Global Warming 2

Johann Hari: We'll save the planet only if we're forced to

Johann Hari in this article was talking about how the humans harm their environment by using or producing green house gases, and how it won’t change a thing if single persons changed their lightbulbs or bought carbon offsets. However, he thinks that people must be forced by rules and fines to stop or reduce their footprint.

First, I don’t agree with the author when he talked about the single actions; I believe if a few people started to change their normal lightbulbs, instead of talking, many people will start to follow. Also, I think choosing what type of lightbulbs to use at home, or what car to drive, or how many gallons of gasoline I burn, for all this I think I must have the right to choose.

MASDAR City

Masdar City is a city with zero-carbon, zero-waste and it will be a home for 50,000 people and a workplace for about 40,000 persons. Also, it will include 1,500 business units. It is designed by the British architectural firm Foster and will be located in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

In Masdar there will be no cars, no smoke and everything is friendly to the nature. For energy Masdar will use wind farms and hydrogen power. Beside that it will use solar power for desalination. However 80% of the used water will be recycled and reused for irrigation and other purposes. For transportation it will use rail train and something called personal automated transport or podcar.

The Masdar project will take 8 years to finish completely. However, there are many question marks around it. Like, how people from outside the city will get in if there are no roads, for example visitors, police cars or ambulances, if there are no roads? Beside that, will the hydrogen power plant work, as we know that it has never been used in reality, only in laboratories?

Cool Cities

With the global warming problem getting bigger, many people started to take an action and seek for a solution. And one of those was the “Cool Cities”, which is a campaign or an agreement signed by various cities to reduce their pollution and footprint, like using hybrid cars and renewable energy, to make the future cleaner and safer.

Abu Dhabi started to walk the same path, starting from MASDAR City to hydrogen power plants. Also, many new rules, fines and campaigns were used to make the people aware of this issue.

Global Warming

Critical Thinking

My Carbon Footprint

What Is A Carbon Footprint?

A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.

My Carbon Footprint Quiz Result:

= 12.4 Earths

Carbon footprint = 24.66

Food footprint = 45.6

Housing footprint = 23.45

Goods & services footprint = 100.3

Total = 194.2

How to Reduce your Carbon Footprint

Use cleaner transport

• Walk, bike, or take public transit whenever possible.
• Avoid allowing your car to idle. If you’ll be waiting for more than 30 seconds, turn off the engine (except in traffic). And don’t take the drive-through—park the car and walk inside instead.
• Have your vehicle serviced regularly to keep the emission control systems operating at peak efficiency. Check your car's air filter monthly, and keep the tires adequately inflated to maximize gas mileage.
• Avoid short airplane trips—take a bus or train instead.

Add energy-saving features to your home

• Install compact fluorescent bulbs in all your home light fixtures—but remember, compact fluorescents contain mercury, so look for low-mercury models and be sure to dispose of old bulbs safely through your local hazardous waste program.
• Weatherproof your home. Make sure your walls and ceilings are insulated, and consider double-pane windows. Eliminate drafts with caulking, weather strips, and storm windows and doors.
• Insulate your water heater. Even better, switch to a tankless water heater, so your water will be heated only as you use it.
• Choose energy efficient appliances.

Adopt energy-saving habits

• Keep thermostat relatively low in winter and ease up on the air conditioning in summer. Clean or replace dirty air conditioner filters as recommended to keep the A/C operating at peak efficiency.
• Unplug your electronics when not in use. To make it easier, use a power strip. Even when turned off, items like your television, computer, and cellphone charger still sip power.
• Dry your clothes outside whenever possible.
• Make minimal use of power equipment when landscaping.
• Defrost your refrigerator and freezer regularly.
• Choose green electricity. Many utilities give you the option to purchase electricity generated by wind and solar power for a small rate surcharge.
• Purchase carbon offsets to make up for the energy use you can’t eliminate.

Reduce your Food Footprint

• Eat more local, organic, in-season foods.
• Plant a garden—it doesn’t get more local than that.
• Shop at your local farmer’s market or natural foods store. Look for local, in-season foods that haven’t traveled long distances to reach you.
• Choose foods with less packaging to reduce waste.
• Eat lower on the food chain—going meatless for just one meal a week can make a difference. Globally, it has been estimated that 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions are associated with meat consumption.

Reduce your Housing Footprint

Choose sustainable building materials, furnishings, and cleaning products.

• Explore green design features for your building, like passive solar heating, a rainwater catchment or grey water recycling system, and recycled materials.
• Choose efficient appliances, including low flow shower heads, faucets, and toilets.
• Choose furnishings that are second-hand, recycled, or sustainably produced.
• Plant drought tolerant plants in your garden and yard.
• Use biodegradable, non-toxic cleaning products.

Adopt water-saving habits

• Take shorter, less frequent showers—this not only saves water, but the energy necessary to heat it.
• Don’t use the garbage disposal. Compost instead.
• Run the dishwasher and the laundry machine only when full.
• Wash cars rarely, or better yet, take them to a carwash. Commercial carwashes use less water per wash than home washers, and they are also required to drain used water into the sewage system, rather than storm drains, which protects aquatic life.
• Avoid hosing down or power-washing your deck, walkways, or driveway.
• Regularly look for and fix leaks.

