No news since and for a while now! First the server was giving big troubles and now we are on our way through Venezuela for 3 weeks. So we will only be active here: Van and Matt on the Road.

by WaddyPeytona_43 - Flickr

After a long while since this thought came up to my mind… I decided to write some lines about it, and the opportunity is perfect to contribute with the Blog Action Day.

Since quite a while, I’ve been hearing, reading and watching a lot of articles, tv shows, comments here and there about the Global Warming… but since I was a child, I’ve been thinking about “Pollution = mankind hands”…

When “EL Niño” appeared.. in the city I used to live then — Maracaibo, veeeery Polluted! — we had severe consequences: looong dry season, followed by loooong rainy season.. Everyone in the world was blaming it to “El Niño”.. some years later was “La Niña”… honestly I still don’t know why ‘they’ call those phenomenon which such names (the boy, the girl).

That’s a bit of my background about this subject. The general Idea I have in mind about the so-called Global Warming (I don’t deny it, but I can question some of the basis for this theory).. is that is not ONLY and exclusively from ‘Mankind hands’… how come?.. well the Planet Earth have had several different periods of cold waves, or hot waves.. I bet we’re living these decades of hot waves.. after having cold waves in the mid 30’s if I remember correctly from an article I can’t locate in my mind at this moment. (sorry folks)

How do I support this thought?.. well I’ve seen several documentaries, not really about Global Warming but about other issues, for example, not too long ago I watched one about the Mayan Culture, it was on History Channel, where they were trying to find a reason for the ’sudden’ disappearance of this relatively ‘high’ culture. Scientist and archaeologist of different Universities made investigations in the Mexican Gulf soil, and discovered that sometime around the XIV century there was a severe cold wave in the Gulf waters. They associated that fact with other investigations made in Europe, USA, and other regions of the planet that agreed on the same point. Also they concluded it may have been a good reason for the Mayans to lose their fields, source of commerce and feeding, and also associated to the sudden disappearance of Vikings settlements in Canada in the same century, even same decades. It may be a good reason indeed! I do not believe in coincidences.

Of course is not yet approved, is a theory of those investigators, but the idea came to my mind. Also reading about the different periods of Glaciation, and that today’s big deserts in the world were actually dense forests in the remote past of our planet, or my nearest example here in Venezuela, the desert in Falcon state (northwest) was the delta of Orinoco river sometime in the past of the continent. All this makes me think: What if this warming process in the Earth is not part of a natural process of the planet?

To add more spice to the dish, recently I’ve read about this same subject in different places. There’s even a documentary running to deny the Global Warming theory and all the Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth theories and proofs. I don’t deny it, just can’t. Global Pollution is a fact undeniable. I’ve lived it myself on my own skin (or breathing system) when I was a kid in school, we were sent back home early in the morning, because there was a scape of chloride in the oil refinery on the other coast front of my school. All that toxic gas was spread above the whole city. Of course, there are so maaaany scientific proofs about the increase of pollution in the whole world. I’m not the one to expose them here.
What made me sit down and write about this subject, is the sad idea that maybe Matt and Me won’t see any snow in Bolivar Peak (5007 mts - highest mountain in Venezuela) in our visit in about 3 weeks. Because the snow there have retreated several mts in less than a decade. But is weird that as a contrast, I just read a recent article about the increase of snow in Mont-Blanc in the Alps in Europe, increasing it’s hight by a couple of mts.

I’m not a scientist, but I wonder, I think, I take conclusions on my own. And though may be a natural process of the Earth, its also a very important problem accelerated by human hand that affects us all: Poor or Rich, American or Asian, Native or Arab, European or African, just all minkind (and animals and plants, and all life process as we know it). I think if EVERYONE out there, takes a bit of conscience about this issue, millions like you or me can make a change.

When I’m in out in the street, if I have any disposable thing in my hands, I think “if I’m at home, I would throw it in the garbage canm i won’t pollute my own home ” .. so it’s very sad when I see other people throwing dirt on the streets, or when authorities don’t move a finger to let justice be made or just to keep the cities clean. That’s where common people can do something for our only and exclusively real home: Planet Earth.

Links of interest:

1. Changing Earth
2. Global Warming, a natural cycle or human result?
3. Earth observation satellites in peril
4. Planet in Peril
5. Artic Melting, worse than predictions
6. Informe internacional durante el día mundial del Ambiente (spanish- info about the melting snow and glaciers in Bolivar Peak)
7. Mont-Blanc crece 2.15 mts (spanish)
8. Global Warming (Wikipedia)
9. Global Warming International Center
10. History Channel - Mega Disasters: Mega Freeze

Time for 5 new websites you must not miss!

1. Stixy A service for online cooperation – sharing notes, images, sketches… worth a look!
2. Creativepro.com On creativepro.com they posted an excerpt of Scott Kelby’s Photoshop CS3 book. It’s about cropping, and has some useful tips!
3. blogonize A new all-inclusive blogging service – with a very nice, web 2.0-ish webpage!
4. WordPress Multilingual Enables you to offer a blog in several languages. We are using it on an upcoming site, stay tuned!
5. Jim Brandenburg This week I got a book of Jim Brandenburg, one of the best nature photographers of our time. Check out his work here!

Quite a mix this time, we hope you find something of interest. Have a great week all!

Full week and delayed Website recommendations this week, sorry. You get a great game for that!

1. Laughing Lion Design Jennifer Farley’s design blog with great Photoshop tutorials. Seen at Photoshop Insider.
2. Blog Action Day 5 days left! On Monday 15th it’s Blog Action Day! More than 8000 participants will write down their view of the environment. We will, too!
3. LinksGuy This seems promising: A list of useful links for freelancers, designers and the like. We hope it will be growing to provide us with useful resources! Beautiful design included.
4. Surfin’ Safari Last wednesday the Safari developers announced the implementation of the @font-face feature for css as described in this A List Apart article. We have to try it yet.
5. Le Courage Here’s the promised game! The brewery Stella Artois sends you on the quest for the best beer in this wonderfully designed flash game.

That was worth the waiting, wasn’t it? Enjoy, and don’t fall from the end of the world…