An armchair environmentalist

[caption id="attachment_2133" align="aligncenter" width="720" caption="Tree planting is one of the requirements of the fourth year students of Stella Maris Academy of Davao. (Photo courtesy of Herica Tiu.)"][/caption]

Even if I flunked one grading period of my high school Chemistry and even if Science is a subject I don't particularly have a strong affection with, I know what global warming is. It is partly caused by human activities. We released too much greenhouse gases---carbon dioxide and methane are some examples---into the atmosphere, so that they form a kind of blanket that traps the heat that entered the planet instead of being bounced back out of the planet.

There is no panacea to global warming, but the most common, one that has in fact done by many people in many places, is to plant trees. For, trees sequester carbon.

I've done tree planting before, and I could tell it's exhausting.

But to those who want to help Mother Earth but have no time to go out and plant trees, one can blog. Yes, in lieu of planting is blogging.

Think again

[caption id="attachment_278" align="alignright" width="133" caption="Timothy Ball, PhD"][/caption]

According to Professor Timothy "Tim" Ball, one of Canada's first PhD holders in Climatology and pioneer of reconstructing the past climates, global warming doesn't exist. But few people believed it. Professor Tim Ball knows why.

"I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Prof. Tim Ball said. "A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law."

Professor Tim Ball belongs to the camp of "heretics" in the climate change debate. Although some would call him and his ilk as "skeptics", "heretics" is more fitting a term. Like the heretics in the past centuries, he is met with disdain and damnation for challenging scientific dogma. The scientific dogma being that global warming exists; that CO2 causes it; and that we should act swiftly before it's too late.

For espousing views that contradict the popular notion, he is scoffed at.  "I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague,saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures," Prof. Tim Ball said.

Yet he stood by what he believed is based on facts. Whether you "Believe it or not," Dr. Tim Ball said, "Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2)."