What can you do to reduce global warming?

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by S.A.M., Dec 17, 2009.

  1. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    72,825
    Here are some of the things we do to reduce global warming [as a family]

    What do you do? This could be a good thread for ideas.

    1. Replace all incandescent bulbs with fluorescent compact bulbs [its so bright that we leave on only a couple now, as compared to the four we did before before]

    2. No air conditioning. Its difficult but you can get used to the heat in Mumbai. it may be harder elsewhere.

    3. Replace old inefficient appliances with more energy efficient ones [e.g. fridges which needed to be defrosted ith automatically defrosting ones]

    4. Turn off appliances rather than leave on standby.

    5. Cover pots while cooking. Fortunately we've always done this

    6. Use washing machine only when full. We have both a semi automatic and an automatic machine, so we limit the use of the automatic by using the semi for small washes

    7. Use a clothesline rather than a dryer. Its better for clothes too

    8. Avoid water wastage in bath. We use bucket and mug to bathe, so it avoids the water loss of both shower and bath [usually we fill one bucket for a bath per person]. We also use cold water, since the temperature in Mumbai is not high or low enough to make it uncomfortable

    9. Recycle at home and also your waste. We don't use any disposable utensils and we buy perishables everyday from local produce markets, so we reduce the amount of waste we produce. Our organic waste is kept separate from other waste and we recycle all glass, plastic and paper which will be taken by recycling centers.

    10. Plant a tree. Occasionally we buy and plant a tree in a neighborhood, or encourage others to do so. The area has become a lot greener simply by planting a few trees in the backyard of the homes around us.

    11. Buy local produce, buy fresh. We go early morning on the weekends to buy fresh fish from the pier and we buy all meat locally from the butcher. All fruits and vegetables from farmers stalls. Its tastier and healthier even though it may cost more.

    12. Eat less meat. We eat meat about twice a week, one of which is a fish day the other a meat day.

    13. Drive less. We walk to the market and local stores and use the bus or train for local travel.

    14. Try telecommuting from home.

    What else can I do? Gimme some ideas.
     
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  3. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    Stop breeding. Reducing our consumption is pointless if we do not also reduce the number of consumers.
     
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  5. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Done. I have no kids [that I know of]
     
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  7. kira Valued Senior Member

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    I wanted to make a thread about what technologies are available to reduce global warming, but as I checked it, there is already this thread. It’s a bit different from the OP, but it’s under the same topic umbrella, so I guess it’s ok to post my question here.

    So, what technologies are available in reducing greenhouse gases without actually limiting our activities and convenience? Can greenhouse gases be trapped at the point source of pollution so they don’t get to release into atmosphere and be minimized? Is it possible that every machine which produces these gases is equipped by the gas trap?

    p.s.: despite the pro-contra about whether global warming is even happening, we cannot deny that the greenhouse gases (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone) indeed contribute to the warming of the earth surface and polluting our air. We can easily demonstrate the greenhouse effect by sitting in a room which has some glass windows (to let sun light penetration) and let no air circulation and not placing any air conditioner. If we stay there whole day and measure the temperature as we enter it and as we leave it, I am sure the thermometer reading at the time we leave it will be higher than that as we enter it. We can as well close the room whole day without staying in it, to see whether the temperature inside the room at the end of the day is different than that if we stay inside whole day. If it is different, we can easily prove that our activities (producing carbon dioxide and water vapor) -not just the sunlight- indeed create local warming. On a bigger scale, this is more or less become global warming. It’s just it’s a bit difficult to imagine (practically) whether the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causing the heat to be trapped within the atmosphere (confining the atmosphere, making the atmosphere becomes a closed container).
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2009
  8. kira Valued Senior Member

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    15. Switch to low-carbon energy (renewable energies)

    16. Capture the carbon at the point of pollution

    17. Insulate our homes (blanket it

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    ) to reduce heating demands during winter

    18. Every building and housing should be equipped with stand alone or grid connected solar PV system. Should find ways to store the energy from the sunlight during summer into some kind of compact batterey which can be used for electrification during the whole winter.

    19. If no enough batterey to store them, northern and southern hemisphere should be connected by grid connected solar PV system. During summer in the north, the excess heat in the PV system is transferred to the south, and vice versa.
     
  9. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    As long as people do not become willing to limit their activities and convenience,

    there can be no serious reduction of global warming.
     
  10. engineerjoe Registered Senior Member

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    47
    2 Questions:

    A. What kind of carbon emissions do you get from using natural gas?

    B. Has there ever been a study looking at the long term environmental effects of the new fluorescent light bulbs? (manufacturing emissions due to them, chemicals used, issues when discarding them, etc.)
     
  11. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    A, dude, you're calling yourself an engineer but you can't figure the empirical formula for the combustion of a hyrdocarbon?

