Recycle Bins - Containers Used For Recycling

Recycle bins or "recycling bins", are containers which are commonly used to store recyclable material before it is picked up by local recycling firms or your council.

There are many common types of recycling bins and recycling containers used in a number of different scenarios.

Before recycling became a widely used process for rubbish disposal, the most common type of recycle bin would have been at your local supermarket or recycling centre. These bins are very large, suitable for use by many people, and can contain different compartments for separating the different types of material. An example of this may be that you wish to separate plastics from glass, or even separate brown glass from green glass etc.

The more common type of recycling container/recycling bin today is a household bin. Many governments in many countries have established recycling plans for home owners. Local councils are usually responsible for delivering recycling bins to home owners, in a bid to convince a growing number of people to recycle part of their refuse.

Household recycling bins can come in a range of sizes and shapes. Some councils in the U.K use wheel based bins for cardboard and paper based products, where others use a number of smaller plastic containers to separate a range of recyclable material.

The introduction of recycling bins on a large scale is a great way to increase recycling. Some reasons for this include; an easier method for recycling products (more convenient), and better education relating to the importance and reasons why we should recycle.

There also exists much larger commercial recycling bins, for use around large offices who may dispose of a large quantity of paper products each day.

In some countries, recycle bins are colour coded to allow citizens to easily identify the most appropriate bin. Many of the recycling bins in use today also include recycling logos to identify their purpose. -CleanEnergyIdeas

Why is recycling important?

The main reasons why we should all recycle more are shown below:

• Energy Saving
• Material Conservation
• Reduction Of Rubbish In Landfills
• Helping The Environment

Energy saving is important if we are to reduce the future effects of global warming. If we recycle one aluminium can, we are able to save enough energy to run a TV for around 3 hours. This will obviously depend on the energy consumption of your TV, but it gives you a great idea as to just how much energy can be saved during the process of recycling products.

Conservation is becoming an increasingly important recycling issue. It is estimated that (in the U.S.A) around 40 million newspapers are cut down each day, resulting in the equivalent of around half a million trees ending up in landfills each and every week.

The reduction of landfills is important for cleaning up the environment, and giving land back to nature. The above information for conservation shows how much waste is sent to landfills in one week, just down to one product (the everyday newspaper).

We are able to help the environment by recycling in a number of ways. It is important that we recycle to achieve a reduction of not only existing landfills, but any future landfill developments which may be needed as a result of over capacity. We can also help the environment through conservation, as the reduction in deforestation saves the environment and the wildlife in these areas.

What You Can Do

If you understand the reasons why you should recycle, and wish to make a difference, here is a list of useful tips you can use to recycle.

• Many homes throughout the UK, and many other parts of the world now have recycling boxes and bins. It is sensible to make use of these, and take the time to fill them. If you don't have these boxes, you can easily purchase a suitable container for each recyclable product (e.g. paper, plastic, and glass), and then take these down to your local recycling centre.

• Try to shop sensibly. Look for products which don't have much packaging to start with, and your halfway there. Did you know that in the US, around $1 of every $11 spent on food items is the cost of the packaging? Also try to only purchase the items you will use to reduce the estimated 21 million shopping bags of food which end up in US landfills each and every year.

The two statements above show how easily we can reduce the impact on landfills, and also include some facts to show why recycling is important. -CleanEnergyIdeas

Paper Recycling

Paper recycling is a great way to save energy, and take a small burden off landfill sites, reducing the impact of these on the surrounding environment.

A study around the time of 2003 to 2004 showed how almost a third of household waste collected for recycling in England consisted of paper and card products.

At the same time, it was estimated that only around 1.3 million tonnes were collected. This figure may sound significant, but still only accounted for a small proportion of paper products. It is estimated that greater levels of paper and card products ended up in landfills during this period.

Many people believe that recycling paper will conserve tree levels, however, this is a common misconception. The explanation to this lies with the paper manufacturers, who grow their own trees in rotation. This method would involve planting new trees as old trees are cut down to make paper products.