An Inconvenient Truth

“An Inconvenient Truth” a movie directed by Davis Guggenheim, is about Al Gore's warning campaign about the global warming danger and how it won’t just effect the planet earth or the wild life in some regions but it will affect our daily life even our lifespan, by showing the early effects on the environment and predicting how worse it will be in the future. I think Al Gore has succeeded in his campaign and the movie was very successful. Therefore, now we can see the global warming issue started to take a part of the political agendas around the world. In my opinion, I think global warming is a serious issue but, there are more serious or important issues around the world like every 8 seconds, a child dies from a water related illness. Which means while we were watching “An Inconvenient Truth” about 700 children died. And those numbers are increasing. So, what are we going to do? And what is Al Gore going to do?

Global Warming

Global warming is the increase of the earth’s average temperature caused by what has been called “green house gases” Besides that fact, it is caused in the first place by the careless humans actions. There are natural causes like earthquakes and volcanoes. By looking at the gases we pollute the air with we can imagine how those gases started to make a layer in the earth’s atmosphere which does the same job as the green houses glass which traps the heat within the house but instead of that we have planet earth heating up. While the temperature is increasing many different effects have started to show up. Starting with natural disasters like floods and hurricanes to the effects on the food web system and the ecosystem. In conclusion I think we must start to do something before worse comes and it’s too late.

Lebanon

Lebanon is one of the most beautiful Arab countries in the Middle East and it was called in the bible "the land of milk and honey". Its capital Beirut is also called "Paris of the east". Beside, the very strategic location which is between five countries and they are Cyprus, Syria, Palestine and Jordan, also it has a very wonderful coast on the Mediterranean Sea. Shakira one of the most famous singers around the world is half Lebanese.

Lebanon, even with all this wonderfulness has faced many hard times and crises. Starting with the tensions between the Muslims and the Christians that has started to heat up around 1943. In 1976 the tensions boiled over when members of a radical Christian group "The Phalange" attacked and killed a bus full Palestinians. Many people lost their lives in that horrible civil war. Making it worse many other countries interfered with the flaming situation in Lebanon, until the peace deal was signed between the Lebanese leaders in 1989. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people died from all the groups and about 300,000 were wounded.

Nowadays Lebanon has started to recover from her wounds. Now you can see the smile back to the Lebanese again and after the night fall you can see the fun around. The buildings have started to be rebuilt like restaurants and shopping malls. But still the life there is expensive and the traffic jams are still there.

My Profile

First of all my name is Abdul Rahman. I was born in Al Wasel hospital, which is in Dubai, by a caesarean section on Thursday 1^st of September 1988. The time was afternoon and the weather was warm and nice. Actually I don’t really know. After that, I spent my first months here in the UAE, and then I flew to the US with my parents, where my father was completing his higher studies. I don’t really remember those times, but I have some unclear memories about thunderstorms there in New Jersey and when a thunderbolt hit our backyard. And after two years in the US we went to Germany. We lived there for two more years in a city called Bremen, where I remember myself playing with the snow and flowers in the backyard. I also remember an old man working on a ferry, who used to give me some kind of candies that tasted mint. And after four years of my life I came back to the UAE. I don’t really remember that days but I think my first expression was "From where all this heat came from?!" In the next few years of my boring childhood, I spent them between our house and the kindergarten that I hate most.

My teenage years were boring routine and pointless life, everyday going to school in the morning, coming back at afternoon watching TV walking around doing my homework and sometimes I didn’t. I was an unsocial person and my friends were hand counted. Beside, I was addicted to video games and PC stuff, spending most of the day in front of my PC playing Video games and I won many international challenges. Nowadays I think it was a waste of time but at that time it was the only interesting thing I could do. With days my life changed, I started to get out, see the world, meet people and became more social. After getting my secondary school certificate my dream was to get a bachelor in IT from Emirates University, but their standards were very high and my marks were low so, my dream was crashed and I applied to ADMC. In the first days, I was worried but now I'm here and I don’t think it was a bad idea.

Now I'm 19 years old. Also I'm a Southpaw and I can raise one eyebrow, I'm interested in many things like cars, sport cars, car races and luxury cars. Beside I'm still interested in PCs and video games but not as in the past. Also, I watch Japanese drama series.

Talking about the future, nobody knows what will happen next, but what I'm planning to do in the future. First, I want to get a master's degree and start a family and take care of it. Then, I'm thinking of a small business project to start with and to expand it in the future until I have a well known company around the world. Yes it’s a big ambition and I accept the challenge.

The World Diamond Trade

Diamonds are the most elegant and expensive gemstones. The Greeks thought it stars fragment fallen from the sky, but the truth is diamonds are a crystallized carbon with a super physical qualities and fabulous look.

Diamond trade is one of the most profitable businesses in the world. Nearly all of the diamond businesses are held by families. The biggest diamond mining company belongs to the De Beers family (De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd) which controls over 80% of the world diamond production, sending most of the diamonds to Antwerp, Belgium. Also known as the number one diamond center in the world and from Antwerp it is redistributed to other parts of the world, like Dubai which is one of main hubs for diamond trading, and also to India where they cut and polish the diamonds because of the cheaper costs. Finally it will be sold for the customers around the world.

Also, there is another illegal diamond trade. The Conflict Diamonds (Blood Diamonds) which means the diamonds mined from conflict hot spots around the world (epically Africa) and sold by the warlords in the black markets, so it can be an economically support to them and they can continue the fight.

In the last ten years the UN (United Nations) started to deal with the problem which begins to be worse. By placing many countries under economical sanctions, so they can't sell any of those blood diamonds. But even with those efforts. There are still huge quantities of smuggled blood diamonds around the world.