    B, Can't you use Google? http://www.thewatt.com/node/175
     
  12. John99 Banned Banned

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    No. your body temp. would warm the room but i have never heard of a persons breath raising temps. but then the breath is warmed to 98.7F.
     
  13. kira Valued Senior Member

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    Actually I made fatal analogical mistake

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    I guess I was tired, posting that at 2 AM. Our activities in a closed room whole day can increase the temperature of the room (depends on the type of the activities) by increasing the collision between air molecule. The analogy of the greenhouse effect itself is something entirely different. Just look up for greenhouse effect in google. The CO2 in the atmosphere increase the temperature of earth's surface by blocking the sunlight that supposed to be radiated back to the space. The CO2 in the atmosphere acts like the wall in the greenhouse effect analogy.
     
  14. kira Valued Senior Member

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    Better to display it in picture. Here is the analogy:

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    p.s.: sorry if you already know about it
     
  15. John99 Banned Banned

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    i thought your premise was on breath.
     
  16. kira Valued Senior Member

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    Nope. As I said, it was a mistake. The one in the bracket here: "If it is different, we can easily prove that our activities (producing carbon dioxide and water vapor) -not just the sunlight- indeed create local warming" should be removed. It's just by product of the activities. It was perfectly wrong example to make analogy. I have corrected it by the two posts above.

    p.s.: I might not be able to post again till Sunday evening, but I'll check back this thread as soon as I am online again. Have a nice weekend!
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I got a high efficiency furnace and a programmable thermostat, and plan to increase the insulation in my house. I changed my driving habits to increase mileage from 22 to 29mpg. I switched to cloth towels in the kitchen instead of paper. I have reduced meat consumption by about half.
     
  18. John99 Banned Banned

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    i could have sworn i saw breath in that first post...

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  19. ThinkingMansCrumpet Registered Member

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    95
    Solar hot water, specifically evacuated tubes.
    Plus all the things you mentioned S.A.M and Solar panels, I will have 12 170 watt panels on the roof soon after Xmas. That will bring the household consumption from the grid down to about 2kWh per day.
     
  20. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    We don't have the facility for solar panels yet, but we have plenty of space on the roof for it. If they become available, I would definitely invest in them. Same for rainwater harvesting. We get enough rain in three days here to fill the lakes to overflowing and have water problems in summer! Obviously if all the residential buildings harvested rainwater, that would help.
     
  21. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    25,817
    I save my rainwater for my garden. And we don't water our lawn. Sometimes its kinda crunchy by August.
    My kid's pool also gets dumped on the garden when it gets kinda scummy with algae.
    I use water from her pool, boil it, and dump it on weeds in the driveway. No herbicides

    I went here to save trees. My junk mail has decreased enormously!
    http://www.ecocycle.org/junkmail/index.cfm
     
  22. John99 Banned Banned

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    I dont own a car, i live in a one room aaprtment, no AC (for over 10 years), very little heat (wear clothes in winter and naked in the summer- in my apartment). No plastic bags (not even from market) and i sit in the dark. Never been on an airplane...well one time and that was about 12-15 years ago. These are my own choices and dont really do it for any one reason. If it gets too hot i use a fan but even then i use it a few days of the year because i dont like air blowing on me.

    Also, very little paper mail.
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Unfortunately, nothing we do to reduce energy consumption in the developed countries will make a big enough difference to matter. China is the #2 producer of greenhouse gases, largely from their coal mine fires, and to date no one has a clue about how to extinguish them. Indonesia is #3, after discovering that clear-cutting Borneo for its hardwoods resulted in massive CO2 production from the peat that was uncovered in the process.

    Furthermore, the 2.5 billion people in China and India take the position that they will curtail their prosperity just as soon as they reach the same level as the people in America and Europe, at which time the greenhouse gas problem will have become hopeless. Automobile sales in both countries are phenomenal.

    We need to think "outside the box" and find other ways of attacking the problem while we wrestle with the issues of consumption, pollution and conservation in the long term.

    Several interesting suggestions have been offered such as changing the ocean currents and pumping cleansing molecules into the upper atmosphere. I'm enough of a scientist to judge that these are real science and not crackpottery, but not enough to help. None of these strategies offers a permanent solution but they would give us time to work on a permanent solution, rather than the couple of decades we seem to have at this point--which are simply not enough.

    What alarms many of us is that the "green movement" has become a political philosophy and very nearly also a religion. Many people seem to think that mankind needs to be punished for our excesses, and if you start telling them that we can stop global warming, at least temporarily, without having to live in caves and eat tofu, they walk away in disgust. You'll get thrown out of a Sierra Club or Greenpeace conference for talking that way, and even the U.S. Democratic Party won't take you seriously.
     

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