Paper recycling can save a significant amount of energy used for the manufacturing of new paper or cardboard products. If we recycle our paper, it will reduce the energy needed to cut down, transport, and process the trees into the finished product.

It is estimated that 1 tonne of paper requires just over 15 trees and around 7,000 gallons of water. It has also been estimated that paper manufacturing requires more energy per tonne than the process of glass manufacturing, and even steel manufacturing.

Recycling our paper and cardboard products can save between 30 - 70% of the energy needed to produce paper from the raw material.

When paper products are sent to landfills, methane is released as the product rots. This methane is harmful to our environment, and most scientists believe that increasing methane and carbon dioxide levels are the two main contributing factors to climate change.

There are many reasons why you should recycle, and the above information illustrates how much of a positive impact the widespread recycling of paper products could have for the environment. -CleanEnergyIdeas

The impact of global warming on coffee plants and beans

If you've taken notice to the sporadic ranges in coffee prices, it's not because of greed amongst the growers. Read about the effects of global warming and how it is substantially impacting coffee crops around the world.

The effects of global warming are widespread, impacting not only our daily atmospheric breathing-related abilities and quality of life in general, but also a great majority of agricultural industries including coffee bean crops. Erratic forces of nature, e.g. too much rainfall, then extreme dry spells as a direct consequence of deforestation and pollution, can very often produce a severe impact of global warming on coffee plants and beans. And based on these ever-changing, sometimes extreme climate and temperature changes, many of the major tropical coffee crop regions of the world which include Central America, Brazil, Africa and India are experiencing irretrievable losses.

The Logistics of it All

A flourishing growth, hence triumphant harvesting of a coffee crop, depends greatly on not just rainfall in itself but more importantly, the timing and amount of it all. During the spring months of April and May, the plants need considerable rainfall to assist with the development of their flowering phase. But when the heavy rains come instead during the months prior to that stage, the coffee crop's growth is stunted, thereby causing havoc on its entire developmental process. As the summer months of June and July approach, the plants need and thirst for yet further moisture. Then, as the seasons shift into the early autumn months of late August and September, coffee plants necessitate dryness so that the beans can harden and ripen. So a drought during this time frame is most beneficial. But when global warming steps in and the weather works in backward succession with the crop's crucial necessities, creating heavy downpours when aridity is essential and vice versa, all that the farmers can do is stand by and watch as the fruits of their labor are destroyed.

Dollars and Cents

A Business Daily article published in November, 2007, states that coffee crop losses will not only create a necessity for increased pricing, but are also defeating the efforts of coffee farmers world-wide. Successes gained by sustaining their crops through strategic laboring and maneuvering within the constant greenhouse effects on their plants, are proving futile as nature consumes substantial percentages of their yield. And as a result, the monetary aspect trickles negatively into not only their livelihood, but that of the global consumer as well, because as is commonly known, when supply decreases, market prices rise.

Possible Solutions in Sight

In a tactical approach toward uncovering new methods and means as an attempt to elude the challenging weather patterns, agricultural experts in conjunction with coffee farmers are working toward developing new, stronger plants that will be able to combat the effects of global warming by utilization of their own resiliency. But only time will tell if this is effective as the world continues to strive toward creating a cleaner, safer environment for all life, including but not limited to, vegetation. -NaturalNews

Why light bulbs are accelerating global warming and mercury contamination?

The incandescent light bulb was downright amazing when it was invented in 1809 by Humphry Davy. Nope, it wasn't invented by Thomas Edison -- that's just another American history lie, much like the stories about Christopher Columbus "discovering" America and being some sort of upstanding hero. In truth, he and his men were butchers who committed numerous atrocities against the Native Americans (see The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn). U.S. history is largely a collection of politically convenient lies, and the story of the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison is just one of many such distortions. Read the timeline of the history of the incandescent light bulb here: http://inventors.about.com/library/...

Unfortunately, very little has changed about the light bulb since the turn of the 20th century. The device still wastes 95 percent of the electricity it consumes. And thanks to a deliberate design by manufacturers to encourage repeat sales (i.e. they are deliberately engineered to burn out), light bulbs still burn out after about 1,000 hours, requiring consumers to toss them into the garbage and buy new ones. (It's true: Light bulbs were invented in 1991 that last 60,000 hours, but companies refuse to mass produce them, since repeat sales of light bulbs would plummet. The bulbs sold to consumers today are designed to self-destruct.)

