October 02, 2006

Confronting Climate Change: Two Films That May Change Your Life

'Global Dimming' and 'An Inconvenient Truth' are two fact based documentaries on climate change that reveal how close we have come to destroying life on our planet.

The coming generations, if they survive the looming climate crisis, will blame us and our ancestors for not seeing what was coming. They will wonder why we continued to be ignorant and in denial when the facts were so clear, why we didn't do anything for our children.

They will blame the politicians for not listening to the scientists. The scientists for not being vocal enough when there was still time. The corporations for putting profit above everything else. And they will blame you and I for continuing to live a lifestyle that depends upon plundering the Earth.

Two recent documentaries demonstrate without any doubt that we are responsible for bringing mankind to the end of a cliff, so to speak, and that if we don't turn back right this moment, our end is near certain. Scientists believe that we may have less than ten years before we cross the point of no return. If we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80% within this time, it'll be too late.

An Inconvenient Truth - the Al Gore movie and Global Dimming produced by the BBC are the two documentaries that lay out all the scientific evidence. Gore's film has already made a tremendous impact in the US and is influencing policy decisions and corporate strategies. The BBC documentary from last year revealed such startling facts that their office issued a press release to bring the world's attention to this phenomenon. The film demonstrates how scientists discovered global dimming and established that global warming is much more severe than we previously thought.

If you haven't seen these films already, please watch them now. Cross-check the facts yourself, form your own conclusion and decide whether to be part of the change or to continue to live in denial.

An Inconvenient Truth, trailer (2 min)


The film is playing in theatres in US. You can download a torrent if that's your thing or read the book until the DVD comes out.

You can also watch these two excellent videos of Al Gore's interview with Jonathan Freedland (46 min) in UK and on Charlie Rose (56 min), US.


Global Dimming, complete film (50 min)


BBC press release from Jan 2005 when this documentary came out.
Torrent of Global Dimming (400 MB)

Global Warming Basics (Wikipedia)

Related Stories

This section will be continually updated.

June 2003 Bush Admin. Censored, Edited Scientific Reports on Global Warming

Aug 2006 Greenland Ice Sheet Melting Three Times Faster Than Five Years Ago

Aug 2006 Global Warming in Action: Swiss Hotel Offers View of Crumbling Mountain

Sep 2006 CO2 Levels Accelerating at "Scary" Pace

Sep 2006 NASA Scientist Warns: "We Have Only Ten Years to Act"

Sep 2006 Big Oil Funding Global Warming "Denial Industry"

Sep 2006 Bush Admin. Blocked Report Linking Hurricanes To Global Warming

Oct 2006 "Genuinely Terrifying" Research Shows One-Third Of Planet Will Be Desert By 2100

Oct 2006 Global Warming Devastates Sea Ice in Arctic Circle

Oct 2006 Decades of Weather Turmoil Ahead Even if Emissions Freeze Now

Oct 2006 UK Economist Warns of Loss of Trillions of Pounds if We Do Not Act Now

Nov 2006 Humanity Has Only Ten Years to Save the Planet: Report

Nov 2006 Climate Change May Occur Faster and With Far Greater Consequences Than Expected

October 01, 2006

Google Experiments With New Interface for Results Page

I just stumbled upon this. Google seems to be trying out a new interface for the results page in which top navigation is moved to a new sidebar. The screenshots below were taken in IE7. I'm not sure if everyone can see this but it does appear to be a selective roll out because Firefox still shows the regular interface as always.

Current Interface



New Interface



There may be two main reasons for rolling this out now. One, Google has always struggled to make people use alternative searches more often. In user testing sessions I've observed a lot of users who have never used Google's image search, groups or Google News. They are often surprised that these services even exist! I believe Google's transition from tabs to plain links two years ago was to encourage use of those links. Likewise, the new interface for results page will lead more people to try out these alternative searches. If you look at full-page screenshot the links in the sidebar are repeated at the bottom of the results.

Second, with more and more people switching from 800x600 to 1024x768 resolution or above, a lot of space on the right side of the page is left unused. The new interface utilises horizontal space by adding a sidebar.

Google has said in the past that they keep experimenting with new features to improve their services. This may be one of those experiments.