Friday, September 10, 2010

Truth About Planes and Climate Change

I was surfing and reading across the environmental issue and i found out this article from the Guardian, you might need to read it to know the complex truth about planes and climate change. as the world is getting warmer than before, almost everyday we hear the news from many part of the world on natural disasters. Here i share what i've just read on environment news.

A new study suggests that planes cause more warming than cars, while ships are cooling enough to counteract them both.
We hear much about the environmental costs of air travel. As our recent Q&A explained, the problem is not just that planes burn a lot of fuel and therefore kick out plenty of CO2 per passenger. Just as important are a host of other high-altitude impacts, including vapour trails and ozone production, that are usually estimated to cause as much warming as the CO2 itself.

Hence we often hear that although air travel accounts for only a small fraction of global emissions (relatively few people can afford to fly), one transatlantic flight can add as much to your carbon footprint as a typical year's worth of driving.

Surely it couldn't get any worse, could it? Unfortunately for green-minded air travellers, it just did. Kind of.

The wrinkle, always vaguely understood by climate geeks but finally explored in depth in a recent scientific paper, is that the relative impact of different types of travel depends not just on practical factors such as engine efficiency and occupancy rates, but also on something altogether more abstract: the time frame you care about.

The reason this is so crucial is that the effects of different greenhouse gases play out in the atmosphere at a different speeds. CO2, released by all fuel-burning vehicles, can remain in the air for centuries, causing a gentle warming effect. By contrast, most other gases and impacts – such as the vapour trails and tropospheric ozone produced by planes at altitude – cause much more potent but shorter-lived bursts of warming.

If you'll forgive an extension to the "frying the planet" metaphor, generating global warming with CO2 is equivalent to slow-cooking the earth in a cast-iron skillet, whereas cooking the planet with vapour trails would be more like flash-frying it in an extra-hot wok.

In order to tot up these differently paced warming impacts into a single carbon footprint number for a flight or any other activity, it's necessary to decide what time frame you're talking about. Conventional wisdom is to add up the total warming impact of all the different greenhouse gases over the period of a century to create a nice, round but ultimately arbitrary number.

If, by contrast, we shifted the focus to a much shorter time period – which arguably would make more sense, given that the next decade or so could turn out to be make-or-break in terms of avoiding climate tipping points – then the impact of vapour trails and other short-lived impacts look massively more significant.

At risk of over-stretching the frying-pans analogy, the flash-fry wok may be more likely to cause a disastrous kitchen fire than the slow-cook skillet, even if they both use the same amount of heat overall.

The new paper, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, finally pins some numbers on all this theory by examining the impact over different time periods of various different modes of transport. The results are illuminating.

According to the paper, if we focus just on the impact over the next five years, then planes currently account for more global warming than all the cars on the world's roads – a stark reversal of the usual comparison. Per passenger mile, things are even more marked: flying turns out to be on average 50 times worse than driving in terms of a five-year warming impact.

If we shift to a 20-year time frame, things look completely different. The short-term impacts have largely died down and the plane looks considerably better – helped along by a quirk of atmospheric chemistry which sees nitrous oxide pollution from the aircraft engines causing cooling during this period by destroying methane in the air. The paper even suggests that for any time frame longer than 20 years, flying is typically greener per kilometre than driving (although when I phoned to check this, one of the authors of the report confirmed my suspicion that this isn't true in Europe, where fuel-efficient cars are more popular).

Of the various forms of transport examined by the researchers, shipping is the other one most markedly affected by short-term climate impacts. Here, however, everything is in reverse because the major short-term effect of shipping is sulfate aerosol pollution. While they remain in the air, these aerosol particles bounce sunlight away from the earth and therefore cause cooling rather than warming. The extent of this effect is amazing: if I'm understanding the numbers correctly, over a five-year time frame the world's ships cause enough cooling to offset the total warming caused by every car, plane and bus combined.

Even over a 20-year time frame, shipping pollution still contributes an overall cooling effect – as do electric trains, due to the aerosol pollution kicked out from coal-fired power stations. This throws up a tricky issue for policy makers and industry. If we clean up some kinds of air pollution for the benefit of environmental and human health, then we stand to significantly accelerate global warming in the near-term.

However the world deals with that particular conundrum, the new paper is a useful reminder that carbon footprints are more multi-dimensional than is usually understood. If we want to buy ourselves as much time as possible to avoid climate-tipping points, it may not just be how much warming something generates that matters, but when that warmth kicks in.

This issue isn't limited to transport, of course. Any activity that generates lots of methane, nitrous oxide or other non-CO2 greenhouse gases will have a much faster warming effect than its carbon footprint, as traditionally expressed, might suggest. That would include meat and rice farming, landfill sites and fridge production, for example.