Incandescent lights are a safety hazard (glass shards, anyone?) and an environmental hazard, since they produce massive carbon dioxide emissions from the coal power plants used to power these bulbs. They're incredibly cheap to purchase up front, but astonishingly expensive to use over time. A typical incandescent light bulb is ten times more expensive to operate than an LED light bulb. It also produces ten times as much carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. Want to warm the climate? Turn on the lights!

So why, then, are so many people still using incandescent light bulbs? Primarily because they have no idea what it costs to actually operate them. The fact that these light bulbs are secretly slipping dollars out of your pocket every time they're used seems to go unnoticed by most consumers. All they see is the price tag at the store. And there, incandescent lights look really cheap.

The $500 incandescent light bulb

But what if the price of the light bulb at the store included the entire cost of the electricity needed to actually power the light bulb? If that incandescent light bulb actually lasted 50,000 hours like LED lights do, the cost of buying the bulb together with all the electricity needed to power it would be a whopping $500!. Would you pay $500 for a light bulb?. -NaturalNews

Excess Ozone Chokes Plants, Accelerates Global Warming

The chemical known as ozone may be making a much more significant contribution to global warming than scientists had previously thought, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.

"Ozone could be twice as important as we previously thought as a driver of climate change," said study co-author Peter Cox.

Ozone occurs naturally in the upper atmosphere, but is produced in the lower atmosphere when sunlight strikes industrial pollutants such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxides.

Scientists have long known that ozone is a greenhouse gas, trapping radiation within the atmosphere and leading to rising global temperatures. But the new study suggests that ozone may have a much more significant climate impact by adversely affecting plants' ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

According to the researchers, high concentrations of ozone and carbon dioxide damage plants' ability to engage in photosynthesis. This weakens the plants, causing their stomata (pores in the leaves) to close. In turn, this reduces that amount of carbon dioxide or ozone that the plants are able to absorb.

Because of this complex interaction, scientists previously did not know how significant of an effect ozone pollution had on plants' ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To answer the question, researchers designed two computer models to test how plants would be affected by ozone if they had either high or low sensitivity. They then used these models to estimate the predicted effect of ozone on plants' ability to filter out carbon dioxide using projected ozone levels from 1900 to 2100.

Under the high-sensitivity model, plants' ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was reduced by 23 percent. Even under the low-sensitivity model, it was reduced by 14 percent.

"Calculations of the efficiency of land ecosystems to take up carbon would be less efficient than we thought previously," Cox said. "The indirect effect is of a similar magnitude, or even larger, than the direct effect. Arguably, we have been looking in the wrong place for the key impacts of ozone." -NaturalNews

Global Warming Versus Planet Poisoning

Al Gore recently won a Nobel Prize for his documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth”. Since then, there has been much debate over whether or not Mr. Gore deserved this accolade and thus rekindled the debate over global warming in general. This seems to be the point of the movie in the first place, to focus our attention on climate change and what we can do about it. Now if only someone equally famous would put together a documentary on how synthetic chemicals are killing us and the planet.

The effects of carbon emissions from our insatiable appetite for energy may be melting the polar ice caps and endangering the polar bears, but perchlorate in our ground water is compromising the healthy function of the thyroid in both man and beast. Increasingly prescribed over the decades, synthetic hormones have also found their way into our lakes, streams and drinking water and already there are populations of frogs found with both male and female organs. Though banned more than 30 years ago, DDT can still be found in the breast milk of women all over the globe.

Since the Second World War, over 80,000 new synthetic chemicals have been manufactured and released into our environment, with 1,500 new chemicals introduced every year. With this increase come all sorts of problems with adverse interactions and unknown synergistic effects. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to isolate any one chemical in the body to find harmful effects. We are all walking test tubes with hundreds of toxins interacting in our liver, fat stores and active blood stream.

