Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Sunday, 27 July 2008
These are some of the actions we would be prepared to take as individuals
1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Do your part to reduce waste by choosing reusable products instead of disposables. Buying products with minimal packaging (including the economy size when that makes sense for you) will help to reduce waste. And whenever you can, recycle paper, plastic, newspaper, glass and aluminium cans. If there isn't a recycling program at your workplace, school, or in your community, ask about starting one. By recycling half of your household waste, you can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.
2. Use Less Heat and Air Conditioning
Adding insulation to your walls and attic, and installing weather stripping or caulking around doors and windows can lower your heating costs more than 25 percent, by reducing the amount of energy you need to heat and cool your home.
Turn down the heat while you're sleeping at night or away during the day, and keep temperatures moderate at all times. Setting your thermostat just 2 degrees lower in winter and higher in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
3. Change a Light Bulb
Wherever practical, replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. Replacing just one 60-watt incandescent light bulb with a CFL will save you $30 over the life of the bulb. CFLs also last 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs, use two-thirds less energy, and give off 70 percent less heat.
If every U.S. family replaced one regular light bulb with a CFL, it would eliminate 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gases, the same as taking 7.5 million cars off the road.
4. Drive Less and Drive Smart
Less driving means fewer emissions. Besides saving gasoline, walking and biking are great forms of exercise. Explore your community's mass transit system, and check out options for carpooling to work or school.
When you do drive, make sure your car is running efficiently. For example, keeping your tires properly inflated can improve your gas mileage by more than 3 percent. Every gallon of gas you save not only helps your budget; it also keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
5. Buy Energy-Efficient Products
When it's time to buy a new car, choose one that offers good gas mileage. Home appliances now come in a range of energy-efficient models, and compact florescent bulbs are designed to provide more natural-looking light while using far less energy than standard light bulbs.
Avoid products that come with excess packaging, especially molded plastic and other packaging that can't be recycled. If you reduce your household garbage by 10 percent, you can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.
6. Use Less Hot Water
Set your water heater at 120 degrees to save energy, and wrap it in an insulating blanket if it is more than 5 years old. Buy low-flow showerheads to save hot water and about 350 pounds of carbon dioxide yearly. Wash your clothes in warm or cold water to reduce your use of hot water and the energy required to produce it. That change alone can save at least 500 pounds of carbon dioxide annually in most households. Use the energy-saving settings on your dishwasher and let the dishes air-dry.
7. Use the "Off" Switch
Save electricity and reduce global warming by turning off lights when you leave a room, and using only as much light as you need. And remember to turn off your television, video player, stereo and computer when you're not using them.
It's also a good idea to turn off the water when you're not using it. While brushing your teeth, shampooing the dog or washing your car, turn off the water until you actually need it for rinsing. You'll reduce your water bill and help to conserve a vital resource.
8. Plant a Tree
If you have the means to plant a tree, start digging. During photosynthesis, trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. They are an integral part of the natural atmospheric exchange cycle here on Earth, but there are too few of them to fully counter the increases in carbon dioxide caused by automobile traffic, manufacturing and other human activities. A single tree will absorb approximately one ton of carbon dioxide during its lifetime.
9. Encourage Others to Conserve
Share information about recycling and energy conservation with your friends, neighbours and co-workers, and take opportunities to encourage public officials to establish programs and policies that are good for the environment.
These are the ways that we think the problem of global warming can be reduced, and who we think should be most responsible:
The issues of climate
Change and global warming
And educating themselves about Individuals
Them.
Planting trees and increasing land owners
Green open areas
Reducing emission through government
New transit systems and
Alternative fuels
Building concrete sea walls government
To protect the shores from
Erosion
Encouraging people to participate Non-governmental organizations
In saving their Earth and reducing
Global warming.
Organizing public marches to Non-governmental organizations
Force governments to take immediate
Actions to reduce global warming.
Organizing campaigns to educate Non-governmental organizations
People about global warming and and governments
How to reduce it.
What climate changes are projected for the 21st century?
The projected rate of warming is very likely to be the fastest in at least the last 10,000 years.
It is very likely that nearly all land areas will warm more rapidly than the global average, particularly those at high northern latitudes in the cold season
Precipitation is projected to increase, with larger year to year variations, especially in mid- to high northern latitudes and Antarctica in winter
Some extreme events are expected to increase in severity For some others, there is not enough information to make confident projections.
Most models show weakening of the ocean thermohaline circulation. This would reduce the temperature increase in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
Northern Hemisphere snow cover and sea-ice extent are projected to decrease further, as well as glaciers and ice caps.
The Antarctic ice sheet is likely to gain mass while the Greenland ice sheet is likely to lose mass.
It is very unlikely that there will be a loss of grounded West Antarctic ice raising substantial the sea level.
Sea level is projected to rise by something between 9 and 88 cm (3.5 to 35") between 1990 and 2100, due primarily to thermal expansion and loss of ice.