All of which is – for carbon geeks such as myself, at least – very interesting. What I'd like to know next is how much work has been done on analysing how near-term rates of global warming fit with the risk of overstepping climate-tipping points. Any pointers?

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Grill Guard, An Accessory that Will Protect Your Vehicle

Isn’t it important to make your car look more better and at the same time still protecting it. Actually you can accomplish it through several ways, one of them are by installing grill guards to your car. You must have familiar with it, at least on sight.

In general this device offer you great advantages for your car, especially if you are using it for off road riding. Most model of grill guard are formed by tubular steel, aside from usual protection, these grill guard also protect the radiator that commonly behind the grille. However, there are various kind of grill guard for your car, and you can just choose any of them which one is suitable for your car outlook.

There are many company offer you range of grill guard, but before purchasing it, make sure you understand how to select the best quality if grill guard, and here we are :

  1. Make sure that you purchase the grill guards to fit the specific make and brand of your vehicle, to avoid of having to drill new holes in your vehicle for grill guard fitting, however don’t worry, several company actually designed car grill guards for many brand.
  2. It is also important that you purchase the entire grill guard package, complete with skid pale and other component pieces.
  3. Finally make sure that you consider the gauge of steel that your choice of guard is constructed with, the thicker the better as it will give more protection for your vehicle, but remember if your grill guard is more heavier obviously involve more pounds of gasoline to load your vehicle.

If you have already decided all of these items, then next thing you have to finish your prefer, because many company offer stainless steel, chrome and powder coated black vehicle grill guard, as for the longevity and outlook concern, however all of these types has something different to offer, keep in mind to check with your grill guard retailer and find out the length of warranty that apply for each type of finish.

Then, issue the style, this option depends on the appearance of steel it is made with, and then decide the installation of your new grill guard, as some brands can be easily installed on their own by you, with just having to bolt it in place while some other brand you might need a skilled mechanic’s assistance.

http://www.carid.com/grill-guards.html



Monday, March 29, 2010

Renewable Energy

The ongoing debate on emission reduction is one of major concern on several environmentalist activists in almost all part of the world. International environmental summits starting from the Framework Convention on Climate Change which was negotiated in the city of Kyoto, Japan in 1997, lead into setting up important features known of the Kyoto Protocol which targets for 37 industrialized countries and European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The so-called emission as particles and gases released into the air as byproducts, or it also understood as the release of a substance (usually a gas, when referring to the subject of climate change) into the atmosphere. There are many types of emissions Greenhouse gas emissions, for example, contribute to global warming and is not sustainable to the health of the earth.

The culmination of the Climate Change summit was the adoptions of The Bali Roadmap, where it consists of a numbers of future decisions that represent various important tracks towards secure a climate in future.

For many leading industries, byproducts or waste product contribute to global warming, although many consider global warming as natural phenomena. But, whatever it is, you must start thinking to consider as to weather your waste product will not endanger the living ecology around you.

There has been many attempts by the industrial actors to initiate eco-friendly technology so that wastes will cycle to energy, this technology introduced an alternative energy and will give you option for another opportunity fuel which are more friendly to environment. If you are in search for this sort of cycling company I may suggest you that N-Viro is one of leading company that provide the highest quality and at the same time ensuring the protection of environment and improvement where you will see what you can contribute for more secure climate for your future children.

http://www.nviro.com

Friday, January 29, 2010

Face Treatment

Having perfect shining face is what almost women want, that will be easy for those who have a lot of spare time for their skin care, but not every women can do. Sometimes lots of activities makes me forget to have some little care for my face, and for me kids sometimes keep me busy all the day. For me daily face wash is one last option for me in case i don't have time for facial treatment. Usually i wait until my kids fall asleep to do some little treatment for my face, i started washing my face and i continue with face cleanser and face tonic, but sometimes it continue only for several days and i just forget it. That a bad habit actually, i remember some friend told me that to start new routine is more easy than to keep doing such routine.

I just want to give you some important tips what would be the best way for choosing the best facial cleanser, one important before you buy facial cleanser is to know the type of your skin, by knowing your skin type it means you choose the appropriate nutrition for your skin, second, change season mean you need to change your face cleanser, because usually your skin will become more dry during winter, third, choose natural ingredient, i think everybody knows the less chemical ingredient will benefit you in the long run.

Here some important tips to know what type of skin you have;
  • Normal skin. This skin type has a proper balance of moisture, oil and durability. Oily skin. Does your face look shiny, greasy or oily a few hours after washing it?
  • Dry skin. Dry skin features facial pores that are hard to see a few hours after being washed.
  • Sensitive skin. This skin type often feels tight or itchy, and experiences allergic reactions and flushing when put into contact with certain chemicals.
  • Combination skin. If some parts of your face are oily while others are dry or sensitive, you have combination skin.