The medical research community continues to look for single smoking guns. A drug that cures cancer or a toxin that causes it. None of it is that simple. With research showing one out of three people in the U.S. will develop cancer in their lifetime, do we really think that global warming is our biggest concern? Yes, we should save energy and cut green house gases. But we should also quit poisoning ourselves and the planet. Eating healthy, fresh foods, cleaning with a little “elbow grease” instead of “Scrub Free”, and purchasing natural products will do more for us and the planet than any synthetic chemical or drug ever could. -NaturalNews

UN: global warming caused by human activity

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met Friday to unveil the first in a series of long anticipated reports on global climate change.

Following the IPCC Working Group I report’s unveiling at the Paris headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, representatives of the global scientific community declared their report to contain unequivocal evidence that humans are the driving force behind global warming.

The report specifically states that human activity has been directly responsible for increases in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide since 1750.

Recent increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are so divergent from global patterns over the past several thousand years that “there is no doubt that increase is dominated by human activity,” said Dr. Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Furthermore, the report stated if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reach double their pre-industrial levels, the earth would likely experience an average rise in temperature of 3.6 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

The IPCC, which was established by the UN in 1988, released its last report on climate change in 2001.

Friday’s report contains information gleaned from the input of 600 authors representing 40 countries, and is the first report issued by the IPCC to document the deterioration of massive quantities of ice in both Antarctica and Greenland, contribution to rising sea levels.

IPCC Chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, said the combined global effort was “a unique example of science in the service of society.”

“February 2 will be remembered as the date when uncertainty was removed as to whether humans had anything to do with climate change on this planted,” said Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), Achim Steiner. “We are looking for an unequivocal response from politicians. The evidence is on the table, we no longer have to debate that part of it.”

The IPCC is set to deliver three more reports this year. The Working Group II report will be unveiled in Brussels on April 6 and Working Group III will be released in Bangkok on May 4. The fourth and final report of the series will serve as a summation of its predecessors. The Synthesis Report, as it will be titled, will be released on November 16 in Valencia, Spain. -NaturalNews

Global warming's impact on your garden.

By Constance Casey

Lilac bushes in New England have pretty steadily been blooming earlier every year for the past 30 years. One way some gardeners have begun to think about shorter winters is to say, "Hey, great, I live in Ohio [or wherever, north of the Mason-Dixon Line] and now I can grow some camellias, maybe a fig tree." This is, frankly, nuts. Be careful what you wish for. Kudzu is creeping north, poison ivy is growing more toxic on its diet of extra carbon dioxide, and allergy season lasts longer.

Another reaction is to say, "I will make the world greener by planting a tree in my front yard that will inhale carbon dioxide and slow global warming." This is not nuts, and it's better than nothing, especially if you are planting a shade tree on the south side of your house and thus cutting your air conditioning use. But in the face of the enormity of global temperature change, it's only a little bit better than nothing.

There are two very specific and more sensible ways to prepare than by cheerily planting the flora of Charleston, S.C., in Cleveland. First, insulate the green things you have from the shock of drought to come by making the soil they live in better at holding on to moisture. Next, choose new plants that can tolerate drought and a wide range of temperatures.

The institutions that guide gardeners have themselves started to adjust. The Arbor Day Foundation recently released a hardiness zone map. Their members complained that the widely used official government source—the U.S. Department of Agriculture map—didn't reflect how much the country was warming up.

The Arbor Day Foundation map, using the USDA Hardiness Zone Map of 1990 as a starting point, tracked some dramatic changes from then to 2006. Our heartland—Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and even Michigan's mitten—has shifted from Zone 5 to a warmer Zone 6. (Higher temperatures mean that most U.S. gardeners will be facing longer summer stretches without water.)

The USDA, slower off the mark, will release its own update of the 1990 map sometime this year. When asked if the forthcoming new map was a response to global warming, USDA spokesperson Kim Kaplan said, "Not specifically." She gave as more compelling reasons the fact that the Government Printing Office is out of copies of the last version and that the old version wasn't Internet-friendly.

