History

**Welcome Guys(or girls)!**
Today we all face a great "challenge". The use of fossil fuels(eg.coal,oil) to create electricity and power cars, trucks and planes has begun to impact the global climate. Without immediate action, many scientists predict climate change may soon cause major crop losses and lack of drinking water throughout the world.

Our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren(and our decendents?) now depend upon everyone(and the viruses) taking immediate action to stop climate change. This may seem like an overwhelming task, but it isn't. Stopping climate change is a simple problem that each of us has the ability to solve.

Many people look to governments, businesses and nonprofit organizations to solve our environmental problems. In reality, however, no organization or government can stop climate change, only individuals can. Each of us has the ability to make minor changes to our own lives that can have a rapid and positive impact on the global environment.


 * How hard would it be for you to cut your energy consumption in half?**


 * At first this may sound difficult, particularly if you already take steps to conserve energy. However, it may not be as difficult as it seems. As you read this, look around your room, or perhaps the rest of your home ...**
 * Are there lights on that are not necessary?
 * Is there a radio or TV on in an empty room?
 * Is an unoccupied room being heated or cooled?
 * Could you lower or raise the thermostat a few degrees, and still be comfortable by changing how you are dressed?
 * Did you take any car trips this week that could have been consolidated?

These are just a few of the many things each of us can do to save energy now.

If you stop and plan your day more carefully, change the types of light bulbs you use, adjust your thermostat, plan your car trips better, etc., you can likely cut your energy use in half with little or no adverse effects on your lifestyle.

And guess what?

If you cut your energy use in half, that means all that extra money you were spending on gas and electricity is back in your pocket!

As soon as you begin to cut your energy use, you have accomplished the first step to help stop climate change. Set a goal of a 50% reduction, and even if you can't reach this goal immediately, remember every little bit makes a difference!

Now for the second step. Today or tomorrow, teach at least two of your friends how they can save energy and money by passing along some of the tips you learn. After you do this, ask your friends to pass these energy-saving tips along again to another two people the following day.

Here's the most amazing part of all this:

If you are able to significantly cut your energy use, educate two people how they can do the same tomorrow, and ask each of them to educate two more people, how long do you think it would take until the entire 6.4 billion people of the world begin reducing their energy use?

Ready for the answer? Less than 32 days! Really. (If you don't believe it, just ask a friend who is good at math to do the computation!)

Stop relying on governments, nonprofit organizations and corporations to help with the environment. If each of us takes our own individual responsibility, we can make a huge change without having to spend a dime or pass any legislation. In fact, all of the money saved will invigorate other parts of the economy. The power to change the world is in your hands. Act today, not tomorrow.

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Step 1: Minimize Drafts In Your Home
One of the simplest and easiest ways to prevent global warming is to make sure all your windows and doors are draft free. Small gaps in your windows and doors can cause you to consume a lot more energy than you really need to in order to heat and cool your home. To make your home free from drafts wait until a cold day, then hold your hand along the edges of your doors and windows feeling for cold air. If you detect drafts, buy weather striping from your local (hardware) store and install it wherever it is needed.

Step 2: Reduce Wasted Electricity
When you eliminate phantom loads, you save a lot more electricity- and CO2 emissions - more than you might imagine. A phantom load is caused when an electrical appliance draws electricity when it isn't in use. Amazigly, about 11% of residential electricity consumption is used by "phantom loads." For example, your DVD player has an electrically lighted display that stays on even when you turn the power off. An easy way you can eliminate these phantom loads is to plug your computers, printers, scanners, DVD players, televisions, etc. into multi-plug electrical surge protectors. Then, with one flick of the switch, you can mkae sure that the appliances plugged into your surge protectors are drawing no electricity at all.

Step 3: Use more efficient light bulbs
If every American household replaced just one incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent one, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, then over the life of the bulbs 90 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions would be pevented from going into the atmosphere. This is like taking 6.3 million cars off the road!

Step 4: Turn Down Your Water Heater.
Just a 15° C reduction on your water heater thermostat can reduce 3% to 5% of your total energy consptution. Most of us have our hot (water) heaters turned up far too high. You'll have plenty of hot water if you set your water heater between 40-50°C. =Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten 1.3 billion Asians= Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten 1.3 billion Asians KATHMANDU (AFP) - – More than a billion people in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers for water, but experts say they are melting at an alarming rate, threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent. Glaciers in the Himalayas, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, lifelines for the 1.3 billion people who live downstream. But temperatures in the region have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade for the last 30 years, dramatically accelerating the rate at which glaciers are shrinking. As world leaders gather in Copenhagen this month for a crucial climate change summit, campaigners warn that some Himalayan glaciers could disappear altogether within a few decades. "Scientists predict that most glaciers will be gone in 40 years as a result of climate change," said Prashant Singh, leader of environmental group WWF's Climate for Life campaign. "The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the Himalayan drainage systems who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers could "disappear altogether by 2035" and experts say the effects of global warming are already being felt in the region. In Nepal and Bhutan, the receding glaciers have formed vast lakes that threaten to burst, devastating villages downstream. Nepalese mountaineer and environmental campaigner Dawa Steven Sherpa said he first became interested in climate change after a close call when part of the Khumbu icefall above Everest base camp collapsed during an expedition in 2007. Sherpa, who has scaled Everest three times, was walking on the glacier minutes before the collapse, and said his near miss alerted him to the dramatic toll that global warming is already taking on the Himalayas. "Every time I go to the mountains the older Sherpas tell me this is the warmest year yet," Sherpa, who will take part in a special "summiteers' summit" in Copenhagen, told AFP. "Initially it struck me how much more dangerous mountaineering would become. But then I realised it was much bigger than that. Entire villages could be wiped out if one of the glacial lakes burst." In China, studies have shown that the rapid melting of the glaciers will result in an increase in flooding in the short term, state news agency Xinhua has reported. In the longer term, it said, the continued retreat of glaciers would lead to a gradual decrease in river flows, severely affecting large parts of western China. Experts say the resulting water shortages could hit the economic development of China and India, with potentially dire consequences for development in two of the world's most populated countries. Even in low-lying Bangladesh, prone to severe floods, the IPCC has said rivers could run dry by the end of the century. But research on the impact of global warming on the rugged and inaccessible Himalayas remains sparse, with the IPCC describing the region as a "blank spot" due to a lack of scientific data. Even the experts disagree on the issue, with some arguing that some of the Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing. India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh recently came under fire for denying that climate change was causing Himalayan glaciers to melt, citing research by the Indian geologist Vijay Kumar Raina. The Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has studied the Himalayan region for more than three decades and warns of an "urgent need" for more research on the impact of climate change. "There are so many uncertainties surrounding where, how and to what extent the Himalayan region will be affected by climate change," ICIMOD climate change expert Arun Shrestha told AFP. "But most experts accept that temperatures are changing, and this is happening more rapidly at altitude." ICIMOD has warned that the current trends in glacial melt suggest flows in major Asian rivers including the Ganges, Indus and Yellow Rivers will be "substantially reduced" in the coming decades. "The situation may appear to be normal in the region for several decades to come, and even with increased amounts of water available to satisfy dry season demands," it said in a recent report on the Himalayas. "However, when the shortage arrives, it may happen abruptly, with water systems going from plenty to scarce in perhaps a few decades or less." Shrestha added: "When the glaciers get hotter, you get more water, but there comes a point when the water will run out. "It's like a bank balance, if you're not putting money in, you can't take it out."

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