newclimates.com – Beat Global Warming

Pandas with their scientific name ‘Ailuropoda melanoleuca’ are the herbivorous animals similar to that of a polar bear but in black and white. The meaning of the scientific name given to this endangered species is “black and white cat-footed animal”.

Scientists have spent enough time arguing and studying to confirm its relation with either the raccoon or bear. The panda possesses a body similar to that of a bear and the other physical characteristics like the male genitalia resembles that of a raccoon. According to recent research and studies, it has been proved that the closest relative of a panda is the spectacled bear belonging to South America.

Pandas were first found around 3 million years ago and the original habitat of this animal is noted to be Northern Vietnam, some areas of Myanmar and South and East China. With the fossil evidence their existence has been stretched even towards North Beijing. As of now, pandas are evident in six of the major isolated forest region in Shaanxi, Gansu and Sichuan in the Chinese provinces. The giant pandas are commonly found in the coniferous and broadleaf forests at the height ranging between 5,000 to 10,000 feet.

The bamboo forest located in the Tibetan plateau is their main habitat that lies around 10,000 feet above the sea level. It is a damp coniferous forest and during winter and spring they move to the lower elevations looking out for edible bamboo. Dense mist and heavy rain are common in these regions. While they roam around, they have to protect themselves from the farmers of the river valleys if they want to survive.

Panda feeds on bamboo for more than 21 hours per day to manage and support their huge body. Unlike bears, Pandas do not hibernate during the winters and instead they remain comfortable within the unbearable weather by moving up and down in their habitat. They take rest or sleep on tree trunks, cavers, outcroppings of cliffs or any other non permanent shelters of the caves. You can see pandas resting during a hot sunny day and also when the ground is frozen up with snow.

The giant pandas measure four to six feet in length and three to four feet in height when they are on their four legs. Males are mostly found to be heavier than females, reaching 250 pounds while females hardly surpass around 220 pounds. Life at the zoo for this endangered species is pretty different from life in their natural habitat, and they seem to have a longer lifespan than when they are in their own habitat. Zoo pandas of 35 years of age were recently revealed by Chinese scientists. Even though they have a long life in captivity, the breeding pattern is intense in the wild when compared to that of the zoo.

Their major natural food is bamboo constituting up to 99% of their daily diet even if it feeds on grasses and other animal carcasses very rarely. In zoos they are given extra care, love, pampering and a recreated natural atmosphere and they mostly feed on rice gruel, sugar cane, bamboo, special high-fibre biscuit, apples, carrots and even sweet potatoes.

Their medium of communication differs from anything like urine, scent marks, calls, occasional meeting and even tree scratches. A panda spends an average day by mostly feeding, resting, playing and searching for food. There are plenty of organizations and steps initiated to save this endangered species from extinction and studies are still on its way to learn more about its behaviour and other patterns of life! One thing to note is that global warming is reducing their endemic natural gaming habitat and without the zoos they probably could not survive as a species. So let’s not gamble with their survival and make an effort to lower carbon emissions.

Are polar bears global warming’s assured victims?

It is difficult to think of the North Pole and its surrounding areas without its most impressive denizen, the massive polar bear, but this might soon be a reality because the future of polar bears is assuredly very bleak. Estimates about the exact number of these majestic creatures left in the wild vary but it is believed that there are about 25,000 of them alive. While more than half of them live in the Canadian Arctic, the remaining numbers are distributed in neighboring areas.

The future of polar bears is very precarious because of many reasons, all of which are due to global warming. We generally speak of global warming and climate change in terms of how it affects humans. However, what many people do not realize is that many species of animals and plants are facing destruction at cataclysmic levels because of the changes brought upon by us and out unbridled greed for the earth’s non-renewable natural resources.

Polar bears are the monarchs of their frozen world but the fact is that they are highly dependent upon their ecosystem which is increasingly becoming very fragile. These magnificent beasts travel over huge distances in search of food. They travel over ice and water almost effortlessly. They are extremely skilled hunters who subsist on seals that live in polar areas. The steady warming of the earth has affected the polar caps as well, and this has reduced the territory available to these animals. They are finding it increasingly difficult to hunt their prey since they keep entering into each other’s territories, which is very difficult for these animals.

The other problem affecting the future of polar bears is that ice is now forming far later than before. This actually means that these animals have less time to hunt for animals and build the layer of fat that enables them to survive the bitingly cold winters of this area. The numbers of seals are also decreasing because the seas are becoming warmer and the availability of certain species of fish is decreasing. The depletion of available food has resulted in a higher mortality rate of these animals. According to scientists, the mortality rate of newborns has increased almost 50 percent in certain areas.

