Honda goes green; the rest go bananas!

The Honda F1 Team, has decided to spread the 'Green' message in the forthcoming F1 2007-'08 season. Notice the conspicuous absence of any sponsor logo on the car. The message is decidedly clear- Global Warming is here.

In the meanwhile, scientist's can't reach any consensus on the causes of The Great Warmth. Experts are sharply divided over the question of whether humans and greenhouse gases are indeed the ones to be blamed for all the heat.

The official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - which brings together almost all the world's leading scientists in the field and all its governments - published the first instalment of its latest massive "assessment report", concluding that it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are heating up the planet. The conclusion was all the more authoritative as the IPCC is a cautious body that acts by consensus; all governments, including the United States, have to agree its conclusions.

Some scientists still disagree - that is the nature of science - but their numbers are diminishing, and few are leaders in their fields.

But the debate rages on as British Channel 4 screens what it calls a "polemical and thought-provoking documentary" - The Great Global Warming Swindle - by one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures, film-maker Martin Durkin tomorrow.

It follows hot on the heels of a decision by the British Environment Secretary, to send a copy of Al Gore's box-office hit, An Inconvenient Truth - which won two Oscars this month - to every secondary school throughout the UK.

In the meanwhile, Filipinos (94%) and Czechs (98%) were found to be the most aware about Global Warming in a recent survey conducted by AC Nielsen, while the US and UAE lagged far behind at 13% and 16% respectively. No surprises there, really!

Leaders across the world want to spread the message wider. Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Bill Clinton have formed a $3 billion fund to combat The Big GW!

International organizations don't want to be left too far behind either. As part of the UN-sponsored International Polar Year in 2007-08, a 60-nation project to probe polar areas on the front lines of climate change, Michael Nickel of Stuttgart Univ is to study Arctic spiders in the hope of finding further clues to the impact of GW.

Amidst all the noise, we keep burning fossil fuels, cutting trees and dumping effluents at will. Self-destruction, anyone?

'Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on for too long.’ - Ogden Nash

P.S. Honda Environmentology page - Hybrid Cars, Fuel Cell Cars, Alternative Energy et al