The Global Threat of Global Warming



Our planet has gone through many cycles of heating and cooling during the almost five billion years of its history. But in the last 100 years, earth has witnessed an unusual increase in the average temperature of its atmosphere and water bodies – the phenomenon popularly known as global warming. Scientific observations and records show that the increase in earth’s average temperature has been very pronounced in our recent past. In fact, out of the 20 warmest years in earth’s recorded history, 19 lie in our recent past, occurring after 1980. Since the year 2000, three of these hottest 19 years touched our planet. Is it anything to worry about? Certainly! It is virtually interfering with the sleep of sentient and caring individuals!

More than one cause has been held responsible for global warming, including both natural and anthropogenic (human) factors. The leading cause, as scientists know it now, is the well-known concept called the greenhouse effect. This happens when the heat radiating back from the earth is trapped in the atmosphere close to the earth’s surface. Certain gases, called the greenhouses gases, and water vapors in the atmosphere are responsible for accommodating this heat and keeping it close to earth’s surface, resulting in the increase in temperature that characterizes global warming. On one hand, this effect is very important for supporting life on earth as it prevents the planet from getting too cold. But excess of greenhouse effect, as we have started to experience now, means big trouble.

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Build Green, Live Happy



Ever since the threat of environmental degradation has hit the high spots of our consciousness, mainstream academics and popular media have gone critically hard on industrial wastes and vehicular emissions. Whether it is a discussion of immediate health effects or of long-term climate change, harmful products have been the main target of environmental criticism. In the context of sustainable development and green living, however, this crackdown on hazardous wastes and toxic emanations seems a bit lacking in proportion. Advocates of green living are now better appreciating the role of green building in ameliorating the environment, on a local as well as global scale. We now know that the influence of building processes on global climate, through the greenhouse effect, exceeds that of vehicular emissions and waste products.

Green building refers to the sum of processes involved in creating and maintaining environmental-friendly infrastructure. While actually coming into construction practices in the early 1990s, the impetus for green building came from the academic research published in the 1980s. The findings of these studies highlighted problems related to health, environment, and expenditure in small communities and low-income populations. The updated definition of green building, therefore, comprises four key qualities:

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Waste Prevention for Environmental-Friendly Living



For decades, advocates of green living have focused on disposing the daily waste in the least hazardous ways. Waste disposal has been an issue worth millions of dollars each year in a single developed country alone. Only more recently have the eco-conscious people started to underscore the prevention of waste as the more environmental-friendly strategy rather than spending millions on getting rid of it safely. This led to the global movement of Zero Waste – a holistic approach combining various environmental-friendly phases for product development.

The primary aim of Zero Waste is to prevent as much of the harmful waste as possible by modeling various processes of product development on natural processes. The main considerations in this case are: product designing, redesigning, and packaging; publicity/advertisement; distribution and usage of the products; and environmental-friendly disassembling of products. There is obviously a strong academic aspect to the strategy of making these processes feasible since a careful assessment of the products’ designing on the environment has to be made by experts in environmental sciences and waste management. This approach has recently come to be known as cradle-to-cradle production.

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In today’s world organic living is a smart way to go



If you ever look around one day in the grocery store you will notice how many synthetically produced products there are in the world. Even if food such as fruits and vegetables have had contact with synthetically produced chemicals in the form of fertilizers and pesticides. While synthetically produced products have helped us greatly they have also hurt us as well. The DDT pesticide that was responsible for a major environmental impact and subsequently banned for agricultural use, along with plastics that will never biodegrade are just a couple of the many synthetic materials that helped us but in the long run will ruin the environment for future generations.  There is a simple yet effective way to help control this type of problem in your own house, just go organic. Organic living really isn’t all that hard a type of life style to get use to. You don’t have to jump right in it immediately and do a 180 in your lifestyle. You can slowly ease your way into organic living or at least take up a few habits of the organic life style. Organic gardening is a good way to slide into the organic lifestyle. For those of you with gardens or wanting to start a garden in the house there are many ways to have an organic garden in your house. Using compost from your house which is just a pile of organic materials such as grass clippings, dog feces, and organic left over from meals left to rot and decompose into fertile soil. Or you can buy organic fertilizer from the store. Cow manure is the most popular kind but they have it in granules you can spread over the garden and yard as well as liquid that can be spread used a hose. With an organic garden you don’t even have to worry about using synthetic pesticides on your organic garden. There are a few ways to prevent pest from attacking and eating your garden. One good way to keep pests away as an organic pesticide is companion planting. What that does is it naturally reduces the amount of pests that are attracted to the plants. A few examples of companion planting are cucumbers planted with beans, sunflowers, and corn. Or if you don’t want to companion plant then a simple mix of crushed onions or garlic in a spray water bottle with a bit of vegetable oil mixed in. spray the plants and it will stay on the plant and the pest when they land or if they are on the plants. That will kill them in a safe plant organic way. Just a simple way to start and maintain a little organic garden for yourself you can even save a little bit of money on buying vegetables from the market place.

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Making a green community can be easy



A green community can and is a happy community. It can all be a possibility and really isn’t’ all that hard to accomplish in today’s modern world. When I was younger the idea of solar energy was a great one but we didn’t’ have the technology to make it worth the expensive to create the solar panels and the idea of using old used cooking oil to power diesel engines wasn’t even thought of. Now we have hybrid electric gas cars and quite a few trucks that now run on used vegetable oil. All of these steps are ways that we can make a more green community. Building more energy efficient homes with more efficient appliances keeps not only the running cost of the equipment but lower the amounts of emissions that are emitted not only from the appliance but from the power plants were the electric it produced. Less energy needed less coal and oil burned fewer pollutants filling the air making the air just a bit cleaner for you and me to breath and for the plants to grow in. all this is possible for our community to achieve. Now a day’s we have cell phones that are basically hand held computers. If we put that kind of effort into making cheaper to produce solar panels for houses we can cut our energy consumption quite a bit, like the hybrid cars find a nice mix of solar power during the day and the coal power plants for night time. We have all been sitting at a stop light with an 18 wheeler sitting next to us as it release out  a nice bit puff of black foul smelling smoke from the exhaust pipe. A simple way to lower the pollutant emission of those huge diesel trucks is the looking into of alternative fuels like used cooking vegetables oil from deep fries. with all the Mc Donald’s  and other fast food restaurants that are out there collecting their used vegetable oil from their deep fryers along with the few house hold deep fryers would lessen the need for diesel fuel in freight trucks or even in the simple school bus that takes children to and from school. Even if we are unable to get a 100% dependence on alternative fuels if we can even just get around 50% half of the cars and trucks in the United States alone would lessen the amount of pollutants in the air substantially. Even if it turns out that global warming is real and we are the cause of it having that many vehicles releasing a significantly less pollutant will really help the planet and ourselves by lowering our dependence on foreign oil supplies. When you support these type of idea in the community and have laws passed that will help bring ideas like this to life we will all have a more green eco friendly community in no time. Everyone can make a difference in the world it isn’t all that hard to do.

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