Ways to Go GREEN at Home

Being environmentally-friendly is just good economics – in our home and budget, and with the earth God gave us.

There are many little things we can do in our homes to play a small part in reducing landfill waste, cleaning the air, and preserving the natural landscape.  But we double our efforts when we get our kids involved, helping them understand the why to our what.

When they get it, it’ll be second nature to them when they’re adults – and that much easier to pass it down to their children.

1. Plant an herb garden.  It’s good to have a reminder around of where our food originates.


2. Switch all your lightbulbs to CFLs (or at least switch a few).


3. Create a homemade compost bin


4. Switch one appliance to an energy efficient model (look for the “energy star” label).


5. Stop using disposable bags – order some reusable bags, or make your own. 


6. Buy an inexpensive reusable water bottle, and stop buying plastic disposable bottles. 


7. Wash laundry in cold water instead of hot.


8. Turn off lights when you leave the room.


9. Don’t turn on lights at all for as long as you can — open your curtains and enjoy natural light.


10. Drive the speed limit, and combine all your errands for the week in one trip.


11. Better yet, walk or ride a bike to your errands that are two miles or closer.


12. Support your local economy and shop at your farmer’s market.


13. Turn off your computer completely at night.


14. Research whether you can sign up for green power from your utility company.


15. Pay as many bills as possible online.


16. Put a stop to unsolicited mail — sign up to opt out of pre-screened credit card offers.  While you’re at it, go ahead and make sure you’re on the “do not call” list, just to make your life more peaceful.


17. Reuse scrap paper.  Print on two sides, or let your kids color on the back side of used paper.


18. Conduct a quick energy audit of your home.


19. Subscribe to good eco-friendly blogs.  (The Daily Green, TreeHugger, and Keeper of the Home Simple Organic)


20. Before buying anything new, first check your local Second Hand Goods Shop.


21. Support local restaurants that use food derived less than 100 miles away, and learn more about the benefits of eating locally.


22. Fix leaky faucets.


23. Make your own household cleaners.


24. Line dry your laundry.


25. Watch The Story of Stuff with your kids, and talk about the impact your household trash has on our landfills.


26. Learn with your kids about another country or culture, expanding your knowledge to other sides of the world.


27. Lower the temperature on your hot water heater.


28. Unplug unused chargers and appliances.


29. Repurpose something – turn one of your well-worn t-shirts into basic play pants for your baby.  Or save egg cartons for paint wells, seed starters, treasure boxes, or a myriad of other crafts.


30. Collect rainwater, and use it to water your houseplants and garden.


31. Switch to cloth diapers – or at least do a combination with disposables.


32. Switch to shade-grown coffee with the “Fair Trade” label.


33. Use a Diva Cup for your monthly cycles.


34. Use cloth instead of paper to clean your kitchen. Be frugal, and make these rags out of old towels and t-shirts.


35. Use cloth napkins daily instead of paper.


36. Read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and open your eyes to the way conventional food is processed.


37. Repurpose glass jars as leftover containers and bulk storage, especially in the kitchen.


38. Five-minute showers – make it a goal for yourself.


39. Donate to – and shop at – thrift stores such as Goodwill.  You’ll be recycling perfectly usable items, and you’ll be supporting your local economy.

ORIGINAL POST

Climate Could Cross Critical Threshold by 2100, Expert Warns

Climate Could Cross Critical Threshold by 2100,

Expert Warns

Environment News Service 16feb2009

CHICAGO, Illinois — Without decisive action by governments, corporations and individuals, global warming in the 21st century is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than predicted, warns a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In a business-as-usual world, higher temperatures could ignite tropical forests and melt the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gas that could raise global temperatures even more - a vicious cycle that could spiral out of control by the end of the century, said IPCC scientist Chris Field of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Field presented his findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago during a symposium titled, "What Is New and Surprising Since the IPCC Fourth Assessment?"

The IPCC Fourth Assessment, for which Field was a coordinating author, was published in 2007.

