Gore connects heart with earth
What has cardiology to do with ''thinking green''? Everything, asserts former US vice-president Al Gore, addressing a galaxy of internationally-known cardiologists here on Wednesday evening.
In a “key thematic oration” to mark the inauguration of the 20th World Congress of the World Society of Cardio Thoracic Surgeons, being held at Chennai, Gore said there was a strong “analogy” between the study of the heart and the earth system.
Al Gore, also the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection, said just as heart diseases built up over a period of time undermined its role in distribution of blood to the body system, the “hydrological cycle” of the earth-a water planet-was similarly affected.
Explaining why “we are now experiencing” such extremes in weather conditions with high temperatures and excessive rainfall, Gore said it was because the relationship between human beings and ecology.
The “holistic relationship between people and the planet” have altered dramatically in recent times, he said. Presenting some grim facts on the extent of “radical alterations to the climate system” that has occurred worldwide, Gore said: “We have put 19 million tonnes of polluting gases into the global warming system.”
The increased carbon-dioxide emissions “traps the heat” driving temperatures to new dizzy heights, he pointed out. Giving figures for January-August 2010, Gore said this calendar year was “on course to become one of the two hottest years ever measured”.
For instance, in May 2010, Pakistan experienced 53.5 degrees Celsius, the “hottest temperature ever measured in Asia”. Day temperatures in Russia exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for many days in a row this year, something which that country had not seen in the last 1,000 years, he said.
Again his own city of Nashville experienced unusually high rain for many days in May 2010 “in areas far outside the historic flood plain”, Gore disclosed. “This was one in a 1,000-years rainfall in which many people’s homes and businesses were destroyed. Further, Australia this year experienced once in a 1000-year drought,” he added.
