[-Sunday, July 23, 2006-]

State of Fear

Update blog again. Hahax!! These few days did not blog bcos nuthin to blog. But not busy playing Maple la, but busy reading novels. Cos i start to go library again. Den Clive Cussler and Michael Crichton gort new novels le!! Woot!! I like to read their books. One word "SHIOK" !!

M.C got 2 new novels, 1 calls State of Fear which is about Environmental problems. Do u believe? There is environmental activists or aka terrorists. LoLx!! They kill people by encouraging more storms and floods tru technologies and use media as tools to amplify their cause that all these disasters are due to our famous "Global Warming".

M.C's stand in his book is that Global Warming is non existant(will state y later). I kinda agree tou. Does anyone know that actually we are going tru a small ice age period? Wad do i mean ice age? It means that actually our current weather is consider cold and not hot compared to billion of years ago. Well, i learnt it from a module in nus during year 1. And de prof always gets to talk in Channel News Asia last time for his opinions on the Tsunami and Kyoto's treaty. How i noe? Cos i get to see it on TV mobile while going to school. This prof and M.C's stand are different. My prof believed in global warming and increasing carbon dioxide is the main cause of global warming. Apparently, M.C dun buy that bullshit as there had been evidence that rising of CO2 does not increase global warming.

Another thing, most people believed that global warming leads to increase rise in sea level. Well, i do believe. But, from what M.C found from the science journals, it turned out to be. Sea level remain almos the same or doesn't change at all. Shocking huh? I was shocked. After finished reading his book, i kinda change my opinions on nature and other thing. So now i looking forward to his latest novel called "Prey". Cant find it so hopefully i can find it when i returned the books. ^^

Here are some comments from M.C and also some parts of the story which are worth pondering:

"No buts, Ted. Name an action that had only positive consequences."
"Okay, i will. Banning CFCs for the ozone layer."
"That harmed 3rd World people by eliminating cheap refrigerants so that their food spoiled more often and more of them died of food poisoning."
"But the ozone layer is more impt --"
"Perhaps to u. They might disagree. But we're talking about whether u can take an action that does not have harmful consequenes."

"Okay. Solar panels. Water recycling systems for huses."
"Enables people to put houses in remote wilderness areas where formaly they could not due to lack of water and power. Invades wilderness and thus endangers species that were previously unmolested."

"Banning DDT." (This one i liked most. Made me feels that im so lack of knowledge =()
"Arguably the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. DDT was the best agent against mosquitos, and despite te rhetoric there was nothing anywhere near as good or as safe. Since the ban, 2 million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. All together, the ban has caused more than 50 million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler, Ted. And the environment movement pushed hard for it."
"But DDT was a carcinogen."
"No, it wasn't. And everybody knew it at the time of the ban."
"It was unsafe."
"Actually, it was so safe you could eat it. People did just that for 2 years, in one experiment. After the ban, it was replaced by parathion, which is really unsafe. More than a hundred farm workers died in the months after the DDT ban, because they were unaccustomed to handling really toxic pesticides."

"We disagree about all this."
"Only because you lack the relevant facts, or are unwilling to face up to the consequences of the actions of organisations you support. Banning DDT will someday be seen as a scandalous blunder."

"DDT was never banned."
"You're right. Countries were jus told that if they used it, they wouldn't get foreign aid." Kenner shook his head.
"But the unarguable point, based on UN statistics, is that b4 the ban, malaria had become almos a minor illness. 50 thousand deaths a year worldwide. A few yeas later, it was once again a global scourage. 50 million people have died since the ban, Ted. Once again,they can be no action without harm."

Author's message:

- We know astonishing little abt every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it. In every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainity.

- We are in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a 400 year cold spell known as the "Little Ice Age."

- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might b a natural phenomenon.

- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might b man-made.

- Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. Only guesses from computer models.

- I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new info than for those who cling to views they held 30 years ago.

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings bcos we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a 1000 people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only 1 hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science.

But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power."

That is the danger we now face. And that is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history and b certain that wad we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.
"Never ask why i love you, just accept that i do." || 9:05 PM