An Inconvenient Truth

It seem to be good to start the 1st day of 2008 to know some truth about the earth we are living, so I watched the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" this afternoon. Turn out it's not about earth, it's about what we, as human being, has done to the blue planet.

Al Gore goes around the whole US and places in Europe, China, Japan, Korea. Presenting his slide show thousands times, he has brought up much awareness of global warming. His slides presenting the scientific data to display how's the temperature going up over the past 15 years and the consequence of glacier's melting, rising of sea levels. And with the increasing of CO2 and pollution, the temperature is still keep going up. If we didn't face the fact and act on it, we are going to face a serious climate threat in 50 years ahead.

I have heard about it since a few years ago. Al Gore got a lot of resistance on the acceptance of the threat from medias, related energy or utilities corporates, and opposite political party. There are many who doubt about it and call global warming might not be something "proven" yet. Michael Crichton's book "State of Fear" seem to be one of the reference, although it's a fiction. I found this to be interesting, as Michael claimed he spent 3 over years to read through tons of articles/documents (the book has 20+ pages of reference citing articles from scientific reference) and he has his view point that the cause to the warming is yet unknown and not proven.

(disclaimer: I have not yet read "State of Fear", I learn this from people who have read it and some search on Internet)

Now, without further study or research, how do we as a ordinary person to judge? Obviously, Al Gore seem having more hard proof/data, he's awarded Nobel Piece Prize of 2007, and he has a supportive team to study and help to educate/dispatch the truth. And yet Michael Crichton is on his own, I still seeing some people arguing on newsgroup to stand on his point!

All I wanted to say is, I find this amazing. The story telling is always a more powerful and convincing channel to convince people. The changes of weather is pretty obviously observed and the disasters in recent years show us something is really happening. It's probably a matter of dispute of whether CO2 is the main cause or is that again some conspiracy theory against big corp/government. I should go to read the book and figure it out.

Note: Wikipedia's "State of Fear" entry contains links of scientists's refuting of the inaccuracies in the book. Nevertheless, it should still worth a read.

失去的是什么？

《每個大人心里都住著一個孩子；而每個小孩心理，都有個未來的成人靜靜等候。》

可是大人再也不會有“從此過著幸福快樂的日子”的期待，童話也不是個多好的逃避場所。“失物之書”讓我想起了小時候讀童話的快樂，也考驗我的記憶力 -- 不過我實在很多都猜不出來，只隱約記得故事的輪廓，細節不復考究。。

或許考查原本的童話故事會有個愉快的回憶，作者的顛覆會更有意義。可是我很懶，我只想拾回閱讀的樂趣、享受它出人意料的曲折。 比起像電影“Shrek"的”童話的另一面", 失物之書要說的似乎更多。我不是很了解書里更深層次的一面。 它讓我所想起，所了解的，是我喪失的想像力 -- 那些隨童話，童年玩樂而去的創造力。 每個人小時候或都會有那么一本小冊子，或者都儲在小腦袋里；那里裝著你辛苦收集來的小石，動物標本。。。每一樣東西都有它自己的故事-- 一個你賦以它的故事，一個你認真無比創編出來的故事。。。那時候的想象力真是無窮無盡啊，這是大人心里住著，等著蹦出來的孩子嗎？