In Fact

Educating Future Generations

On the Sunday during Earth Day weekend, I found my eight-year-old niece distraught by the family driving the car to the zoo. “You are destroying the Earth”, she disappointedly answered questions about why she was upset. She could not hold back her tears. I wondered how in her short life she had come to this understanding when many adults still do not ask the related questions and have no interest in the discussions. “What do we do if the Earth is destroyed?” she asked inquisitively, while still crying. My sister and I sat with her and explained to her that, there are things that we could do. But more importantly we told her: “You and your friends—your generation–have the ability and opportunity to change things.”

At Biotrends, we recognize the importance of educating our children on how to treat our environment. Over the past several weeks, the discussions over global warming have esclated. As we were trying to put together this issue, it became obvious to us that the debate over global warming is still ongoing. The movie “An Inconvenient Truth” co-produced by former vice-president Al Gore is one major reason. Last year's active hurricane season and the destruction by the Tsunami of December 2004 have also been reasons why many have been discussing environmental issues. Recently, the National Academy of Science released their report requested after hearings on Capital Hill. Their final conclusion was that the global warming was a fact that we must deal with.

One more time in my scientific career, I have been reminded that we have the responsibility to look at the facts and examine and present different sides of the debate. I remain convinced that global warming is impacting Earth in ways which will change our lives and our planet for ever. However, most importantly, here at Biotrends, we believe that it is our responsibility to present both views of the debate which presents opinions of scientists from across the country. In the discussions and debates on global warming there are still two sides of the debate. One side argues that man-made pollution and its contribution to increases in CO2 levels over the last few decades have increased the progression of global warming and as a result we have created adverse effects on the balance of the Earth's environment resulting in warming of the ocean's water, more intense hurricanes and melting of the ice-caps at the poles. The opponents of the global warming, however, propose that global warming is a part of the cyclical and decadal changes on Earth, and we will reach another period of cooling. In this issue Biotrend's co-editor Dr. Gayle Knapp talks about the changes attributed to global warming in an excellent article. In this issue also, I talk with Dr. William Gray, who has been called the “Hurricane Predictor.” His forecast/report for the upcoming hurricane season is talked about every June 1. Dr. Gray is one of the opponents of the idea of global warming and its effects on the intensity of hurricanes. In addition, we requested to interview Vice President Gore and the request was not granted by his office.

With the awareness that the discussions on global warming will continue, we will try our best to continue to talk to scientists and other advocates on both sides of the debate to bring you the science and the news for this issue and our future issues.

Other pieces in this issue include articles on the science of tsunamis and hurricanes by Dr. Michael Sugarman and two students. Dr. Grace Stafford discusses how we could have cleaner energy and driving titled “Driving Clean”. In another article, Dr. Knapp talks about how our efforts have paid off in recovering the ozone layer.

In fact, one familiar theme which is again made obvious is that we need to educate the younger generation on how we can preserve our planet Earth. Here at Biotrends we will continue to do our part.

Shadi

shadi@biotrends.org

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