"There is a real risk that human-caused climate change will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide from forest and tundra ecosystems, which have been storing a lot of carbon for thousands of years," said Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at Stanford, and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

"We don't want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot," he said.

This is a crucial year in the international effort to address climate change. Intergovernmental negotiations will be taking place all year, culminating in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, December 7-18. There, governments are expected to finalize a treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions that will take effect when the current Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012.

In their negotiations, governments rely on the facts presented in the assessment reports published by the IPCC.

Established by the United Nations in 1988, the IPCC brings together thousands of experts from around the world to assess the science and policy implications of climate change.

The IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide concerning the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

In 2007, the IPCC and Al Gore were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Field was among 25 IPCC scientists who attended the award ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

In September 2008, Field was elected co-chair of Working Group 2, which is charged with assessing the impacts of climate change on social, economic and natural systems. One of his major responsibilities is to oversee the writing and editing of the "Working Group 2 Report" for the IPCC fifth assessment, slated for publication in 2014.

The fifth assessment will incorporate the results of new studies that predict more severe changes than did previous assessments.

"The IPCC fourth assessment didn't consider either the tundra-thawing or tropical forest feedbacks in detail because they weren't yet well understood," he says. "But new studies are now available, so we should be able to assess a wider range of factors and possible climate outcomes."

"The data now show that greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating much faster than we thought," said Field. "Over the last decade developing countries such as China and India have increased their electric power generation by burning more coal. Economies in the developing world are becoming more, not less carbon-intensive. We are definitely in unexplored terrain with the trajectory of climate change, in the region with forcing, and very likely impacts, much worse than predicted in the fourth assessment."

New studies are revealing potentially dangerous feedbacks in the climate system that could convert current carbon sinks into carbon sources. Field points to tropical forests as a prime example.

Vast amounts of carbon are stored in the vegetation of moist tropical forests, which are resistant to wildfires because of their wetness. But warming temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns threaten to dry the forests, making them less fireproof.

Researchers estimate that loss of forests through wildfires and other causes during the next century could boost atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by up to 100 parts per million over the current 386 ppm, with possibly devastating consequences for global climate.

Warming in the Arctic is expected to speed up the decay of plant matter that has been in cold storage in permafrost for thousands of years.

"There is about 1,000 billion tons of carbon in these soils," says Field. "When you consider that the total amount of carbon released from fossil fuels since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is around 350 billion tons, the implications for global climate are staggering."

"One thing that seems to be certain," he said, "is that as a society we are facing a climate crisis that is larger and harder to deal with than any of us thought. The sooner we take decisive action, the better our chances are of leaving a sustainable world to future generations."

Field is founding director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, a private organization that conducts basic research for the benefit of humanity.

The author of more than 200 scientific publications, Field's research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. His work includes major field experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change, integrative studies on the global carbon cycle, and assessments of impacts of climate change on agriculture.

Late last year, Field was elected an AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS said Field was elected "for his central role in developing global ecology, with major contributions to the global carbon cycle, climate-change impacts, and feedbacks of ecosystems to climate change."

source: 19feb2009

Massive Antarctic Wilkins Ice Shelf Set to Break Loose

Massive Antarctic Wilkins Ice Shelf

Set to Break Loose

Agence France Presse 3apr2009

 PARIS – A Jamaica-sized ice shelf is close to wrenching itself away from Antarctica, following dramatic weakening of an ice "bridge" linking it to the continent, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported Friday.

The icy umbilical cord tying the Wilkins Ice Shelf to two islands on the Antarctic peninsula "looks set to collapse," ESA said.

The evidence comes from radar pictures taken on Thursday by its Envisat Earth-monitoring satellite, the Paris-based agency said in a press release.

Scientists have been keeping a worried eye on this ice shelf for years.

For many, it is a barometer of global warming, which has hit the Antarctic peninsula harder than almost any region on Earth.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf was stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles) before it began to retreat in the 1990s.

By May 2009, an ice bridge, about 2.7 kms (1.7 miles) wide on average and just 900 metres (yards) at its narrowest point, was all that connected it to Charcot and Latady islands.

