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  • Written by madhu
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What Happend in Copenhagen?

For climate change deniers it was ‘the joke of the decade’, let’s see what it was for the rest of us. Climate change is the hardest problem the world community had ever to deal with, 192 countries participated on this save the earth summit bilaterally divided though, into developed and developing nations.   It was very evident all the states liked to avoid the consequences of atmospheric warning but also liked someone else to pay the costs of addressing it. 

On the course of the conference, attempts to make all 192 states to agree on a global agreement seemed too ambitious, the focus was on getting the biggest economies (who are the biggest source of the problem and the states with the resources to help the others) together and see that they can get some sort of agreement among them. The main polluters who are in very different economic circumstances, the developed world which created the problem wanted to get raising powers like China and India to undertake potentially costly measures that could slow their own growth. Needless to say, that was not very attractive to the developing states.  Adding to the severity both the worlds considered national politics to be more important than reaching a global consensus. 

As the conference reached its final days with the aspirations of most of the participating nations getting shattered, a major blockade at the summit grew out of an unfortunate combination of weak leadership on the part of the Americans and Chinese power to impede progress. Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao could only agree to the lowest common denominator i.e. China doesn't want to lead, and the US cannot lead. The conference made it clear that we do not have a global climate policy and that the will to create one is lacking. The CO2 issue is fundamental, but it cuts deep into every economic process. It will lead to new power battles and to a new division of power. In other words a two-year buildup (from Kyoto) to a cacophonous conference ended in de facto deadlock, with only a select group of major powers cobbled together a non-binding “agreement” to undertake various purely voluntary actions, aimed at an arbitrary target for limiting future atmospheric warming. It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one was in display in Copenhagen.

P.S.

As it was widely expected, all references to containing the temperature raise to 1.5 degree C, in previous drafts were removed, but more surprisingly, the earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80 per cent was also dropped.

Greenpeace noted on its Twitter page: “2 years planning, 2 weeks negotiating = worse than half-assed deal in the last 2 hours.

  • Written by madhu
  • Hits: 1759

Light Sense

The potential energy savings from lighting are really impressive. Regular incandescent light bulbs have used the same primitive operating principle for the past century: a coiled wire, usually tungsten, glows under electricity in a glass vacuum. This method is much like a joke without a punch line; only five percent of the electricity is actually converted into light. The rest is wasted in heat. Despite such horrible inefficiency, shops around the world including developed countries continue to sell some billions of these energy-wasting light bulbs each year.

Lighting is by far the biggest item on the power bills for buildings say its an office or a residence. Streetlights also devour huge amounts of electricity. Often they are outdated models from the 1960s. If our policy makers switch to modern lighting they could save billions of dollars each year. One of the most promising lighting solutions comes from Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED), which are thin yet wide lighting glass tiles that are coated with a layer of polymers. They can be integrated into walls or furniture can change color and are especially energy efficient.

OLEDs create completely new possibilities for applications, in a few years this new lighting will hopefully replace classic power crunching neon tubes. Traditional LEDs are already known to last much longer than even compact fluorescent light bulbs and are more robust and less sensitive to vibrations. They also react extremely quickly, which is why the auto industry is using them more and more for brake lights.

Let the ignorance get vanished by knowledge, let there be sensible Light in the future.

  • Written by madhu
  • Hits: 1519

Environmental Benefits of Planting Trees

Environmental Benefits Of Planting Trees

   1. Trees serve as a natural habitat, which provides support to a wide variety of flora and fauna. They provide a sense of privacy and security to the wildlife, seeking shelter in the woods, apart from providing them with food and nutrients.


   2. Trees remove excess amount of carbon dioxide and air pollutants present in the atmosphere, including sulfur dioxide, ozone and nitrogen oxide. In addition, they give us oxygen required for supporting life.


   3. Planting trees is very important to improve the quality of air and reduce its pollution.


   4. The visual quality of a landscape is improved by planting trees, which, in turn, improves the quality of life.


   5. Planting trees help reduce ozone levels in urban cities. Even the biodiversity gets enriched in turn.


   6. Trees control the climate by moderating the effects of sun, wind, and rain. While they moderate summer temperature by providing shade, in winters, they act as windbreaks for your home, thereby helping you save on heating cost.


   7. Trees reduce soil erosion, because they bind the soil through their roots, which would otherwise have been washed away in rainstorms and flood. Trees also help improve the fertility of soil. Rich soil transfers nutrients to food, which contributes to human health.


   8. The greenery of trees adds color to the landscape and enhances the picturesque beauty of the environment.


   9. According to a recent study, houses and properties on tree-lined streets are found to be attractive places to live in. Apart from this, trees and shrubs planted around homes also provide evaporative cooling benefits.


  10. Trees are great absorbers of noise. Noise pollution can be reduced, to a great extent, by planting more and more trees.


  11. Planting of trees facilitates better management of flood water. Trees also moderate flood hazards, by allowing the rainwater to percolate into the soil, instead of running over it.


  12. The demand for clean drinking water can be met by planting new trees. Forests and plant cover naturally slows the runoff of rainwater, thereby filtering it. Once slowed, rainwater seeps down to refill underground storage tanks or aquifers. Also, they prevent water from mixing with the salt water of oceans. This is of immense help, as salty water takes much longer to re-enter the fresh water portion of the hydrological cycle. 

