free web tracker soliloquies: autumn in the midst of summer

soliloquies

so・lil・o・quy/- n. [C,U] a speech in a play in which a character talks to himself or herself, so that the audience know the character's thoughts.

Sunday, August 15, 2004

autumn in the midst of summer


The news yesterday reported the mark of 40 consecutive days of "manatsu-bi"s in Tokyo. This is a record breaker, renewing the record set in 1995. However, the weather today is just like autumn; the sky is gray with a chance of shower, and the expected high for today is 22C. Believe it or not, the temperature has dropped 12 degrees in just a day. What's more, the temperature will go up 9 degrees tomorrow, if the forecast is correct. What is wrong with our weather? Not just here in Japan, but in Bali also.

When we were in Bali, the weather was a bit cloudy, even though it was the dry season there. We've had squalls, and a lot of clouds were visible throughout the day. The native hotel worker there told us that appearance of clouds are unusual, and normally, continuous sunshine greet the tourists this season.

Is is the global warming? On the plane there, I saw the movie "Day After Tomorrow". The meteorologists all say that the movie is fictionized and exaggerated, and is scientifically incorrect, but me, as an individual, is sensing change in our climate. Europe last year experienced its hottest summer, and disastrous flooding devastated Germany and Czech, while Japan experienced one of its coolest summers, resulting bad harvest and high rice prices. This year, its the opposite. Japan is experiencing its hottest summer, while some places in Hokuriku region had one of its worst flood. China had a one of its strongest typhoons in its history, landing in one of its provinces, causing deaths and economic losses of 15.3 billian yuans.

On the other hand, the main cause of the greenhouse effect, which are the fossil fuels' price has hit its record high in American and European markets. I wish this economic factor will promote the spread of energy efficient technologies and automobiles, since the main reason why the Kyoto Protocol is losing it's effectiveness is from the economic reasons. If the oil prices are high, the profit gained from using fossil fuels will decrease therefore, the ecology friendly technologies will go up as a new option. It's about time, people!

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