Babybio
I went to see An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. A group at the University bought a showing at a local theater. The movie was excellent and something that everyone needs to see.Even more amazing than watching Al Gore inspect tobacco sheds on his family's spread: I biked to the theater straight from the train and arrived a little early. I sat outside and was writing and watched as a flock of moms with baby carriages arrived. A student explained to me that they were there for babybio (baby movies). Each carriage was parked neatly on a patio with a number attached to the handle-- 25 numbered carriages in a row with sleeping babies in perfect silence.!?
From their website:
If your baby/babies are sleeping you will be given two slips of paper with a number. One should be attached to the carriage and the other taken with you into the theater. Carriages with sleeping babies can be placed in the lounge or on our terrace so our personnel can keep watch and hear them. During Babybio we keep a constant watch on the sleeping babies.
Empty carriages may be placed outside.
In case a baby wakes we will come into the theater and call out the number. The little one may then come into the theater to watch the end of the film.
You are also welcome to take the babies into the theater already from the beginning of the presentation.
A changing table has been set up in the bathroom and we have a microwave oven available to warm bottles.
posted by Matt_J @ 2:52 PM
4 Comments:
in our office talk of inconvenient truth (which i haven't seen yet) the question has arisen about the relationship between two oft-mentioned concepts: the "hole in the ozone" and "global warming". are they in any way related? i come to you humble and seeking knowledge.
btw, al gore did his slideshow in portland recently, and i've heard the movie is better, and less a pitch for his future candidacy.
hi matt, eldon here. that's my question above. sorry i didn't identify myself.
Hey Eldon!!
The answer is yes and know-- global warming makes ozone depletion a little worse, but it does not cause ozone depletion and there would still be an ozone hole even without climate change. (There are many feedbacks: in the other direction, ozone depletion actually helps get rid of a small amount of the greenhouse gas methane, resulting in a slight cooling).
I think its fine to say they are not related. Basically ozone depletion is caused by human's release (mainly in the past) of chlorine-containing compounds, the CFCs. That's what's behind the Antarctic ozone hole. Of more concern to you and me is mid-latitude ozone depletion, thinning of the ozone over our heads. Here the cause is a combination of climate change and chlorine-containing gases. The same greenhouse mechanism that causes warming at the surface causes cooling in the stratosphere. This causes more ice particles to grow in the stratosphere and ice surfaces are active in chemical reactions that increase chlorine's efficiency at destroying ozone. This figure http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/pages_media/SROC-final/graphics/small/Slide7.jpg
shows that the globe has lost a few percent of its total ozone cover (at low to mid latitudes) just since 1980. This impacts human skin cancer rates and virtually all land-based organisms.
I also think its fine to say that they are completely related since both the increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases like CH4, N2O and the CFCs, and ozone depletion caused by CFCs, are caused by technology and population growth.
I can't fit the link on a single line. If you assemble these in a single line you can see it:
http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc
/pages_media/SROC-final
/graphics/large/Slide7.jpg
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