The lack of food is causing polar bears to increasingly get into confrontation with humans. This invariably does not end well for the animal and its population drops further. It is also believed that they will try to encroach into areas where grizzly bears live.

It seems very unlikely that the future of polar bears is going to look up since human beings are making very little effort to change the way in which they live. As a matter of fact, people are developing the frozen world where these animals live in an effort to extract the immense natural wealth that exists here. Humans will have to make a lot of changes in how they live in case they have to give these animals a chance of survival.

While cycling has increased in French cities, sustainable neighborhoods begin to bloom in the capital. Residents may well be among the first to use the bike paths of sustainable neighborhoods, which are biased toward light motorized traffic and public transport. The construction of an eco-district among other thing rests on better living and living together. The urban setting has to be warm and alive, and natural heritage, security, as well as biodiversity, water management, noise and air pollution are taken into account. Building a sustainable community is based in particular on high environmental quality rewarding the preservation of the planet and a better quality of life. A sustainable community is designed according to environmental and energy challenges, but also according to economic and social criteria. Eco-building, renewable energy, greening techniques are widely used in these eco-neighborhoods.

The concept of eco-neighborhood was first developed in the countries of northern Europe. The Government has encouraged its development in France where the projects of sustainable neighborhoods are still very recent. These neighborhoods are close to the center and well served by public transport. Meanwhile, there is a proliferation of small projects in France. These new neighborhoods are truly eco-neighborhoods, they need to be serviced by public transport and car traffic and parking are limited. It is a difficult objective to implement but the view is changing even though it is still a gamble at this stage. Indeed, 40% of average emissions of greenhouse gases are produced by buildings and 40% by public transport. Other sectors, which include industry, only account for 20%. In France the focus is on the building with techniques such as thermal insulation, while in the first experiments in Germany, the main criterion is a city without a car.

The construction of an eco-district refers to the principles of sustainable development based on economic issues (including development of commercial and non-polluting activities), social (build social housing and community facilities) and environmental (focus attention on managing energy, water and waste). The principle of an eco-neighborhood is a first step towards a new vision of the city, the goal is to break the boundaries of these eco-communities across the territory of the city. To do this, these areas must be readily accessible to all, that they are role models. Beyond the planned actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the City of Paris is acting on the environment: adaptation of buildings, vegetation of Paris, creating green spaces, roofs, shared gardens and playing grounds. The sustainable neighborhoods are emerging especially on the outskirts of the city, on vacant urban land or concerted development zones.

The district Fréquel Hondarribia in the 20th district was awarded in November 2009 a contest in the category of driving down energy costs. The Batignolles district in the 17th district will be divided into three areas including. In 2012, the heart of the 18th district will pilot an eco-neighborhood in Paris, while it will retain its architectural heritage site. Launched in December 2009, the warehouse Macdonald located in Aubervilliers, is the largest geothermal project of its kind in Paris and covers an area of 1200 hectares. By common impulse, the inhabitants of the street Denoyer, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, decided to participate together in the greening of their neighborhood.

In Europe, there are many sustainable neighborhoods, including the Netherlands, Ava-Lanxmeer in Culemborg, Sweden, B001 in Malmö and Hammarby in Stockholm, and Finland in Helsinki Vikki. BedZED is a neighborhood built between 2001 and 2002 in south London. Covering an area of 43 hectares, it accommodates 100 housing units, 2,500m² of offices and shops, green spaces, playing fields, a theater, a gaming center, a health center, a sports complex and a nursery. Since its inception, and compared to conventional dwellings, this eco-district reduced its energy consumption for heating by 88% and electricity by 25%.

In Germany, the Vauban district in Freiburg im Breisgau was rehabilitated in 1996. Nearly 3,000 homes and 600 jobs were created. The homes are powered by solar energy and produce more energy than they consume. The neighborhood was built for optimal sun exposure, with ecological materials, and the roofs are vegetated. The traffic is reduced and the outdoor space reserved for soft play and travel. Switzerland also has many eco-neighborhoods, in Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Bern near the casino area. Plans are under way in Austin, Texas, United States, and Wuhan, China as well.

The City of Paris has been engaged for several years in a new policy of sharing public space. For example Alesia-Tombe Issoire sponsored by the code bonus pokerstars 2012 covers an area of 465 hectares and is built to improve safety and comfort of residents. The continuity of bicycle routes has been optimized, and speed of traffic has been limited. A significant portion was also dedicated to the greening of the district, with the planting of 45 trees and 14 planters. In the 12th arrondissement, the district encourages slow travel, with a velocity of 30 km/h, a revamped parking lot, or the creation of bike paths. Shrubs and planters were installed to add vegetation to the area.

