Can WE do any difference?

Sustainability, sustainability, sustanaibility, many of us now know the meaning of this word. I am also sure, there are many people who don't know it or even never have heard about it. In my oppinion, it is good to understand it, because everyone would like to live better, to make life more simple . And to do it , we don't really need too much effort. Me or you can make just few simple steps to help.

First of all, have a look around you, and think where can you do any improvements. It is enough if we start in our houses. Switch of the light, switch of your TV or anything you are not using, try recycle your waste, and do not use too much water (I mean do not waste it).
As you see, it is verty simple, the only thing we have to do is to change a bit our behaviours, and get use to it. Our life will be better, and environment will be safer.

International Debate

Me and Sara were representing USA. I had known already something about this country, however it is true that I leant more during this exercise. We were searching the internet to find any useful information, and there were lots of them. As we had limited time to our presentation we focused on most important points for us .

The other 14 countries presented wide range of information, among them I could find more or less interesting things. Personally, I think that each country did good work, they showed us their problems, targets, strategies and ideas how to improve and make their country better. At the moment, I do not remember a lot ( there were too much to remember of course), but I can say, my knowledge about other countries, their policies and sustainability is better now than before debate.

I think our presentation went quite well. There were mistakes of course, mainly because of tension and formal speech to the audience. I did not ask other people what did they think about it, but at that time we did our best.

In addition, this exercise learnt me that the cooperation is a very significant factor, especially if we are a tem and there is common work to do. Also to make things better next time, I would focus more on particular targets, strategies and I would give more specific examples of it.

Northamptonshire-Way to recycle (blogprompt nb. 3)

Recycling, recycling, and recycling. Recently, this one word became very popular and important for us. In every day life people produce thousands tons of households wastes. I assume it is not easy to get rid of them. I mean it is easy for us , we have got proper bins, and is’t enough if we put our wastes in to them. But it can be a problem for city we live in. Every one of us can help, easiest way is to start in our houses. For example I hove got 3 different bins, and I have to put proper waste to proper bin. But to make it more efficient the Northamptonshire Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy (referred to henceforth as 'the Strategy') has been developed jointly by the Northamptonshine Waste Partnership (NWP). The aim has been to produce a joint approach to managing the County's municipal solid waste in the peiod from 2007/8 to 2020/21

The 2002 Strategy set 3 main targets. During 11 year period they want significantly increase recycling and composting household waste:

1. 36% of household waste by 2010/11

2. 45% of household waste by 2015/16

3. 50% of household waste by 2020/21

As a progres we can see Household Waste Recycling Rates in earlier years – 2001-2007. According to to the table the figures shows rise in recycling in every district in Northamptonshire. For example CBC noted 28% rise, KBC 43%, DDC 47%. Northamptonshire as a whole observd 39.2% rise in recycling and composting, which is very impressing and optimistic.

We can also see how often our waste are taken away. Almost in every district it is every 2 weeks.

And what we can do to improve recycling waste? As I mentioned above we can start from our houses. It can be the best way to help if we are talking about each resident. We can pay attention to what and where we throw out. In Corby where I live we have got 3 bins. To each bin I am able to put only particular waste. I am sure there are many people who are confused about recycling. We can easily help them by explaining and showing what is going where.

At the end we can ascertain that Northamptonshire has done big improvement in recycling household waste. Figures shows very clearly that this issue is going in right direction. If efforts are made to help household to produce less waste in the first place, then is also likely to have positive implications for the environment, as well as reducing the cost of waste management.

Bad news sells papers!-blogprompt number 2

How reliable do you think UK newspaper reports are about climate change? To what extent to UK newspaper reports link climate change to ‘sustainable development’?

In my oppinion, UK newspaper reports about climate change are satisfying. There are many different newspapers on the market, such as Guardian, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, and many many more. In some of them we can find an aricle saying something about climate change.

Climate change 'making seas more salty
Scientists report that increased salinity in oceans can be attributed to manmade climate change

The Mediterranean area will become drier as a result of increased salinity in the water.

Global warming is making the sea more salty, according to new research that demonstrates the massive shifts in natural systems triggered by climate change.

Experts at the UK Met Office and Reading University say warmer temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean have significantly increased evaporation and reduced rainfall across a giant stretch of water from Africa to the Carribean in recent years. The change concentrates salt in the water left behind, and is predicted to make southern Europe and the Mediterranean much drier in future.

Peter Stott of the Met Office, who led the study, said: "With global warming we're talking about very big changes in the overall water cycle. This moisture is being evaporated and transported to higher latitudes."

The team wanted to see whether manmade climate change could be blamed for changes in salinity measured in the Atlantic. In 2003, experts reported that the north Atlantic waters were freshening, with salt levels decreasing – a mild version of the scenario depicted in the Hollywood film The Day After Tomorrow where massive amounts of fresh water shut down warm ocean currents and cause temperatures to plunge.

Meanwhile, further south towards the tropics, Atlantic waters have been getting saltier – about 0.5% more since the 1960s.

Using state-of-the-art climate models, the scientists simulated events over both parts of the ocean with and without increased levels of greenhouse gases. They found that the freshening of the north Atlantic could be explained by natural variations, a conclusion supported by a recent recovery of the salt levels there.

But for the mid Atlantic, the models showed that only human-driven global warming could explain the increase in saltiness – the first time such an explicit link has been made between climate change and salinity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/27/climate-change-water

Because of climate change we have to face more natural dangerous than few years ago. Iam talking about more frequently storms, floods and hurricanes. I placed few links below reporting information about floods from 2007.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Report-calls-for-34urgent34-review.3146391.jp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1556544/Hull-is-'forgotten-city'-of-the-flooding-crisis.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2007/2007-07-24-03.asp

In conclusion, I believe it is connection between climate change raports and sustainable development. People are curious, want to know everything what is going around them, and basically want to improve their lifes, and in this case climate change is a big issue. From newspapers we can have a lot of information about it, see if things goes in good or bad way and try make them better.

Carbon dioxide

According to that article I absolutely agree that the carbon dioxide emissions has increased. And I am sure, it is still increasing. We can now ask the question, WHY? Why it is increasing? The answer is really easy. Basically, it’s because of us, people are involved in this process which has destructive impact for our planet. I am talking here about global warming and climate change. The climate of the Earth is always changing. In the past it has altered as a result of natural causes. Nowadays, however, the term climate change is generally used when referring to changes in our climate which have been identified since the early part of the 1900's. The changes we've seen over recent years and those which are predicted over the next 80 years are thought to be mainly as a result of human behaviour rather than due to natural changes in the atmosphere.

Burning fossil fuels releases the carbon dioxide stored millions of years ago. We use fossil fuels to run vehicles (petrol, diesel and kerosene), heat homes, businesses and power factories. Deforestation releases the carbon stored in trees and also results in less carbon dioxide being removed from the atmosphere.
The statistics shows, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased more in the northern hemisphere where more fossil fuel burning occurs. Since the Industrial Revolution the concentration globally has increased by 30%.
The future
The best case scenario for the increase in carbon dioxide emissions predicts that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach double the level of before the Industrial Revolution, in 2100. The worst case scenario brings this forward to 2045.