Both maps divide the United States into zones by shared average low temperatures. Bands of different colors run from a very cold Zone 1 (Fairbanks, Alaska) to a tropical Zone 11 (Honolulu). The maps are a general guide; you may have something like a sunny wall where cold-averse plants can grow. Or your garden may be in a valley that's colder than the surrounding hillsides.

For those who acknowledge that warming is definitely here, the highest priority is to protect trees, which shelter other plants from drying wind and sun, as well as absorb carbon dioxide. The single best drought-survival help you can give those beneficial trees and your other plants is to cover any bare earth, from which water evaporates quickly, with mulch. Spread shredded bark or bark chips or compost about 3 inches deep on top of the soil (take care not to push mulch right up against plant stems or tree trunks where it can cause rot).

When you're planting new things or moving old plants, improve the moisture-holding capacity of your soil even more by digging in organic matter—the same bits of bark or well-rotted cow manure, or compost.

Compost—dark, earthy, decomposed organic matter—has the immediate and obvious effect of making your soil moister, and it's also a welcoming home for the earthworms and microorganisms that make nutrients available to your plants.

A less obvious effect of making and using compost is to keep the atmosphere healthier. When the stuff rots in a municipal landfill, instead of decomposing in a nicely aerated compost heap, it exudes methane—a greenhouse gas that traps heat on Earth at a greater rate than carbon dioxide does.

Selecting plants for drought tolerance doesn't mean that your yard will be all yucca and cactus. Lots of favorite annuals bloom well with low water—cosmos, petunias, verbena, marigolds, and zinnias. (Remember that even drought-tolerant plants need to be watered thoroughly when they're first planted.)

Perennials from Mediterranean climates have evolved to thrive without summer rain. Pinch the leaf of a plant native to Provence or Greece (and similar climates in coastal California, South Africa, and Chile), and you'll see these plants are resinous and fragrant. These include useful and beautiful plants like lavender, rosemary, sage, catmint, oregano, and thyme. A less familiar herb—agastache, also known as hyssop—is a real garden star; it flowers nonstop through the summer, beloved by bees. The red agastaches attract hummingbirds.

The Denver Botanic Garden, which has long been landscaping with natives adapted to Colorado's semi-arid climate, has clear advice and useful plant lists. The catalog of High Country Gardens in Santa Fe, N.M., has particularly interesting water-smart planting designs including "The Inferno Strip Garden" for hot, narrow spaces.

Any botanical garden will have good advice on the native plants that can stand up to hot summers; planting natives will make life easier for your local birds and beneficial insects.

Like everything involved with interacting with the natural world, water-wise gardening gets a little complicated. Climate watchers who are warning us of longer droughts also are predicting heavier rains in winter, coming in fewer events—downpours, buckets. The plants from the Mediterranean or the Colorado high plains do not do well if their roots are drowned. Happily, and also paradoxically, a good cure for waterlogged soil is to add organic material. It's an apparent paradox because that's the stuff that holds on to water, but the organic stuff also keeps the soil aerated and keeps water from collecting in fatal puddles.

You can hedge your bets in this chancy new world by choosing trees and shrubs that do well across many temperature zones. Among the most adaptable: oakleaf hydrangeas, amelanchiers, many of the deciduous magnolias, and a lot of the pines. It may not be precisely right, I suddenly realize, to use the word adaptable. People are adaptable; we can change our behavior. (Not long ago no one used car seatbelts, and everybody smoked.)

It's more accurate to say that some plants and trees have evolved to tolerate or survive or withstand a range of conditions. There are some clever little weeds that can shift strategies quickly, but for the most part it takes generations for trees to adapt to new conditions, which makes them terribly vulnerable.

The tree losers in the coming warming, sadly, are sugar maples and white birches, which thrive in a niche and are unwilling to adapt. Their populations are dwindling in the warming Northeast, land of the precocious lilacs.

Gardeners tend to be the most adaptable of human beings. In fact, working in a garden is an experience that trains you to be flexible and to find consolations where you can. So the poppies never came up and deer ate the roses? Well, the irises looked great, and the lilacs were fabulous.

