Very Important Information about Environment, Family And Relationships And More

Outdoor fireplaces are similar to indoor fireplaces and have stone or brick patio. Traditionally, like all fireplaces, even the outdoor ones were wood burning but these days, due to pollution and its energy efficient capabilities, or rather lack of it, has people moving towards gas. Even outdoor fireplaces require regular cleaning to maintain it.

Outdoor fireplaces using gas are quite popular these days as they provide immediate warmth, very similar to wood. Gas logs sets are used instead of wood in gas fireplaces. Gas logs are ceramic fibers which resembles wood. These use natural gas or propane for burning; as a result they do not produce carbon monoxide and also do not leave ashes. Vent free gas logs are always advisable for use.

Like for indoor fireplaces, even outdoor fireplaces will require few essential accessories. Depending on the budget, one can buy a range of fireplace accessories. Like a fireplace tool sets is very essential which contains a shovel, tongs, brush and poker. Fireplace screen, another important item prevents the sparks from leaving the fireplace and also prevents pets and children from coming in contact from fire. But these screens are useful in wood fireplaces and not in electric and gas fireplaces.

In a new research, it has been observed that “mountain waves” in the atmosphere above Antarctica create rare clouds that are helping destroy the ozone layer.

Over the last two decades, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) released by human activity have opened a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

Key chemical reactions that lead to ozone depletion happen on the surface of rare polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), which form high up in the atmosphere.

Here, sunlight breaks down the CFCs into products that react to produce chlorine, which in turn decomposes ozone.

“The question was: how are these clouds generated?” said Lars Hoffmann of the Julich Research Centre in Germany.

According to a report in New Scientist, Steve Eckermann of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, along with Hoffmann and colleagues, used satellite infrared data to study atmospheric temperatures above the Antarctic Peninsula.

They found pockets of high and low temperature air in the stratosphere, and these only occurred above mountains.

The colder pockets fell below -78 degrees Celsius, which is cold enough for PSCs to form.

This implicates so-called mountain waves, which are created when an airstream flows over high relief.

The waves churn up the air high in the atmosphere and appear to create the temperature variations.

Barack Obama’s pledge to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020 is a “huge signal” of encouragement to countries negotiating a new climate pact, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said on Wednesday.

The U.S. president-elect said on Tuesday the United States would engage vigorously in climate change talks when he is president, and he pledged to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020, despite the financial crisis.

“I think that will have a very positive influence on the negotiations,” Yvo de Boer, who heads the Secretariat, told Reuters in Algeria. “He indicated that he intends to show national and international leadership.

“I think that that statement will be seen as a huge signal of encouragement to the international community,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of an African environment conference.

“A CHALLENGE, BUT DOABLE”

De Boer said U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases stood at 14 percent above their 1990 levels but it was possible to get volumes down to that target within the deadline. He said: “I think its feasible. It’s a challenge, but it’s doable.”

European nations have pushed the United States for years to show more leadership on climate change so that China and India, developing nations whose emissions are outpacing the developed world’s, will follow suit.

The Democratic president-elect, who regularly criticized the Bush administration’s attitude toward global warming, said his government would set strong annual targets that set the country on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and cut them by a further 80 percent by 2050.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 developed nations have agreed to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

Members hope to finalize a new accord to follow Kyoto at a summit in Copenhagen in late 2009, but pressure for poor countries, who made no Kyoto commitments, to sign up to cuts is fuelling tensions between rich and poor groupings in the talks.

Poverty in Africa, where nearly three quarters of people rely on agriculture, means it is the part of the world least able to adapt to the severe weather changes forecast to be triggered by global warming, experts say.

“We really need to use the Copenhagen opportunity to design a regime that is more Africa-friendly,” de Boer said.

“African nations have actually been quite modest in the negotiations so far. This meeting in Algeria provides an opportunity for 53 African countries to really develop a collective position and that will give them important negotiating strength in the process,” de Boer said.

Asked if Obama’s apparent sensitivity to climate questions and his own part-African heritage would help strengthen African involvement in the climate talks, de Boer replied: “I think you should ask Senator Obama this question. He’s made it very clear he’s first and foremost an American. But let’s see how he develops his international policy.”

It is us, humans, who have been ruining this great earth into garbage and rubbles for our selfishness. We have been destroying the green trees like anything and making this place unlivable for our future generations. It is only recently where we have realized that we should do something for our earth. There are smaller things like buying organic tote bags only and other stuff like which help us in our aim of making our place greener.

No one knows that recycled sports bottles can be reused again. Such ignorance has been costing us a great deal when it comes to making the earth greener. Buying only promotional USB will also help in our goal of making this place greener.

The products like organic tote bags help immensely by way of preserving the green by reusing them and using only organic materials. They also will not pollute our earth unlike their polythene counterparts.

Recycled cards are another way to help make this place a better one to live. They are reused once and can be reused many times.

If only if we vow that to only buy green promotional products like the tote bags, etc we can actually help in smaller ways to make this place greener.

A treatment for varicose veins helped cut the appetites of healthy, growing pigs and might offer a less radical alternative to weight-loss surgery for obese people, US researchers reported on Tuesday.

They injected a chemical into blood vessels supplying a very specific part of the stomach to cut off production of the hunger hormone ghrelin.

It made the pigs eat less, and tests showed their bodies were producing as much as 60 percent less ghrelin, they reported in the journal Radiology.

“With gastric artery chemical embolization, called GACE, there’s no major surgery,” Dr. Aravind Arepally of the John Hopkins University School of Medicine, who led the study, said in a statement.

“In our study in pigs, this procedure produced an effect similar to bariatric surgery by suppressing ghrelin levels and subsequently lowering appetite.”