The average temperature of the Earth as a whole is not stable but varies with time, as evidenced by analysis of geological layers. For example our planet was ten degrees colder 20,000 years ago, during the height of the last ice age. These variations are still very slow, and the temperature has fluctuated by only 0.2 degrees between the year one thousand and the late nineteenth century.

The fact that worries the international community at present is the acceleration of the phenomenon, which now occurs at a rate unmatched in the past. Thus, since the late nineteenth century, a hundred years ago, the average global temperature rose 0.6 degrees. Worse, the computer simulations suggest that warming will accelerate and the average temperature could therefore increase by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees by the end of the century. It is this unlucky phenomenon that is called global warming.

Temperature variations of the atmosphere are usually linked to factors such as fluctuations in solar activity or speed of rotation of the Earth. But most scientists believe that the main cause of the current warming of the planet is a different phenomenon called the greenhouse effect. It is a process by which a large part of the Sun’s energy reaching Earth is stored by the atmosphere of our planet, rather than reflected back into space.

As we have seen, according to Wien’s law, the nature of the radiation emitted by a body depends on its temperature. The Sun, with a surface temperature of 6000 degrees emits mainly in the visible and energy passes easily through our atmosphere. But as the Earth’s temperature is much lower than that of the Sun, the Earth re-emits this energy as infrared radiation. However, certain gases in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, although transparent to visible light, are opaque to infrared light. So they block the re-radiation, absorb its energy and thereby heat up. Much of the solar energy is absorbed by the atmosphere, a phenomenon that is also found on the planet Venus.

The most likely cause of the acceleration of the greenhouse effect and global warming since the late nineteenth century is the impact of humans playing on the environment. Huge amounts of greenhouse gases are indeed released into the atmosphere by various modern activities such as fossil fuel use in industry and transport, and agricultural practices such as deforestation and farming cattle. For example, it is estimated that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased 30 percent since the beginning of the industrial age, which contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect.

The effects of global warming already being seen with, for example, the withdrawal of some glaciers, rising of sea level by thermal expansion of water as well as reduction in thickness of the polar cap Arctic. The acceleration of the phenomenon in the twenty-first century should lead to stronger effects, especially a sharper increase in the mean sea level and extreme changes in weather, with powerful heat waves and periods of heavy game rainfall .

The effects will induce great human suffering with more floods, more droughts, problems of water supply, development of diseases like malaria, the disappearance of certain coastal areas or low altitude islands. In the longer term, we can worry about such phenomena as the melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland, which would result in a 6 meters rise of sea level, with the disappearance of most coastal regions of the world. We should not count on luck for the game of global warming effect to reverse, but only hard work for the current and future generations can make it happen.

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

– Albert Einstein

According to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), cows, pigs, sheep and poultry are among the world’s greatest environmental threats in the cards and contribute a staggering 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions—considerably more than transport, which emits 13%. The report, entitled “Livestock’s long shadow,” says the meat industry is degrading land, contributing to the greenhouse effect, polluting water resources, and destroying biodiversity. Livestock use 30% of the earth’s land surface and pastures for cattle use 70% of deforested areas in the Amazon. Massive deforestation is expected as meat consumption is expected to double by 2050 as the populations from emerging countries embrace an unhealthy “western diet” based on meat products and fast food.

Curiously, the environmental threat caused by the meat industry has been mostly absent from the ongoing dialogue about climate change. Even the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth failed to address the livestock industry’s impact on global climate change.

In the video Methane, I combined footage of factory farms found on the web using the search tool in Flickr, YouTube, and various blogs, with an animation from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre Scientific Visualisation Studio. The animation depicts the breakup of the Ayles Ice Shelf in Canada’s Ellesmere Island on August 13, 2005. More than 90% of the ice cap has been lost. The piece shown in the animation is equivalent in size to approximately 11,000 football playing fields. The Canadian Arctic is experiencing the highest degree of climate change on the planet.

– Michael Alstad

Have we overlooked one of the largest factors in global climate change? Methane is an eye-opening and devastating portrait of the livestock industry as a main producer of greenhouse gas emissions. Our contribution to a destabilizing climate does not stop at the toxins being dispensed into the water and air, but includes the animal products we farm and consume. Alstad emphasizes a circuit between the unnatural living environments of stockyards, ensuing environmental damage, and the Arctic ecosystems that are impacted. Though the footage is shocking, the real cause for alarm—and motivation for immediate action—lies in the causal relationship that is exposed. Why has this link been so often ignored or concealed? What other aspects of the debate have been deliberately left in the dark? It is not a game.