  • Written by madhu
  • Hits: 1968

Conservation Is the World's Best Energy Source

 The proverbial “quickest way to double the money is to fold it n put it back in the pocket” will hold true with energy conservation too. The world seems to have insatiable appetite for energy these days. Together the developed and developing world is spending a stupendous amount of money to develop new technologies and to produce energy efficient products out of it; future of new economic powerhouses like China and India depends on a steadily growing global energy supply. But where modern technology falls by the wayside in their rapid development, massive quantities of natural resources are wastefully being burned and pumped into the atmosphere. That makes no sense economically, and it's environmentally insane. Seemingly however the best and easy way to fight energy problems is to save them.
 
End consumers use only about a third of all the energy produced worldwide. The rest is wasted; it disappears into the air or sea through leaky pipes and poor insulation. Even supposedly fine-tuned products such as automobiles are horrendously inefficient. Around 70 to 80 percent of the power created by the motor does not end up being used for the car’s main purpose i.e. moving forward. Instead the energy heats up the radiator fluid or is blown out the muffler as hot air. The current energy systems can be compared with a bathtub that doesn't have a plug in the drain, it constantly needs more water. In other words it’s an intellectual provocation for any creative engineer or planner. Saving doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality of life. An energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulb, for example, uses only one-fifth of the energy required by a conventional incandescent bulb and lasts ten times longer. Buying them will “pay off more than most investments.
 
There’s no doubt that something is underway. The growing number of forecasts predicting dramatic changes to the planet’s climate is altering the perceptions of political leaders, corporate managers and even average consumers. It will be taken seriously once consumers see how rising prices for gasoline, heating oil, natural gas and electricity will empty their pocketbooks. The more financial pressure is applied, apparently, the more people will be willing to save. There's one more problem with voluntary commitments from captains of industry to end-users, everyone welcomes conservation efforts, but no one pushes it. And at the end of the day they’re all just playing for time, even though it wouldn’t require magic to reach it. But now the day has come, we either react to our nature’s agony or just die with it.
  • Written by vijaysr
  • Hits: 1361

Global Warming Quotes 2010

As printed in the College Calendar 2010

1. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. * 
    - Henry Ford, 1863 - 1947

2. Global warming is not just about polar bears and penguins; it’s about support for life on earth.

3. Protecting one large tree is equal to planting thousands.

4. Solar water heater is the best way to reduce electricity bill and fight global warming.

5. Don’t cut trees, transplant.

6. Painting your roof white helps cool your home, reduces A/C power consumption and fights global warming.

7. Use water from bathrooms and sinks [grey water] to water trees.

8. Switch to battery powered vehicles to reduce your cost of travel, and reduce use of fossil fuels.

9. Being vegetarian, helps reduce green house gases.

10. Save Forests and help prevent forest fires.

11. Reduce consumption, Reuse when possible and Recycle.

12. Buy Energy Efficient products. Solar Panels with LED lights create very efficient Solar Power Solution for rural and urban areas. 

 

Notes:

#1. * - could have been, this

Yuck! It's time for you to save your world !

#2. Most of the things that these quotes talk about are practical [cost effective] and are directly applicable to "the common man" in India.

We have to come up with a different set of quotes for people with expendable funds [people with extra large carbon footprint].

 

  • Written by vijaysr
  • Hits: 1300

Another 100 Trees !

21st Dec 2009: Hostel students numbering more than 100 participated in a tree planting campaign, a total of 100 trees were planted in the engineering college campus.

These 100 trees and trees already planted in this area will benefit from the grey water from the hostel.

The area is lanscaped so that water from wash area and bath rooms flows naturally to nearly 1000 feet from the orgin.

There is no electricity utilized in pumping water to these trees.
 

  • Written by vijaysr
  • Hits: 1351

Solar Panel: DC lighting Initial Testing

Designed for 12 hours daily use.

And 2-3 days of bad or no sun light.

LED lights used: Cree, Bright White. 

1184 watts is the being generated, if compared to conventional lighting.
As LED's used is atleast 8 times more efficient at lower voltages. 

 

Solar PV are expensive, coupling them with existing highly inefficient lighting will make them even more expensive for general adaptation.

After 1 year, we can say that these work without any problems.

 

0811 Solar PV initial testing

  • Written by vijaysr
  • Hits: 2072

11th Hour: Story of Sunlight

The Story of Sunlight:
 
For vast majority of human history, we were living off of current sunlight. 
Sun fell on the fields, the fields grew plants, plants made cellulose - plant matter, animals ate the cellulose,
we ate the plants, we ate the animals, we had clothing made out of the plants & animals, we were living off of current sunlight. 
 
It was our food supply, clothing, we heated with wood, it was our heat supply, our light supply, it was all current sunlight.  
So the sunlight that fell on the earth in a year is the maximum amount of energy that we could use... That's how we lived...
 
Later, at one point we discovered little pockets of "ancient sunlight", some coal here and little bit of oil there,
between that and the first agricultural revolution, our population slowly crept up 1 billion people, 2nd billion in 130 years in 1930, 3rd billion in 30 years 1960... 
 
Watch 11th Hour, to understand better.
  • Written by vijaysr
  • Hits: 2009

Climate Change: Is it real?

For Starters: In short, Global Warming is the heating up of earth, so that it can't support life or present human form.
Not so real (frighting) as of today, in nature everything takes time.
 

Unless, written otherwise on the label :
A baby takes 10 months to be born. But corporations can be formed overnight.
However advanced the technologies may be, it still takes the same amount of time [with nature].


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