Global Warming: An Inconvenient Truth

Since our last class discussion on Thursday about what our final projects would be I have been searching for something that I was interested in and actually wanted to write about. To my surprise the source that peeked my interest was a movie that I watched over the weekend. An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary about global warming and the implications that it has and will continue to have on our planet. I had heard many different things about global warming and the movie before watching it. I must admit that I was one of the non believers; but that’s not what this film is about. It isn’t trying to put blame on anyone and it doesn’t have any other ulterior motives, political or not. It simply presents facts from many independent sources and makes the viewer want to do his or her part to help solve the problem. After watching the film it seemed clear to me that global warming is happening and it is something that we can and must address.
What really surprised me was that the film offered so much undeniable evidence to support its claim but it is still not something that is taken seriously by the mass. Studies upon studies have been conducted that prove global warming is occurring and it will only continue to occur. In the last 30 years, 400,000 square miles of Artic sea ice has melted. Whole states will be submersed in as early as 50 years. Anyone who has seen the trailer, which if you cannot find time to see the movie, at least watch the trailer, can spout out several astonishing statistics that are quite frankly scary.
One would think that something of this magnitude, something with so many implications on millions of lives that the government would take action. So what has the government done? Absolutely nothing. My intention is to put together a timeline of events that show what global warming has done to our planet; also I intend to write a formal research paper about global warming. Hopefully this project will be able to inform people of what global warming is and what it means to us as a society.

Texts and Contexts


I have not taking many writing courses; in fact I have only taken a handful of writing classes at the University level. In these few classes I have written in the traditional genres, research papers, proposals, and other business type writings. To help ignite our creativity none of my professors for these classes have ever used any of the techniques talked about in the Sumerfield reading, most likely because of the style of writing. I am not sure that any of these techniques would really help me out. I would enjoy the writing in complete darkness technique, not sure how useful it would be for me but it would be interesting. To me the most important aspect of trying to create an environment conducive to promoting creativity is the class structure. As they mentioned when students feel comfortable to share ideas and express themselves to their classmates this is when students are at their creative peaks. I totally agree with this idea. In classes where I get to know my classmates I feel more comfortable and feel that I can offer my opinions and ideas without hesitation. I also feel that I get more out of classes such as this and tend to do better. Coincidence?

One piece of advice that I did get from reading Texts and Contents is to learn how to read and write with the ear. I feel that this is a good piece of advice. When I hear a story the story takes form in my mind differently than when I read it to myself. I pick up on the small details that often times make a story good easier when I hear it than when I read it. It is almost as if the story comes alive when I hear it as opposed to when I read it. Like when I am reading my mind is to0 cluttered with the words to take the time and “paint” the picture for me. So when I hear something my mind is able to form a picture of what I am hearing in my head much better, in turn making the whole experience better. This can be interpreted as an enabling constraint which is something that was talked about in the reading. I do agree with the idea that some constraints are disabling and some are enabling; by identifying all the constraints and then labeling them as either enabling or disabling we can be more productive. Once we are aware of what some of the enabling constraints are we can then use those to our advantage by incorporating those into the activities we do in order to become better writers.

Thinking in Pictures: Artists and Accountants (Grandin)

Grandin’s observations about what she calls “thinking in pictures” are very interesting to me. I, like many others, was aware of the use of pigeons as messengers but never really thought about what the implications of this were. I never stopped to think about how the pigeon knew how to get home. Reading about how pigeons make their way home made me realize that maybe animals do have the capacity to think at a higher level than I had previously assumed. Hearing of other stories of other animals behaving in ways that would make me believe that they do have cognitive capabilities and these capabilities are different than the way humans think, well for the most part. Although I was not enthused to find out that the human brain is not much different in terms of physical size and makeup than that of a pig or horse, she does make a good point that the most dramatic difference would be between how we respond to our emotions and how we deal with them as opposed to how animals deal with them. I couldn’t help thinking that as babies we all “think in pictures”. Children will constantly learn things by first relating to pictures. Children books are overwhelmingly dominated by pictures, why, maybe because we first learn by “thinking in pictures” and then evolve to a more involved way of learning.


Lives of a Cell (Thomas)

It is interesting to think of a community as a cell, that instead of individuals working to obtain personal goals we are actually working together to achieve a larger more universal goal. That we might be biologically programmed to do specific tasks without us knowing and these tasks are meant to help the “community” to achieve a desired goal; in this sense we would be similar to bees or termites. Personally I have trouble agreeing with this because I would like to think I have a more meaningful impact on whom or what I am. However, Thomas does give us some reason for hope. As he points out we have not had much time to evolve and will keep evolving for many, many years to come. Hopefully we will learn to use our brains to a higher degree and achieve much more.

I also thought that Thomas’ observation of how much individual autonomy is a good thing or bad thing interested me. The fact that at some point we may be able to control specific brain activities individually is at a first glance exciting and something to strive for. However, Thomas makes a very good point, are we capable of managing our own bodies? I tend to agree with him that we for the most part are not. I think this is a very dangerous line to walk, at what point does it stop? I would not want to be in control of my own body. I would probably be so focused on the more complex bodily functions that I would forget to breathe! Furthermore those who had the ability to do so and then teach others would inherently gain power over those who cannot. Who would decide who would be taught and how would this decision be made?