a minor inconvenience? or a wake up call?

Finally got around to watch An Inconvenient Truth just now...

Oh my God........... Even though I am already aware of all the issues presented in the movie beforehand, I am still stunned as I watched it...
I never realized the true extent of the problem...

I've always (wrongly) assumed that everyone would probably have some idea on what is happening all around us, every single day... Boy was I wrong...

But could this be the end of humanity???......
Maybe not... It seems that Al Gore may have exaggerated and hyperbolized some of the contents of the movie...
But I have to say, it is indeed a great way to convey the message, and if it does not send alarm bells ringing in any right minded person, I doubt that person has the right to be called "right-minded"...

ACT NOW!!!
At least start by watching the movie, don't worry, it's presented in such a way that common people without a scientific background would still get a grasp on it...

and no, I'm not writing this to promote the movie or anything like that (hey, I don't get paid for doing this)... I just want as many people to realize what's going on... I'm doing this in my conscience as a human being, as a resident on this planet, as a part of the biosphere...

Hopefully I can make a difference, even if it's only a tiny bit... Every single act counts...


*one thing that kinda popped up in my mind when I watched...

We ecologists know of a phenomenon called "carrying capactiy" or termed as "K". Basically, a habitat has a finite carrying capacity, in which it can only support a certain relative population of organisms in it.

When the population exceeds the carrying capacity, the habitat cannot support it anymore, and an internal mechanism will drive the population down towards that maximum population limit (i.e. by famine, disease, etc), and the maximum population limit will fluctuate around the carrying capacity.

(okay, I have to say thanks to Dr. Kevin C. Burns for his BIOL214 lecture, lol)

I should probably also point out that human population is growing exponentially, especially in the past few decades... Since the main barrier on our population growth used to be war, famine, disease, and space...

But with the advent of our current technology, famine and disease have recently become more of a localized barrier instead of a universal one, and even though there are still war fought on the face of the earth, they are also localized in certain areas, and do not limit the global population growth.

And that leaves us with space, and this is the main limit on human population... However, human have begun to colonise places on earth which may not have been supposed to be colonised in the first place, and the result of this colonisation have left a scar on the face of the earth...

Now, when I watched the movie, I started thinking, does the human population on earth have neared, or even exceeded, the earth's carrying capacity?

Does the biosphere cannot longer support our exponential growth rate? Could global warming and climate change be the earth's mechanism of driving our population numbers down, or at least limiting our population growth?

For if this is true, we are probably on the verge of a massive die-off of human populations......*

I'll end this post with a quote from Sir Winston Churchill (also quoted in the movie)

"The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is"