Video Response #3- Great Title, Need More Solutions

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim about former vice president Al Gore’s slide show and campaign to educate people about global warming.   Al Gore first learned about the issue of global warming as a college student and has been an environmental activist since the 1970’s.  He has become very passionate about advocating for change in our laws and how we live to help alleviate this pressing problem.

Former vice president Gore does an excellent job delivering information to his audience.  By using humor and personal life stories and tragedies, he is able to be personable and keep his audience open to what comes next.  Mr. Gore presents some staggering facts about the current state of the physical terrestrial environment due to climate change and global warming.  He discusses issues such as receding glaciers and ice caps, and how it will continue to change our land masses.  Mr. Gore talks passionately about the changing of the seasons and the effect it is having on our ecosystem and the huge change we are seeing in the weather, which is causing draughts, flooding, and outrageous storms that is happening worldwide! 

Mr. Gore states several times during this film that this is a moral issue that we cannot ignore.  He states that there are three factors contributing to the issue at hand; population, technological revolution, and our way of thinking.  This is where the film was lacking for me.  I did not get much about solutions.  I heard a lot about the changes that are happening but I did not hear enough about what we can do to help alleviate these problems.  I believe that if the film would have included more on solutions it would have been complete.

The article titled, “Expansion of the Fox Permafrost Tunnel Planned,” written in the Daily News Miner by Ned Rozzen, is a description of the fox permafrost tunnel near Goldstream road. This tunnel was first drilled by the Army Corp of Engineers in the cold war era for experimentation purposes. Now that cold region engineers have been introduced to the tunnel for about the last 40 years, a pleathera of permafrost engineering experiments and testing have been done. Along with research about the life that has been frozen in the ice for possibly thousands of years. As an Engineer myself this is extremely interesting to see. It was the first time such a variety of types of permafrost has been seen in such a small area. Frozen silts, ice wedges, ice lenses, only to name a few. A second shaft through the mountain side is planned to be drilled soon. Allowing engineers and researchers to explore many different types of new research like thermal equilibrium when vegitation is removed, whether life on mars is possible, and much more. I can’t wait for my opportunity to visit the tunnels, and if you can see them  you should definitely take advantage of the opportunity.

http://www.newsminer.com/view/full_story/5792116/article-Expansion-of-Fox-Permafrost-Tunnel-planned

Reading Response 2: No more Livestock, Only Hybrids?

The article, Vegetarian is the New Prius, written by Kathy Freston, gives some scary statistics due to the growing demand for meat, eggs, and dairy and the harmful effects producing the goods is doing to our planet. This article was written for everyone to put an awareness out that we’ve started to do better for our planet by driving Toyota Prius cars with low emissions but the next step is to cut out poultry and other meats. Livestock is the highest contributing factor to harming our environment with both air and water pollution, poisoning land and worst, gases aiding in Global Warming.

Now we’ve started to reduce emissions by converting cars to hybrids such as the Prius. This article is suggesting our next step is to go vegetarian, start eating veggie burgers, soy based dairy, and tofu. Some restaurants are even helping move forward by serving veggie-based meals. Adding to helping our environment, this article demonstrates that going vegetarian will help our bodies as well.

This all sounds like a good thing but opposing this subject, not everyone wants to cut out meats all together. The pollution leading to global warming can be reduced without halting production on livestock. A lot of the farms can be more efficient in their waste disposal and growing of the animals. Reducing the steroids and chemicals used to grow the livestock would be a good start as well. What happened hundreds of years ago when all the extra chemicals weren’t used? Just raising the animals isn’t the only problem, the energy and gasses it takes to transport and slaughter the animals is harmful too. People need to be more inventive and find ways to do those jobs instead of just giving up and turning vegetarian.

This is a serious concern any way you look at it, but the way it can be handled could make the difference in eating meat or going for the veggie burger. Make a wise choice in a balanced meal, trying veggie meals more often. More responsible production, eating a salad, and driving a Pruis, every little bit helps keep our world in better shape.