Global warming wallop

I was thinking out loud today and something dawned on me. If poster boy Al Gore had released his harping documentary, An Inconvenient Truth now, as in this Spring instead of in 2006, would it have been as potent? For instance, as we sit through a massive snowstorm, which is seeing up to 50 centimeters in parts of Ontario, is the earth warming up? Scientists predicted, and are still contending, that this current winter will be/has been the coldest in decades. So if memory serves, when Gore released his seminal work (or was his seminal work losing the presidential race? I'm not sure) we had had a relatively green winter. Pun intended: grass was visible during that winter. Anyway, if released this year, would people care and jump on the green bandwagon, which hit its peak at the beginning of last year? You know, Canada's bold commitments to ward off climate change: eradicate incandescent light bulbs by 2012, drop out of Kyoto, and to ween out plastic bags in grocery stores. We will make a difference, we will.

Or the fact that billionaire-cum-climate change combatant (alliteration, fun!) Richard Branson has teamed up with Gore to wreak havoc on the world's lethargy and ambivalence towards climate change. But the problem, is that Branson owns Virgin Airlines and facilitates tons of emissions annually. Or the fact that he travels from city to city, country to country on a day-to-day basis, personally emitting an insurmountable amount of emissions.

But whatever, it's all in the name of a cause -- a means to and end -- and, any other euphemistic cliches which apply.

And in truth, I concede that this is only the tip of the (metaphoric and literal) iceberg on such a monolithic issue that has so many facets to take into consideration to just understand the rudimentary basics. In the end, I support the notion that there has been a change in the climate, which more than likely or "very likely" to use the words of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is due to human activity. 

However, the key issue I assert, is that the IPCC also said that the global surface temperature had risen by only 0.6 degrees since 1900. Thus, the problem lays in the (utopian or dystopian) future and if the slight change in weather is a catalyst, which will only exacerbate the change in the climate.

So let's leave it to the poster boys to predict the apocalypse or to lead us down an ineffectual tryst.