Bariatric surgery involves cutting off part of the stomach and sometimes small intestine so that people eat less and so their bodies have less time to digest food. About 205,000 people in the United States had bariatric surgery last year.

Arepally said he used a chemical called sodium morrhuate to kill tissue in specific blood vessels leading to the fundus, at the top of the stomach.

“The chemical doesn’t really destroy the blood vessels but it destroys the very specific area of tissue that produces the hormones,” Arepally said in a telephone interview.

Tests in 10 pigs showed they ate less and their bodies produced less ghrelin.

Arepally said he was talking to pharmaceutical companies to design a better way to try this approach in people.

“Ghrelin is one of these primordial hormones,” he said.

“It is a survival hormone. It is very powerful. It is pretty much universal in all animals.”

Many studies have shown, however, that treating obese animals is far easier than treating obesity in humans. People eat even when they are not hungry and for other, complex reasons.

“Appetite is complicated because it involves both the mind and body. Ghrelin fluctuates throughout the day, responding to all kinds of emotional and physiological scenarios,” Arepally said.

Perhaps the minimally invasive surgery — the chemical is delivered using a thin tube threaded through the arteries — could complement or substitute for bariatric surgery, Arepally said.

The chemical and the procedure are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, he said.

“One of the things I want to do — I want to put this chemical in a better format,” Arepally said. “We just injected this chemical into the blood vessels.”

Arepally notes the irony of working with pigs. “We used pigs because the circulatory system and anatomy is very similar (to humans),” he said.

New York and 11 other states are suing federal environmental regulators over greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries, the New York attorney general’s office said on Monday.The suit, led by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, charges that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the federal Clean Air Act by refusing to issue standards, known as new source performance standards, for controlling global warming pollution emissions from oil refineries.

“The EPA’s refusal to control pollution from oil refineries is the latest example of the Bush Administration’s do-nothing policy on global warming,” Cuomo said in a release. “Oil refineries contribute substantially to global warming, posing grave threats to New York’s environment, health, and economy.”

In ruling last year, the Supreme Court found that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Since then, the EPA head has said it is Congress’ job to regulate emissions of gases blamed for warming the planet.

Coalitions of states have also sued the EPA to require it to set standards for global warming emissions from power plants and to uphold the right of states to regulate pollution emissions from automobiles.

Monday’s suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, said about 15 percent of U.S. industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, come from crude refineries, which burn some oil as they make products like gasoline and jet fuel.

The suit seeks to force the EPA to control oil refinery emissions of greenhouse pollution and to order the agency to adopt the standards.

The EPA did not immediately return phone calls about the suit.

Spain’s government said on Tuesday it would take firm action against a nuclear plant after the watchdog pressed for charges over its handling of a radioactive leak for which 2,600 people had to be screened.After a months-long investigation, the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) on Tuesday asked the government to sanction the Asco I plant on four charges of seriously breaching safety regulations arising from a leak in November.

“We all agree, whether we are for or against nuclear power, that it should be safe and that means there can be no manipulation or covering up,” Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian said in comments broadcast on state radio.

“Consequently we will act decisively in the sanctions proceedings,” he added.

The CSN said that although neither people nor the environment had been harmed by the leak, the plant near the northeastern port of Tarragona had failed to provide adequate information or take proper action to ensure public safety.

The leak originally occurred in November and radioactive particles were detected outdoors on March 14, although the Endesa-owned plant did not tell the CSN until April 4.

Local authorities and environmental groups protested that a school trip to the plant was allowed to go ahead on April 4, a day before the leak was made public.

Neither the government nor the CSN have said what form eventual sanctions might take. The record fine levied against a nuclear plant in Spain is 1.6 million euros ($2.35 million) handed down to the Vandellos II reactor in 2006.

Spain’s ageing reactors face an uncertain future in a country where nuclear power is a vote-loser. Both major parties in March elections vowed to gradually replace the plants amidst a boom in renewable energy sources.

Okay, so I got a new job and it requires me to throw away a bunch of paper. I’m looking for the Wylie, Rockwall area

go to www.earth911.org put in what you want to recycle and your zip code. They should give you a list of local recycle centers.

I process biodiesel from restaurant wastes.

It is illegal to use untaxed fuel in your car. It is even more illegal to sell untaxed fuel to other people. If you start selling it, eventually you will be caught.

—–

You have to pay fuel taxes on anything you put in a car (those with electric cars often have to pay increased registration fees).

People have been done for using biodiesel that they didn’t pay tax on so this is something that needs to be paid attention to.

Here’s a fact for you: about 75% of the water in California is from Northern California, and about 75% of the people live in Southern California. This creates a problem of transporting the water. Most of southern California is pretty dry, but they need a lot of water; and with transporting water, you inevitable lose some (through evaporation and such), so to make up for people should consume less water.

——–

Water that had previously been available to us from the Colorado river is now being claimed by other states. Water from snow melt is becoming less reliable due to climate change. Underground aquifers may not always be replentished because urban and agricultural uses are drawing too much from the system.

And cities are still emerging and expanding, although the rules have changed, for the most part. You have to ensure a reliable water supply. Some developments are being turned away or downsized.

Conservation can be voluntary, unless it’s not working, at which point the cost will skyrocket and/or measures will be imposed. I’d rather try to conserve voluntarily myself.

I think the sites below will help you a lot.

http://www.ranchowater.com/files/news/Fa…
http://wwwdwr.water.ca.gov/
http://www.pcl.org/legislation/AB2153Fac…
http://www.acwa.com/issues/general_water…

——

Most of So.Cals water is taken from the Sacramento Delta. As CA population increases, more is bypassed from the delta. Certain fish species are delining at an alarming rate.
Check out this link.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/…