"It is not what we don't know what gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain.

Not many years ago, "the solution to pollution was dilution." The air and the rivers could absorb whatever we wanted to throw at them. Mother Nature would take care of it. We knew that "for sure."

Now we have contaminated the water, built on our best foodland, and virtually destroyed the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

And some of us are continuing to believe "for sure" we can spew thousands of tons of the gases into the air every year with impunity. To quote Mark Twain, it "just ain't so." Mother Nature has abided our folly long enough. And now, said an environmental presenter, she's "striking back" - by melting our ice caps, and hitting us with tornadoes, earthquakes, flash floods and other things.

At Shelburne last Saturday, Anne Parker showed convincing proof that the surface temperature of planets depends upon the density of the atmosphere. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has a lower surface temperature than any of its neighbours - Venus, Earth and Mars. It also has the lowest atmospheric density.

Ms. Parker is one of a handful of persons trained by Al Gore as presenters of his "Inconvenient Truth." She was a marketing specialist until she saw the light through the smog on climate change.

As part of her presentation to the Centre Dufferin District High School session sponsored by Ontario Highlands Friends of Wind Power, she had photos comparing the glaciers between the mid-1930s and the present. They are disappearing from Glacier National and Waterton parks and, more importantly in some ways, the Himalayas Mountains - not to mention Yukon, Alaska, Greenland and the rest of the Arctic.

The most frightening thing about the Himalayan glacier disappearance would be that 40 per cent of the world's population relies on the glaciers for its water. What does 40 per cent of 6- or 7- billion people do when they run out of water?

Keith Stewart, PhD, of World Wildlife Federation had a simple message: "They move." He raised the spectre of "hundreds of millions" of people migrating. What becomes of our way of life in that event?

Dr. Stewart said he became involved in the federation's climate change program in 1998. In essence, part of his message was that everything in nature is interconnected. When you "take away one thing, all things change," which explains why the federation is seeking solutions to climate change and global warming. He said a global rise of 1.5 degrees "is inevitable. Once about 2 degrees, all bets are off."

In 2003, according to a recent study, the world released 7.3-billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels. Dr. Stewart said we have to stop wasting energy, to upgrade building codes, to retrofit existing buildings, and to offer incentives for conservation, as well as to rely on more renewable energy sources. "We need to do more than turn off the lights."

Ms. Parker gave a "short version" of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. She reminded the audience that vegetation absorbs carbon dioxide, and showed that most of the land mass on earth, ergo the greatest amount of vegetation, is in the Northern Hemisphere. As a result, there's significantly less vegetation to absorb carbon dioxide during the winter months.

(An unrelated study shows that coniferous trees absorb considerably less carbon dioxide than deciduous. Our pine forests are not as important in that regard as hardwood.)

Glaciers reflect sunshine back into space, she said. As the glaciers recede, increasingly less is reflected. And the more we trap the sun's heat by emitting greenhouse gases, the more the glaciers melt.

At Shelburne, high school students are taking leading roles in combating global warming. Saturday, students Brooke Crewson and Steve Krysak outlined the work of the Environmental Club, and teacher Chris Sheppard said in an interview that the school is planning to introduce four credit courses in green energy.

CDDHS was one of the first in Canada to erect a small wind turbine and solar panels on its roof.

At the same time, it instituted its "blue line meter project," a means of measuring how much electricity was being consumed at any given moment. Within weeks, energy consumption in the town declined by as much as 15 per cent.

Brooke and Steve said the club has attended climate change conferences in Montreal, Guelph and Toronto. And "the (club) members have been given the opportunity to help inform local residents and tourists about renewable energy, and more specifically wind power.

"We believe that having the correct information is vital to the debate over wind power in the area, and so we set out to provide that information," said Steve.