Landfill Problems and Global Warming Effects

Wastes with high moisture content or which receive artificial irrigation, rainwater, surface or groundwater infiltration produce leachate and methane gas at a high rate. It has been shown, from one study that once a dump is saturated, annual precipitation of 36 inches per year which exists in certain parts of the world can percolate 1 million gallons of contaminated water per acre annually.

This is a lot of contaminated water - also known as leachate or garbage juice! This contaminated water is ten to 1,000 times more contaminated and damaging to the local surface and groundwater than sewage, although it contains few human disease organisms (pathogens) and much fewer than sewage.

All nations also produce huge quantities of scrap tires. Waste scrap tires present landfill problems. They are hard to compact, may rise to the surface over time in poorly compacted waste and provide dangerous breeding grounds for mosquitoes and rats, in the water which collects in them. They also unfortunately do not disintegrate to reduce their volume in stockpiling.

Also if industrial hazardous wastes are landfilled the waste materials that will often be found in the site will be such that the sites will later be classed as contaminated land and do not meet the contaminated soil criteria. This is to be expected where regulatory control is poor but the cost to the community is hugely greater than paying for good regulation in the first place.

It is not realized by many in the community at large that waste prevention and recycling are critical to reducing or stopping climate change. Waste-to-energy (WTE) plants create heat and electricity from burning mixed solid waste. Because of high corrosion in the boilers, the steam temperature in WTE plants may end up being less than 400 degrees Celsius. This has to be avoided because at these temperatures of combustion many hazardous by-products of incomplete combustion will be present which are very harmful to the local environment and the health of future occupants, if not cleaned up.

But, the adoption of large scale waste prevention and recycling will help address global climate change by decreasing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and saving energy (US Environmental Protection Agency).

The fact is that global warming, also known as the greenhouse gas effect, remains controversial in many quarters. Many still question the basis of the prediction of climate change. However, Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the United States agreed in principle to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases to somewhat below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012.

In 1997 global cooling was a big environmental worry and an issue back then, but few paid attention to that either, and the concerns were soon found to be unfounded. The perspective in global cooling is similar to the way people view global warming now.

Landfill methane is an excellent and frequently untapped resource. Most times gases are simply flared or burned in the atmosphere, which is much less contributory to the greenhouse gas build-up which worries us all, than just letting the methane (landfill gas) escape without flaring. Landfill methane is typically flared in the developed nations, and almost never flared in the developing world\'s nations.

Opinions about landfill gas as an emissions problem, and even the producer of significant greenhouse gas emissions vary across the US. We have been made aware that state regulators consider methane to be a minor problem in New Mexico, due to the dry climate. However, Albuquerque is treating at least one serious methane problem with a high priority. State-by-state analyses nevertheless, do show a large and untapped potential for biomass-fired electricity generation. A very separate question, of course, is how much of this potential makes financial, environmental, or political sense.

However, interest in the use of landfill gas to fuel electricity generation is growing. Landfill methane is collected at a growing number of landfill sites and burned for energy production which mitigates the global warming effect of the methane as well as producing electricity and/or heat.

by: Steve Evans

Green House Gas's and Its Effects on our Planet

Green house gas's , are they as big of a problem as people say? . People who know little about green house gas's , truley are not aware how its effecting our earth , so hopefully this information clears some of this up , and will show you how serious this problem is actually is.For 2.5 million years , the earths climate constantley been changing , from our iceages to warmer years , but in the last century our climates temperature has been rising unusually fast , from about 1.3 to 1.5 degrees fareinghnheight . Scientists beleive that it is our own human activity , thats driving the temperture up , and this process is called " global warming".

Dating back to the times when the industrial revelution began , factorys , trains , and eventually cars , have burned fossil fuels such as oil and coal , which were and still are , releasing hudge amounts of carbon dioxide , and other gas's into our earths atmosphere . These green house gas's , or trapped heat near the surface of the earth , are formed by a natural process of the sun , and this is called the " greenhouse effect" . The green house effect , begins with the sun and the imagery it radiates to the earth. The Earth and the atmosphere absorb some of this energy , and the rest is radiated back into space. Now with that being said , these Natuarlly occuring gas's , in the atmosphere trap some of this energy and reflect it back, thus , warming the earth . Scientists now believe that the green house effect is getting intensified by all the extra green house gas's that humans are releasing .

