Eric's Beijing Diary

Mark and I rode our bikes to the Musashi-sakai station, took the Chuo line to Yotsuya, switched to the Marunouchi line as far as Kasumigaseki, rode the Hibiya line to the Roppongi Hills station, and met Kahori at Starbucks.

The movie was called "An Inconvenient Truth." In my opinion, the most important part of the movie was the first 10 to 15 minutes. I am a skeptic by nature. I am not to sure what to think about global warming. And the discussion about what went on 600,000 years ago must be seen as highly speculative. But the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere...that is data that demands an explanation.

I first became alerted to the issue of global warming when John and I visited the Portage Glacier in Alaska back in the summer of 1997, and heard people commenting about how much smaller it was becoming. But after all, temperature trends are cyclical. These things to go up and down. But the steady year-on-year increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere closely matching rising levels of industrial activity--this is hard to ignore.