Over the past year, the ice shelf has lost about 1,800 square kilometres (700 square miles), or about 14 percent of its size, in further breakup events, ESA said.

New pictures show "the beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge" itself, it added.

This week, rifts formed along the central axis of the bridge and a large chunk of ice broke away. The stress patterns are now expanding rapidly, pointing to a likely imminent collapse of the link.

Ice shelves are ledges of thick ice that float on the sea and are attached to the land. They are formed when ice is exuded from ice sheet on land.

In the past 20 years, Antarctica has lost seven shelves.

The process is marked by shrinkage and the breakaway of increasingly bigger chunks before the remainder of the shelf snaps away from the coast.

It then disintegrates into debris or into icebergs that eventually melt as they drift northwards.

Scientists are especially puzzled that the Wilkins has suffered big breakups during the southern hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest.

One theory is that relatively warm currents from the Southern Ocean are scouring the underside of the shelf, thinning it rapidly from underneath.

In the past 50 years, the peninsula -- the tongue of Antarctica that juts up towards South America -- has experienced warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), which is many times higher than the global average.

In the early 1990s, many experts predicted that it would take 30 years for a shelf as vast as the Wilkins to be lost.

Antarctica is the world's biggest store of freshwater. Its ice, located on land in two vast slabs and on the peninsula, holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 57 metres (185 feet).

The Antarctic ice shelves do not add to sea levels when they melt. Like the Arctic ice cap, they float on the sea and thus displace their own volume.

source: 3apr2009

Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates

Pace of Climate Change

Exceeds Estimates

KARI LYDERSEN / Washington Post 15feb2009

 CHICAGO, Feb. 14 — The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Field, a member of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said emissions from burning fossil fuels since 2000 have largely outpaced the estimates used in the U.N. panel's 2007 reports. The higher emissions are largely the result of the increased burning of coal in developing countries, he said.

Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of "feedback loops" that are speeding up natural processes. Prominent among these, evidence indicates, is a cycle in which higher temperatures are beginning to melt the arctic permafrost, which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, said several scientists on a panel at the meeting.

The permafrost holds 1 trillion tons of carbon, and as much as 10 percent of that could be released this century, Field said. Along with carbon dioxide melting permafrost releases methane, which is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

"It's a vicious cycle of feedback where warming causes the release of carbon from permafrost, which causes more warming, which causes more release from permafrost," Field said.

Evidence is also accumulating that terrestrial and marine ecosystems cannot remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as earlier estimates suggested, Field said.

In the oceans, warmer weather is driving stronger winds that are exposing deeper layers of water, which are already saturated with carbon and not as able to absorb as much from the atmosphere. The carbon is making the oceans more acidic, which also reduces their ability to absorb carbon.

On land, rising carbon dioxide levels had been expected to boost plant growth and result in greater sequestration of carbon dioxide. As plants undergo photosynthesis to draw energy from the sun, carbon is drawn out of the atmosphere and trapped in the plant matter. But especially in northern latitudes, this effect may be offset significantly by the fact that vegetation-covered land absorbs much more of the sun's heat than snow-covered terrain, said scientists on the panel.

Earlier snowmelt, the shrinking arctic ice cover and the northward spread of vegetation are causing the Northern Hemisphere to absorb, rather than reflect, more of the sun's energy and reinforce the warming trend.

While it takes a relatively long time for plants to take carbon out of the atmosphere, that carbon can be released rapidly by wildfires, which contribute about a third as much carbon to the atmosphere as burning fossil fuels, according to a paper Field co-authored.

Fires such as the recent deadly blazes in southern Australia have increased in recent years, and that trend is expected to continue, Field said. Warmer weather, earlier snowmelt, drought and beetle infestations facilitated by warmer climates are all contributing to the rising number of fires linked to climate change. Across large swaths of the United States and Canada, bark beetles have killed many mature trees, making forests more flammable. And tropical rain forests that were not susceptible to forest fires in the past are likely to become drier as temperatures rise, growing more vulnerable.

