Kyoto Now!

I am now experimenting with B&W in the digital darkroom. This was originally a colour Fuji Provia slide with glowing sunsetting colours but somewhat I have gotten hooked on B&W.

Do you approve with the conversion and the decision to do it this way?

Besides, You may guess that I pray for the wealthy capitalists to be aware of the effects that they greed have on our environment...

Attached

I prefer B&W one... Interesting caption!

At first I thought the caption was about resort or something, then I figured that you must be talking about the Kyoto Protocol...

 

Albert

A shame what we are doing against ourselves!

I like the black and white much better. It sets the focus more on the smoke than the color version.

but, altough i do strongly agree with you concerning the kyoto protocol, i don't think this is the right picture to tell the world about it. Because you don't see neither the source or the nature of the smoke. It could be just water vapour and that's not much of a problem.

 

and to luis:

you're right about what you're saying but this doesn't change the fact that something has to be done. and the kyoto protocol is just a start.

No se ni papa de ingles, pero no me hace falta al ver tu imagen. Ya sabes como es esto, primero jodemos y luego nunca mais....

Ronny, the best approuch would be to plant million of trees (and don't cutting them by millions in the savege way we're doing). Trees breath CO2.

Jose Angel, te sugiero que te informes bien antes de dar una opinion sin ninguna base. Por otra parte supongo que para escribir el mensaje no habras producido energia electrica en el salon de casa frotando dos palitos.

By the way, Ronny says a very interesting thing here: When you see huge white clouds from power-plants, they are only vapor water, from heat-exhange processes.

What a heated reaction to a simple wish! That we, human beings, stop from destroying the planet. Perhaps the right thing to do is start stopping a crazy level of "well being" (open only to a few), reduce our heating systems (and, instead, go back to using wool on us), refrain from air conditioning (to remember that, many times, open windows and fans may be enough), etc, etc.

Y José Ángel, gracias por tu sincera opinión que ha merecido una contestación algo airada que no creo te merecieses.

Snif!

:-(

The smoke, here, was quite blackish and, looking into the photo, the high rise funnels of a power plant can be clearly seen: That was pollution going into our atmosphere as steadily and as dirtyingly as all the smoke puffed into the air by the severely damned smokers

BTW, cruel irony that the country that more savagely prosecute smokers is the main one not to have signed the Kyoto protocol...

Alberto, China is the most problematic country in burning coal, not USA. Now about the picture: Lovely use of B&W and the horizon is just where it must be. I like also very much the sky's grayscale.

Thanks, Luis. I was waiting for your comment on the photographic merits, if any. As for my comment, I do refer to all mankind not exclusively to anybody. China, truly, is joining enthusiastically, the club of the wrongdoers...

buen trabajo Alberto..

Bush rejects the Kyoto Protocol and incredibly doesn't even accept the science beind global warming:

"Now, when it comes to the issue of the environment, this is one of the worst administrations in modern history. The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it's one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky, slap it onto something, like 'No Child Left Behind' but you leave millions of children behind. Here they're leaving the skies and the environment behind.

If they just left the Clean Air Act all alone the way it is today, no change, the air would be cleaner that it is if you pass the Clear Skies act. We're going backwards. In fact, his environmental enforcement chief air-quality person at the EPA resigned in protest over what they're doing to what are calling the new source performance standards for air quality.

They're going backwards on the definition for wetlands. They're going backwards on the water quality. They pulled out of the global warming, declared it dead, didn't even accept the science..." -- Kerry.

Dirty Secrets

Unsettling, especially when considering America's major influence on the world... America: a nation that should lead by [good] example, a nation that should lead the world in greenhouse emission reductions - inspiring other countries to do the same. But as America remains largely indifferent to the real threat(s) of global warming, being perhaps the most powerful country in the world, other countries will unfortunately feel the same and draw the same illogical conclusions regarding the real threat(s) of Global Warming:

"Every year it seems the weather grows more disturbed. Massive flooding, severe winters and terrible drought offer almost daily evidence of worldwide climate change. There is no longer serious doubt as to whether global warming is a reality."

"In the summer of 1994, Wayne Grady (author and scientist) joined a team of scientists aboard the Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent and the American icebreaker Polar Sea to investigate the effects of global warming at the planet's northernmost regions."

"The expedition showed beyond doubt that the arctic is changing year after year, and the scientists confirmed what they had long suspected. If current predictions about our present rate of global warming are correct, we'll reach a 3-degree rise in temperature around the middle of this century and a 5-degree rise by the year 2100. Such an increase will easily be enough to rid the planet of all its current ice. This would raise the world's oceans by more than 75 meters! This would mean a world with a lot less land, we're talking WATERWORLD! If the Greenland and East Antarctic sheets alone melted, ocean levels would increase 30 meters."

"Vancouver's city hall is 11 meters above the current sea level. Tokyo is 5. Cape Town, Africa is just under 12. Los Angeles, at 95 meters, would lose its coastline. Forget New York, Brooklyn is 4.5."

"Melting vast sheets of ice is a slow process that could take as long as 500 years, but melting even these smaller glaciers over the next 80-100 years would drastically effect our lives and/or the lives of our children."

