the top of the list. Sadly many pollies don't see it that way, It obviously isn't a vote winner
Nice image Huffy, but in reality how much of that light is really necessary, it makes me angry to see that so much could be done in the way of conservation, as a start, but nothing happens. If you didn't catch Al Gore (The man who should have been US president) on Enough rope it's worth reading the transcript from the ABC Website
That is a great transcript from ABC, very compelling reading
As Astronomers we can do our bit too ....
Plant lots of leafy low growing shrubs & Ensure full cutoff lighting is the standard installation
You are either part of the problem, or part of the solution
