The Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is something, what is caused  by several gases called Greenhouse gases. The main type of gas is carbon dioxide. There is a lot of water vapor(hidrogen dioxide) and nitrous dioxide in the atmosphere too.

The picture is explaining the Green House effect in detail. The main thing what is going on, is that we produce  greenhouse gas in factories and also generate it with cars, and so on. This gas traps the solar energy inside the atmosphere, raising the temperature significantly. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the burning of fossil fuels has contributed to a 40% increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 280 ppm to 397 ppm. Here is a % amount of contribution to the greenhouse effect by various gases.

Gas	Formula	Contribution (%)
Water vapor	H2O	36 – 72%
Carbon dioxide	CO2	9 – 26%
Methane	CH4	4 – 9%
Ozone	O3	3 – 7%

Heres another picture of how the greenhouse effect works:

So it's possible, that in several years, the time it takes for greenhouse gases to leave the atmosphere, will increase significantly, and therefore the temeperature too.

The true cost of food

We are going to talk about food and the true cost of food soon...



THE PROBLEMS WE'RE FACING

Food consumption is an area where individual decisions can make a difference; supply will follow demand and it's already happening. But first we need to look at the current landscape: The way food is produced and the way we eat create huge costs that are not reflected in our food bills.

Some are actual dollar amounts (subsidies and cleanup costs that we pay for in taxes);
some are damage to the environment (pollution and loss of wildlife habitat);
some are loss of quality of life (tasteless food, loss of the pleasure of preparing food and eating together); and
some are health issues (obesity, diseases, poor nutrition, contaminated food).

Agribusiness farms employ chemical-intensive systems that pollute land, air, and water. We transport much of our food from centralized factory farms instead of buying it from local sources which is a poor use of resources and a contributor to air and water pollution. We're losing our wild places because of wasteful agricultural practices such as uncontrolled grazing and fattening up animals with diets of factory-farm corn. Americans get much of their meat from pollution-causing factory farms and feedlots. More and more of our food production is controlled by a few large producers. Buying from small, independent producers allows us some input into how our food is grown.


Let us find the key words for this topic... demand, landscape, subsidies, pollution, fuel, free range, obesity, industrial farming etc.

This is a very useful site for ESL learners and teachers,  with Global Issues and Activism in English Language Teaching

Gabi

Carbon footprint

A carbon footprint is an estimate of the climate change impact of activity – such as making a product, living a lifestyle or running a company.
Typically, a carbon footprint is calculated by estimating not just the CO2 emissions that the activity in question causes, but also any emissions of other greenhouse gases (such as methane and nitrous oxide) and in some cases other types of climate impacts as well, such as vapour trails from aeroplanes. For simplicity, all these impacts are added together and expressed as a single number in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): the amount of CO2 that would create the same amount of warming.
Here you can calcuate your carbon footprint: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
(Hungarian average carbon footprint is 3.1 ha. In Etopia it is 0.5, in the USA 10.3 ha.)

Green Cities

According to grist.org, the eco friendliest city on Earth is Reykjavik, it has been putting hydrogen buses on its streets, and, like the rest of the country, its heat and electricity come entirely from renewable geothermal and hydropower sources and it’s determined to become fossil-fuel-free by 2050.
The second one is Portland, it is the first U.S. city to enact a comprehensive plan to reduce CO2 emissions and has aggressively pushed green building initiatives. It also runs a comprehensive system of light rail, buses, and bike lanes to help keep cars off the roads, and it boasts 92,000 acres of green space and more than 74 miles of hiking, running, and biking trails.
The third is Curitiba. About three-quarters of its residents rely on public transport, and the city boasts over 580 square feet of green space per inhabitant.
The fourth is Malmö, known for its extensive parks and green space, Sweden’s third-largest city is a model of sustainable urban development.
The fifth one is Vancouver, it has been a leader in hydroelectric power and is now charting a course to use wind, solar, wave, and tidal energy to significantly reduce fossil-fuel use.
And the list goes on with London, San Francisco, Bahía de Caráquez, Sydney, Barcelona, Bogotá, Bangkok, Kampala, Austin, Chicago, Freiburg, Seattle and Quebec City. 

To read the article click on the following link: http://grist.org/article/cities3/

How to transport 35 people

This experiment made in Denver is called “How to transport 35 people” and is useful to understand cars are not the best urban transportation system. It has been calculated only 1,2 passengers travel in average in each car. In the first picture 35 people travel in 35 different cars,  getting stuck in a traffic jam.

In the second picture the drivers are without the cars, surrounded by the space previously occupied by their vehicles. It makes really clear how much city surface can be taken by cars .

In the third picture the 35 drivers take seat in an imaginary bus and the traffic jam magically disappears. .

In the last picture the 35 car drivers are still in the bus, but now more cars, bikes, motorbikes and pedestrians pop up in the street. You have now more than 50 people in the street, but the traffic is still really fluid.

BBC short videos about recycling

In this BBC page you can watch 4 short videos (around 2 minutes each) about the garbage collecting system

in some cities from Italy, USA, Belgium and South Korea.
It's important to understand how it will change in a near future. More and more countries are adopting the "pay-as-you-throw systems", something unbelievable in Hungary, where you can decide whether to recycle or not without any economic consequence. The "pay-as-you-throw systems" calculate directly your garbage fee according to the amount of not recycled-not recyclable rubbish you produce.
These systems can motivate people to recycle as much as possible: less waste you produce, less money you pay.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7746001.stm

Water foot print calculator

The ecological footprint is a measure of human impact and demand for natural resources. Buying lot of stuff, not recycling, etc., makes our ecological footprint bigger.
But what about water consumption? There's a proper measure for it, the water footprint. Sometimes we aren't aware of our water consumption, for example nobody knows in a year we flush in the toilet as much water as we drink in 40 years.
Generally we think our water consumption is limited to the amount of showers we have: it's good to save water when we are in the bathroom  (remember to close the tap whenever you brush your teeth), but let's not forget we need water to grow food and  to produce all the items present in our life: to produce a car we need as much water as 50 times its weight.
Our diet and our daily habits influence our water foot print, calculate yours and discover what you could do to reduce it.

Water foot print calculator