"Countries such as Bangladesh and parts of Thailand are now less than a meter above sea level. A meter rise in sea level would bring the shoreline of Eastern North America inland 30 meters."

"The ocean level is rising at a rate of about 1-2 meters per year, but that number per year will rise and by the year 2050, ocean levels will rise a meter/year."

"The greenhouse effect is the engine that drives global warming. Solar radiation hits the earth and some is reflected back into space. We know that if air did not surround the earth, it would be much too cold for human habitation. Earth's atmosphere acts as a blanket. Small amounts of carbon dioxide and a few other gases in the atmosphere help to retain heat through a vital process known as the greenhouse effect. Sunlight passes through the atmosphere and strikes the earth. Some of the light is reflected and some of it is absorbed. The absorbed light warms the earth. The heated surface then radiates infrared light into the atmosphere where small amounts of carbon dioxide keep the radiation from escaping. Since prehistoric times, carbon dioxide has helped to regulate the temp. of the earth in this way. Due to the burning of large amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has nearly doubled in the past 100 years. Trees remove CO2 from the air as a part of their natural processes. As humans cut down forests the capacity of trees to remove CO2 from the air is diminished. If we continue to burn large amounts of fossil fuels, and deplete our forests, the greenhouse effect will result in global warming. There are too many molecules of the wrong gas in our atmosphere - CO2, and it is the gas with the greatest influence on the greenhouse effect. Until recently the CO2 levels remained constant, they remained at about 280 parts per million (ppm) for thousands of years. If the amount of CO2 is lowered below 200ppm, you get an ice age; raise it above 400, and palm trees grow in Russia. Today [that meaning 1994 when this book was written] the CO2 level is 365 ppm and rising! Since the world has been burning an increasing amount of fossil fuels, matters are getting much worse. The ppm level rises on average 1.8 per year."

So that means that right now in the year 2005 the CO2 level is above 384!And if it continues to rise above and beyond 400, "we will be living on a different planet, a planet less like Mars and more like Venus. Venus's average surface temperature is 450 degrees Celsius, and its atmosphere is made up of almost entirely CO2."

-- The Quiet Limit of the World by author and scientist Wayne Grady. Perhaps the most enlightening book I have ever read.

Creo que en la foto en color se aprecia que parte del vertido es vapor de agua de las torres de refrigeracion (necesarias para enfriar el condensador de la central en una situacion como la de Andorra en la que no hay ningun rio caudaloso en su entorno), el humo es el penacho largo de izquierda a derecha que parece salir de la chimenea mas alta.

No obstante suscribo la necesidad de disminuir las emisiones contaminantes de todo tipo y me apunto a la utopia.

The purpose of this photo has vastly been reached: Pure marketing for a clear shout:

Kyoto Now!

Of course some argument arose and some scientific facts: My friend, Guillermo Lobera - a university prof. - clarifys that, actually, the smoke trail is water vapour... but the plant shedding it into our air is very well a thermic power generating plant located in the middle of a forgotten province (Teruel) in Spain, in a place called Andorra.

No pollution involved, hence.

It may be true that this photo does not depict "pollution" per say, but to those of us who know little about the functions of the industrial world, it does. The problem remains and the story still needs telling.

I agree with you. Knowing little about technicalities, we know enough about the world in which we live and pollution cannot be denied.

Taking this particular power plant, it may have not been polluting right then but it does pollute all around continuously.

Some will say that we need them for our heating and A/C systems and I say that we may, as well, reduce our standard of well being which cannot be maintained anymore.

Cannot we put on some more wool to keep warm, just as a preposterous and utopic idea?

I only would like to point out who are the ones that will heavily use coal in the next future:

"By replacing all the coal demand in and after 2005 to gas demand, the CO2 emissions of 6.4 billion t-C oserved in 2000 will be reduced to 5.9 billion t-C by 2005. However, the CO2 emissions will exceed the 2000 level by 2010, at 6.5 billion t-C. From 2010 onward, the CO2 emissions will increase at a similar pace as that before the shift to gas. In short, the shift to gas merely has an effect of delaying the increase of CO2 emissions by about eight years"[1]

 

[1]: Mimuroto, Y. Koizumi, K. "Coal Use Considering Global Warming Prevention and the Prospect of Coal Use". Institute of Energy Economics. Tokyo, 2004

Sorry Alberto, but you are asking for an absolutely imposible utopy.

Many thanks, heartfully, for your illustrated and enlightened reaction but let me disagree on your opinion about my utopic wish. I agree it's utopic but not unfeasible.

We are putting it to work at home even these last days of incredible cold weather when our water pipes even freezed!

But, of course, we do believe in acting as well as in speaking!

>>>We are putting it to work at home even these last days of incredible cold weather when our water pipes even freezed!<<<. Oh yes, and after your influenza and fever, I supose you're finally very happy :). Utopy is really beautiful, but you know very well it's an imposible dream. People loves to read about nice dreams and due exactly to this, reality is a lot harder when it arrives.

Me encanta!!!