Preventing deforestation in the tropics is more important than in northern latitudes, the panel agreed, since lush tropical forests sequester more carbon than sparser northern forests. And deforestation in northern areas has benefits, since larger areas end up covered in exposed, heat-reflecting snow.

Many scientists and policymakers are advocating increased incentives for preserving tropical forests, especially in the face of demand for clearing forest to grow biofuel crops such as soy. Promoting biofuels without also creating forest-preservation incentives would be "like weatherizing your house and deliberately keeping your windows open," said Peter Frumhoff, chief of the Union of Concerned Scientists' climate program. "It's just not a smart policy."

Field said the U.N. panel's next assessment of Earth's climate trends, scheduled for release in 2014, will for the first time incorporate policy proposals. It will also include complicated models of interconnected ecosystem feedbacks.

The panel's last report noted that preliminary knowledge of such feedbacks suggested that an additional 100 billion to 500 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions would have to be prevented in the next century to avoid dangerous global warming. Currently, about 10 billion tons of carbon are emitted each year.

source: 19feb2009

Global warming a ticking time bomb

Thursday July 29, 2010

By FLORENCE A. SAMY

thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: The world has less than 12 years to go before it faces major ice-melting and potentially catastrophic effects if nothing is done to reduce carbon emissions.

Energy and environmental conservationist Dr Chirapol Sintunawa said it would take approximately that time for the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere to reach the 450 parts per million (ppm) figure, which would cause temperatures to rise and ice to melt, increasing sea levels.

“At present, the atmospheric CO2 is about 392ppm. The Earth can ideally withstand only 350ppm of CO2, which is considered the safe level by many scientists, including Nasa climate scientist James Hansen,” said the professor from Mahidol Univer sity in Thailand.

Worldwide campaigns have been ongoing as far as Siberia to create awareness of the 350 target, he said on Tuesday.

“The global warming effect will see global temperatures rising by 2°C at 450ppm. This means ice in the North and South Poles will start melting more.

“We must act now to reduce carbon and protect the environment,” said Dr Chirapol at Warisan Global’s Go green with e.n.v.y: A GreenTech Entrepreneur ship and Networking Session.

Preliminary data by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed that the carbon dioxide figure stood at 392.04ppm as of June this year. It was 389.43ppm in 2009 and 387.88ppm in 2008, he said.

He deduced it would take less than 12 years to reach the 450ppm level.

Recycled Island, Pacific Ocean

WHIM takes the plunge, revealing design for floating island of recycled plastic in Pacific

  Plans have been revealed for a new island in the North Pacific Gyre which could accommodate up to half a million people. Netherlands-based firm WHIM Architecture has designed the floating island to be manufactured out of 44,000 tonnes of waste plastic currently drifting on our seas, turning an environmental hazard on its head to create a fully sustainable, self-sufficient island the size of Hawaii. 

Named ‘Recycled Island’, the project involves a complex fabrication process in order to make washed-up plastic refuse into an effective building substance. The WHIM’s website outlines the following method: collecting discarded plastic from the Pacific Ocean; separating the plastic into groups according to type; shredding the material followed by a thorough cleaning process; heating the plastic; reproduction into a functional building material; constructing the island – here images show the entire island being pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle; the assembly of plastic housing.

Set to include residential housing, agricultural land, beaches and tourism outlets, it has been suggested that Recycled Island could become something of an eco-tourism hotspot. The Pacific Ocean currently holds the largest amount of plastic waste on Earth, causing immense amounts of damage to wildlife. A spokesperson for WHIM Architecture explained: “We have three main aims; cleaning our oceans from a gigantic amount of plastic waste; creating new land; and constructing a sustainable habitat.” 

 

 Seaweed is also thought to play a major part in the self-sufficient nature of Recycled Island, as plans include extensive seaweed cultivation areas and the WHIM’s website states that the farms ‘can increase local fish populations by providing shelter and food for herbivorous fishes, and act as ‘nutrient sinks’ that take up inorganic nutrients (ammonia, nitrate, phosphate) from the water column’. The product can also be utilised for food, bio-fuel, fertiliser, medicine and CO2 absorption.