I am not a scientist or Al Gore but I think Global Warming is real. I was not a believer in the beginning but after what has been happening in Johannesburg this past week, it’s safe to say Mr. Gore was right, we are going through a profound change in weather patterns and I am suffering for it. It’s like a cold rainy winter in Johannesburg and most of Southern Africa is at the height of summer. That’s just crazy, don’t you think? I woke up yesterday to news that the high temperature for the day was going to be 16 degrees Celsius. At first I thought I had slept through the rest of the summer and woke up in July. However, I was wrong I checked my calendar and I saw it was still March. WHAT! 16 degrees in summer!

On my drive to work I was thinking to myself, what if Al Gore won the 2000 US Presidential Election, would we have known about Global Warming? Would an Inconvenient Truth have been made? After a quick Google Search on Global Warming, I have come to understand that there has been raging debate in the science a.k.a geek/nerd world about this issue for along time. Some say that this is just a weather phenomena and can’t be directly linked to humans and their polluting industries. Whereas others are adamant that this ‘phenomena’ is a direct result of humans polluting the earth for the last 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution. The later believe that the process can be reversed or managed but we have to begin now. Governments have to sign Global Warming protocols like Kyoto.

This is all well and good but the largest and guiltiest polluter, the United States is not a signatory of Kyoto. They are part of a small community who believe that Global Warming has nothing to do with human pollution. The truth of it is that the US fears that curtailing and legislating against pollution would affect many of its industries, thus making it more expensive to produce and compete with Asia. I understand where they are coming from but the problem is that they are not even making an effort to at least curtail pollution, which will have long term effects on it anyway. Hurricane Katrina and the recent Tornadoes in downtown Atlanta seem not to be reason enough for the US to wake and smell the polluted air and come to realise that Global Warming is real and may destroy parts of the earth as we know them.

South Africa is a lowly African country at the bottom of Africa but it’s equally affected by Global Warming. Winter weather in summer, long winters in the Western Cape etc are reason enough to believe that the seasons as we know them maybe changing and there will be more devastating weather phenomena on its way. All I am hoping for is that summer does not become like the Northern Hemisphere summer, 3 months and 9 months of winter. Living in Johannesburg, winter is no joke, its freaking cold and now with the power issues, winter will be cold and dark. FLIP! I hate Global Warming!

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