Why Alternative Energy

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Sometimes, I must admit, it is difficult to convince myself of the scientific basis for global warming and alternative energy. The data seems too easy to manipulate. Can scientists really predict temperatures 100 years into the future when it is so difficult to predict this year?s hurricane season? Perhaps with some probability of error.

What is clear, however, is that the thinning ozone layer isn?t getting any smaller around the Antarctic. Instead ?the hole? is getting bigger. And that is not good.

We know that biodiversity is important for our survival. Learning how different organisms and animals live and breath provides valuable, sometimes lifesaving, insight into our own lives. So we should do what we know we can while we can to protect the species that we have ? perhaps not to protect against cataclysmic global collapse in the distant future per se, but to address the dramatic change that?s happening now.

Another reason to stop destroying our environment with toxins like CO2 is less selfish: for a Love of Nature. And here too I?m not a big observer of nature. I will more readily read about societies and economies, chemistry, neurology or physics, and take pictures of man-made buildings. So how can one develop this love of nature?

One could try remembering a past experience that peaked one?s interest in one?s natural surroundings. For me, it wasn?t the trip to Yosemite or Yellowstone that did it. The incident came in eighth grade. I don?t remember it fondly. We had to collect insects and butterflies and pin them to the bottom of a box. What horror.

But I can see how someone else could have enjoyed the whole experience. What is scary to one person, may be thrilling to another. In fact, I?m reading a book which expertly conveys the joy of bug collecting, among other things. It was published in 1888. And it?s about the Agassiz Association, which was established by a Massachusetts teacher, based upon his lifelong love of nature, and named after someone he admired, a famous naturalist and inventor of his time, Louis Agassiz.

The Agassiz Association was founded on the ?belief that education is incomplete unless it include some practical knowledge of the common objects around us.? Tomorrow I will publish an excerpt from the book.

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Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaynejung/2012/01/02/why-alternative-energy/?feed=rss_home

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