Signs of global warming , include a recent pattern of very warm years . 1998 was one of the warmest years in history , with 2005 , a quick runner up .Futher more , readings taken from ice core samples , Show that green house gas's , C02 , and methane , have hit there highest levels in 420,000 years , and our sea ice is also shrinking .Our sea ice has declined 10% in the last 30 years .

As long as our nations around the globe , consume these energy's , and increase their feul consumption , the overall mass of green house gas's will continue to rise . Researchers predict that our temperature will increase by 2 - 10 degrees farenheight by the end of the century . What is uncertain is what rising temperatures ,will mean for our planet . Some focast rising sea levels which of coarse would mean floods , along coastal areas around the world . Weather patterns are changing also , making huricanes more frequent , severe drought is more common in warm areas , and species which are unable to adapt to this change will face a hudge drop in numbers and inevitably , extinction .

by: Jerome Exner

JUST 5 SIMPLE WAY TO HELP OUR PLANET

· Turn off your computer or the TV when you’re not using it. Unplug chargers when not in use.

· Wait until you have a lot of clothes to wash before using the washing machine. Don’t use the machine for one item just because it’s your favorite shirt.

· Take shorter showers. Heating water uses energy.

· Close the blinds on a hot day if the sun is shining in. Dress lightly instead of turning up the air conditioning. Or use a fan.

· Dress warmly inside your house when it’s cold, instead of turning up the heat.

· Offer to help your parents keep the air filters on your AC and furnace clean.

· Walk short distances instead of asking for a ride in a car.

· Plant a tree.

IT'S EASY, RIGHT?

What Can I do About Global Warming?

During the mid-20th century, scientists have begun to observe and record the steady increase in the average temperature of the oceans as well as on the atmosphere. This change is now termed global warming and is recognized to be one of the leading factors in which the planet has been undergoing drastic climatic changes such severe typhoons and flooding. With all these alarming developments, I could not help but wonder what I can specifically do in order to contribute toward decreasing this adverse phenomenon.

One of the recognized causes of global warming is the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This particular compound is produced by burning fossil fuels in order to provide energy. One good way to contribute toward reduction of carbon dioxide emissions would be to use a fuel efficient vehicle. This is not a hard thing to do, since a lot of automobile manufacturers have step up to the challenge to develop and sell vehicles that don’t consume as much gas as the older models. Another way to help fuel efficiency is to keep my vehicle in top shape and to try carpooling as well as commuting once in a while. It always pays to have engine tune ups regularly as well as to ensure all the tires are properly inflated, as tires not fully inflated can also increase gasoline consumption. Using car air conditioner is also one source of carbon dioxide emissions. On a cool day, driving around with windows open would a good alternative. As for driving less, it not only saves on gas but would also help reduce traffic congestions. It might even encourage a healthier lifestyle, as I now have the option of walking whenever I can.

Carbon dioxide is also emitted by home appliances so it would also make sense to purchase energy-efficient appliances that will not only reduce pollution but also translates to lower energy bill. Using compact fluorescent bulbs is also a good strategy to reduce energy costs. Appliances and light bulbs that came with the Energy Star label are also the most ideal to use and install. Some utility companies even offer rebates for those who made the switch into using energy efficient light bulbs and would also be another way for me to reduce energy bills.

There are also a lot of organizations that are pushing for the use of more renewable energy sources and thereby minimize our reliance on burning fossil fuels. I could also help the fight in global warming by giving my support to these organizations and help educate my friends and family regarding the dangers of global warming and promoting renewable energy at a community level.

Another way to contribute towards the fight against global warming would be to have a ‘greener’ home. This means a more energy-efficient home. One simple and practical way to ensure this would be to seal all drafts in order to prevent increased used of heating during winters. During summertime, opening the windows and letting cooling breeze come in is a good alternative to using the cooling system. These initiatives also translate into lesser energy bill and more savings on my part. -climatarians.org

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