The possible effects of global warming in Egypt in the future
The Nile River:
Egypt’s Nile Delta is particularly at risk from sea-level rise, which would threaten freshwater resources, crop production, fishing livelihoods and encourage the spread of diseases such as malaria.The Nile (and almost every other river in the middle latitudes) will experience reduced stream flow. As temperatures rise, vaporization (transport of water from the surface to the atmosphere) will increase. In the high latitudes, that vaporization will be balanced by more precipitation (and so stream flows might even increase), but in the low latitudes that won't happen. There's not going to be much rain falling into the Nile Basin, and that means reduced stream flow, which will result in less agriculture, hydroelectric power, and drinking water for the region.
Less rainfall = less drinking water.
Less rainfall = less water for agriculture = famine.
The possible effects of global warming in Egypt in the future
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — Millions of Egyptians could be forced permanently from their homes, the country's ability to feed itself devastated.
That's what likely awaits our nation by the end of the century, if predictions about climate change hold true. The World Bank describes Egypt as particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming, saying it faces potentially "catastrophic" consequences.
"The situation is serious and requires immediate attention. Any delay would mean extra losses," said Mohamed el-Raey, an environmental scientist at Alexandria University.
A big reason is the vulnerability of Egypt's breadbasket —
the Nile Delta, a fan-shaped area of rich, arable land where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. Although the Delta makes up only 2.5% of Egypt's land mass, it is home to more than a third of this largely desert country's 80 million people.
The Delta was already in danger, threatened by the side effects of southern Egypt's High Dam. Though the dam, completed in 1970, generates much-needed electricity and controls Nile River flooding, it also keeps nutrient sediment from replenishing the eroding Delta.
Add climate change to the mix, and the Delta faces new uncertainties that could have a potentially more devastating effect on Egypt.
The Mediterranean has been creeping upward about .08 inches annually for the last decade, flooding parts of Egypt's shoreline, el-Raey said.
By 2100, the rising waters could wipe out the sandy beaches that attract thousands of tourists. Also at risk would be the buried treasures archaeologists are still uncovering in ancient Alexandria, once the second most important city in the Roman Empire.
But those losses would pale to the impact of the worst-case scenario that some scientists are predicting — global warming unexpectedly and rapidly breaking up the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.
If this happens, seas could rise by about 16 feet (4.9 meters), causing mass devastation to the region, according to a World Bank study released this year.
Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Penn State University, said the sheets are collapsing at slow rate, but much faster than scientists thought a decade ago. A complete collapse could take "at least centuries," said Alley, an expert on ice melt.
But even minimal sea rise in the next century would have serious consequences for Egypt, experts warn.
A rise of 3.3 feet (one meter) would flood a quarter of the Delta, forcing about 10.5% of Egypt's population from their homes, according to the World Bank. The impact would be all the more staggering if Egypt's population, as expected, doubles to about 160 million by the middle of the century. The Delta is already densely packed with about 4,000 people per square mile (2.6 square kilometer).
Also hit would be Egypt's food supply. Nearly half of Egypt's crops, including wheat, bananas and rice, are grown in the Delta.
Areas not under water would also be affected, with salt water from the Mediterranean contaminating the fresh ground water from the Nile River used for irrigation.
But the unique and fragile ecosystem of the Delta makes the job of protecting it much greater — and human activity has already made the task harder.
For thousands of years, annual Nile floods deposited mud, sand and minerals that replenished the Delta and prevented erosion. But for the past three decades, the High Dam has curbed the sediment from resettling in the Delta and allowed erosion to flourish.
"The sediment created a balance. Now the coastal processes are acting alone without sediments counteracting, and the balance has been changed," said Omran Frihy, a retired coastal researcher in Alexandria.
Fortunately the government in Cairo is beginning to confront the problem.
In Alexandria, authorities are spending US$300 million (euro222 million) to build concrete sea walls to protect the beaches along the Mediterranean, Frihy said. Sand is being dumped in some areas to replenish dwindling beaches.
Similar walls are going up in other parts of the coast including Rashid, where archaeologists in 1799 discovered the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the secrets of ancient Egyptian writing.
The government is also preparing a "national strategy study" on ways to adapt to climate change, said Maged George, Egypt's minister of environmental affairs.
Mohamed el-Shahawy, a climate scientist at the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, said the government was obtaining a "vulnerability index and detecting the most vulnerable regions."
reference: Anna Johnson, Associated Press
Basic principles about Global Warming
" Global Warming " ?
Global warming or greenhouse effect is an effect occurring in the atmosphere because of the presence of certain gases (greenhouse gases) that absorb infrared radiation. Light and ultraviolet radiation from the sun is able to penetrate the atmosphere and warm the Earth’s surface. This energy is re-radiated as infrared radiation which because of its longer wavelength, is absorbed by such substances as carbon dioxide. The overall effect is that the average temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere is increasing (so-called global Warming). The effect is similar to that occurring in a greenhouse, where light and long-wavelength ultraviolet radiation can pass through the glass into greenhouse but the infrared radiation is absorbed by the glass and part of it is re-radiated into the greenhouse.
The greenhouse effect is seen as a major environmental hazard. Average increases in temperature could change weather patterns and agricultural output. It might also lead to melting of the polar ice caps and a corresponding rise in sea level. Carbon dioxide, from fossil-fuel power stations and car exhausts, is the main greenhouse gas. Other contributory pollutants are nitrogen oxides, ozone, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons.