Climate Change Is NOT Caused By Humans?

A wise man once said...

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny."

In life whenever there is a problem, people are quick to point fingers and place blame.

He did it! She did it! Now look what you’ve done! They should be held responsible! This isn't MY fault!

While most will deny the accusations and will try their darndest to pass the blame on anyone other than themselves, a few brave souls will actually stand up and take responsibility for their actions, for their wrong doings. Even fewer will stand and volunteer to cleanup a mess they feel they didn't help create. Although, instead of playing the blame game and debating who should be held accountable, we should all be working together on our solution game and pitching in to cleanup.

Truth be told, there is no bigger oopsie (AKA, fuck-up) in this world than global warming problem we now have on our hands. We are literally murdering the very planet we live on! Contaminating and destroying the air we breath, the water we drink. In the words of my late Grandmother, "this world is going to hell in a hand basket." With all the ways we have to help combat global warming, somehow people are STILL arguing over what caused global warming in the first place! Does it really matter who is to blame?

The vast majority of us believe global warming is a direct result of human activity, but there are a few people out there that say that just isn’t so. While no one is 100% sure exactly what caused global warming to start, I think we can all agree that humans have only added to the problem over the past few decades and sped the process along. The fact is that climate change may result from both natural and human causes. So now what? Well how about we stop debating who or what is or isn’t responsible and start working on ending it...or more realistically, slowing it down. Or how about I just end this post with a warm, fuzzy tale instead of all this nerdy, scientific talk?

Jude Ndambuki teaches high school chemistry, but when he's not in class, you might find him dumpster diving for discarded computers. For the past eight years, the Kenya native has been refurbishing computers otherwise headed for landfills, then sending them to grateful students back home. In the Help Kenya Project, Nddambuki gives the computers away for free, but there is one small catch. For students to receive a computer, they first must plant a tree. While tree planting helps offsets carbon emissions, recycling electronic equipment helps the environment by reducing pollution from the metals inside the devices.

The kids are given new life. The computers are getting new life. And trees being planted bring new life. It's all connected. And as humans, so are we. Climate change is a human issue. And nothing is more human than sharing your love and giving all you can to help change the lives of others and the world we live in.

Humans "may" have not caused climate change, but we can help change it.

***NOTE***
The post you read above is my contribution to Blog Action Day '09. It's an annual event (held every October 15th) that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. It is the largest-ever social change event on the web with over 13,000 registered blogs in 155 countries. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices. Learn more at www.blogactionday.org

You can also see this post featured on BrazenCareerist.com

I Want To Protest Protesters

I don't understand protesters. In fact, I hate them - all of them, protesters of any kind and for any cause. I feel an overwhelming urge to smack them over the head with their own protest signs, hoping that it will knock some sense into them. I want to strip the megaphones out of their hands, turn it around and shout in their face "NO ONE CARES AND YOU'RE WASTING YOUR TIME!" As you probably know, the annual G-20 Summit was held in Pittsburgh last week (Sept 24-25). But if you don't know what the G-20 Summit is, in layman's terms it's when global leaders from around the world gather in one location to discuss issues that concern every country. This year it was President Obama's turn to host the event here in the States. And despite thousands of protesters (both foreign and domestic) that join together to rebel, the G-20 Summit has been going on for a solid decade now. So one doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to see that all the vandalism and violence that rioting protesters bring has done absolutely nothing to stop G-20 from continuing year after year. Getting arrested is the only thing the protesters succeed in. They fail miserably at getting their "message" heard because quite frankly, no one is listening and no one cares. And the G-20 Summit rolls on.

I respect everyone's First Amendment right, the Freedom of Speech. So as much as I would love to tell them to shut the hell up and find something better/more productive to do with their life, I can't. They have a right to be there protesting. In fact, in an attempt to keep things somewhat peaceful, the city even granted protest permits to those wanting to protest the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh. However, not every protest group followed the rules in obtaining this permit. There was a Anarchist group that made it well known they did not have a permit and made it clear that their goal was to disrupt the G-20 Summit as much as possible. Of course these wiz kids didn't realize they did absolutely nothing to disrupt the G-20 Summit itself, because none of the global leaders cared about them marching or what they had to say. All they did was disrupt the neighborhood hosting the Summit by causing chaos in the streets, overturning dumpsters and other childish antics. And yes, they were arrested.

Although what do you expect from an Anarchist group? In terms of intelligence, I rank them right alongside the KKK. Seriously, if you believe in anarchy, you have to be borderline retarded. How could anyone really think a world without rules would be a better place to live? Their ignorance is truly astonishing! I would love to take all these dumbasses and put them on an island where anything goes - Anarchy Island! Then when I come up and stab you in the face since there is no law stating I can't do that, are you still going to be a fan of total anarchy? How about if I pour acid down your throat while I castrate you with a plastic knife, still think a life of total freedom for all is the way to go? If you ask me, Anarchists need to grow the f up! They are adults, but yet they rebel against everything in this world as if they were teenagers still rebelling against the Friday night curfew set by their parents. We live in a world where laws and leadership are needed to maintain order in everyday life. It's for your own safety and well being. If you fail to see that or understand that, you need to put down a banner and pick up a book because you have sooo much to learn about life and the world we live in.

To be fair, not all protesters cause violence and destruction. There are "peaceful protests," but even peaceful protests cause a disturbance and can cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars! A peaceful protest doesn't solve anything either and it usually results in the protesters getting arrested. So again, why do protesters waste their time? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Take for example Greenpeace (photographed above). They were the first protest group at the G-20 Summit last week...and by the first I mean a day early! Ok, so let's stop and think here for a minute. If you want the global leaders of the G-20 Summit to hear/see your message about reducing CO2 emissions, don't you think it's best to do that when they are actually in town? The global leaders hadn't even landed yet because the Summit wasn't starting until the next day! I have to believe that the Greenpeace stunt was more about publicity than fighting for a cause. The whole thing was idiotic. And what was the point of them dangling from the sign for several hours? All this "protest" accomplished was having traffic blocked and motorists either sitting in their car with the engine running or taking longer, alternative routes to their destination. This of course resulted in MORE CO2 being put into the air! Way to go Greenpeace. Now that's how you help ADD to CO2 emissions. And just like the Anarchist group, the Greenpeace protesters were also arrested. No shocker there.

I believe in the old "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" motto. It's why I'm all for things such as voting in elections or marching FOR a cause - to raise money for things like fighting cancer or to gain awareness for gay marriage rights. But when you protest against something, the majority of the time nothing ever gets done. There is a big difference between marching FOR something and protesting AGAINST something. One propels us forward and the other holds us back...unless of course you're Rosa Parks. Then everything I just said gets throw out the bus window.

So if you must protest, do it right. Do it Rosa Parks style. She didn't need a big, flashy banner hanging from a bridge complete with dangling stunt men to get her message across. And she didn't need to flip dumpsters and kick in cop cars to be heard. All she needed was to take a stand by sitting down - calmly, peacefully, quietly. You can learn a lot from a little, old woman and very little from a 20-year-old new age hippie. Just a piece of advice, you're better off staying in your dorm room studying than following your brainless friends into a street riot where you rebel against things you know little to nothing about, just because it's the cool college kid thing to do. Less tree hugging. More studying. You'll be better off later in life for it. And best of all, someone might actually hire you for a real job after college because you won't have a long criminal record full of protest arrests you need to explain. How awkward would that be during the interview process? Think any employer wants to hire someone to work under them who has repeatedly rebelled against authority, time and time again? You might want to rethink participating in that next protest march.

***NOTE***
Related post of interest...
9/3/08 - The Right To Bare Boobies

50 Clean-Tech Tips and Going Green Facts

Today, April 22, is Earth Day. So, I thought I would supply everyone with a little Ecotech news. Here are "50 Clean-Tech Tips and Going Green Facts" to help greenify the geek in you. (And don't ask me why those annoying little icons are beside every item on my numbered list. I'm feeling too lazy to find out why they are there and remove them.)

50 Clean-Tech Tips and Going Green Facts

1. Selling refurbished PCs is now a $6 billion-a-year business.
2. The "phantom load" (electricity consumed by "switched-off" appliances like TVs, radios, microwaves, etc) can add $200 a year to your bill.
3. Switched-off devices account for 40% of the energy consumed by electronics in an average home.
4. The U.S. government could save $330 million over a 4 year period if its data centers complied with Energy Star Version 4.0
5. Extra heat generated by computers means more heat in the office, which translates to more use of air conditioning.
6. Companies that sign for the WWF's Climate Savers Computing Initiative could reduce CO2 pollution by 10 million tons annually by 2010.
7. At the 2008 CES, Fujitsu showed a laptop PC whose outside plastic shell is 50% vegetable-based polymer alloy.
8. Creation of a desktop PC usually requires ten times the PC's weight in fossil fuels and chemicals, most of them toxic.
9. 15 billion batteries are made and sold across the globe every year.
10. If you're not sure where to donate out-of-use electronics, Recycles.org can match you up with nonprofit agencies that use old equipment.
11. By 2011, more than 400 million PCs will have been purchased as replacements for current home and office computers.
12. Typical U.S. cell phone users replace their phones every year and a half.
13. 130 million cell phones each year go into retirement.
14. Recycling 100 million phones would recover 3.4 metric tons of gold - gold that would not have to be mined.
15. PCs contain gold too: 1.2 tons of PC scrap electronics has more than can be extracted from 17 tons of gold ore.
16. Only 15% of Americans are aware that local recyclers will take old electronics and computers.
17. Each year, the world generates 20 million to 50 million metric tons of e-waste.
18. E-waste makes up 2% of solid waste in the U.S. and is the fastest-growing segment of U.S. garbage.
19. Flaws in Windows XP's sleep mode and Microsoft's choice of "High Performance" as the default performance option may have added $5 billion to power bills annually worldwide.
20. NASA, the Department of Defense, and the General Services Administration are all now committed to buying only EPEAT-certified computers.
21. Manufacturing 1 desktop and 1 monitor requires 530lbs of fossil fuel, 58lbs of chemicals, and 1.5 tons of water.
22. 12% (25 million) of Americans would pay extra for greener electronics. On the other hand, 41% (90 million) are not willing to pay extra.
23. Wii is the power-saving leader of game consoles, consuming only 18.4 watts. Compare the hogs: Xbox (186W), PS3 (199W), and a PC (209W at peak usage).
24. While old CRT monitors use more energy to show white than black, LCDs spend slightly more energy to show black than white.
25. Don't recycle, Freecycle. There are 4,226 Freecycle.org online groups helping more than 4 million users give away "junk" to others who can use it.
26. The average office drone uses up 10,000 sheets of paper - about a whole tree's worth of wood pulp per year.
27. 2.05 million tons of electronics were put out as garbage in the U.S. in 2005. Only about 18% of that was recycled.
28. The U.S scraps about 400 million pieces of consumer electronics equipment, e-waste per year. It's the fastest-growing waste stream.
29. If you buy a new system, Apple and Dell will recycle your old computer, regardless of manufacturer.
30. Search EPEAT.net's Product Registry to find computers and monitors that are certified green.
31. There's 4 to 8lbs of toxic lead in all CRT TVs and monitors. Flat-panels have less lead, but more mercury.
32. It's estimated that as much as 80% of U.S. e-waste is shipped overseas or to Mexico to be dismantled in unsafe working conditions.
33. As much as 50% of the power most desktop computers use is wasted as heat jettisoned by fans on the power supply.
34. A survey by Staples in November 2007 indicated that only 23% of U.S. residents recycle electronics.
35. Between 2000 and 2007, as many as 500 million computers became obsolete.
36. To create just 1 kilogram of consumer goods, manufacturers on average create 5 kilograms of waste.
37. Shopping for a new HDTV? Plasma TVs consume far more energy than LCDs and they waste it as heat energy.
38. Shopping for a surge protector? Buy one of reasonable capacity. The bigger it is the more energy it consumes.
39. Bamboo is the most sustainable of all materials. Look for laptops encased in it, such as the ASUS Ecobook.
40. By 2001, e-waste already accounted for 70% of the heavy metals and 40% of the lead in U.S. landfills.
41. Some LCDs are built using plastic rather than glass, which is far easier to recycle.
42. If all commuters worked from home just 1 day a week, we could save 5.85 billion gallons of oil each year.
43. If you listen to your CD player 2 hours a day, you can save $200 a year by switching to rechargeable batteries.
44. The energy saved by recycling 1 plastic bottle will power a computer for 25 minutes.
45. Take an HP, Lexmark, or Dell printer cartridge to Staples for recycling and you will get a $3 coupon for ink or toner.
46. Energy Star 4.0 is quite stringent, demanding highly efficient power supplies and very-low-power idle modes.
47. Unplug! Each year in the U.S., electronic devices that are turned off but not unplugged use electricity worth $3 billion.
48. Blog, it eliminates the need for paper, thus saving a tree.
49. Or better yet, turn off your laptop or PC and go outside. If we are going to having global warming, you might as well enjoy the warm weather it brings.
50. Last but not least, paint your laptop and/or PC green. It will trick the components inside into running at a more energy efficient level. Ok, fine, this last one is a lie. But using a green colored computer will make you look hip to all those that have jumped aboard the "going green" bandwagon.

Now go hug a tree. It's Earth Day!

Clicking Publish – The Life Cycle Of A Blog Post

Remember when you were in the 4th grade and the school sent home a permission slip for your parents to sign that allowed you to attend the upcoming Sex Ed class lecture? For many parents, including mine, I’m sure it was a relief to be somewhat "let off the hook" when it came to having "The Birds & Bees talk" with their kids. Although I think I was more uncomfortable and embarrassed for my parents to talk to me about sex than they actually were about approaching the subject. I think my biggest fear was that they would use their own relationship as an example in explaining certain aspects. That alone horrified me! It would start with the phrase..."When two people love each other like your Dad and I do, they want to show..." Even to this day, I DO NOT want to think that my parents have sex! It grosses me out to see my parents hug, hold hands or kiss. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy my parents have been married for over 30 years, but as far as I’m concerned, they’ve only done it 3 times in their lives – once to produce my oldest sister, again to produce my other sister and a final time to produce me. And that is it and that is all the information I need from them.

Apparently public schooling was doing something right because it saved me from the horror of having to hear how babies are made from my parents. I remember coming home from class that day, hoping my Mom wouldn’t ask how school went. Hoping she wouldn’t want to go over the somewhat confusing and messy lecture I endured in school. However, being the good Mom she is, she couldn’t resist asking me if I had any questions. She knew my Dad would be more squeamish talking to me about sex, so she took it upon herself to engage me in the topic and leave herself open to any and all questions I may have. Sensing that I wasn’t going to share with her what I learned in school today, my Mom decided that the best thing to do was to just ask me if I had any questions. My reply..."Yeah, what’s for dinner?"

It was rather apparent, I had no interest in knowing how babies are made. I didn’t want a baby. I wanted a puppy and maybe a new skateboard. Watching that baby being delivered was f*cking gross! So disgusting in fact that I vowed right then and there that anyone who wanted to have a baby was certified crazy! Even the making of the baby was gross. Who would want to touch a girl? Girls are dumb and I didn’t like them. They did stupid stuff, like scream while running in a game of tag. I didn’t understand them so I kept them at a distance...and they seemed like nothing but trouble. I protected myself with a nice thick layer of cootie spray. It was my shield from icky girls trying to touch me. And I certainly didn’t want to accidently touch a girl or she would become pregnant! Then I would never have time to ride my skateboard.

Over the years, the cycle of life became less scary to me. Sure the getting a girl pregnant part still frightens me, but the touching a girl part is a lot more fun than they made it look like in that Sex Ed video. So now that the truth is out, that the stork doesn’t deliver babies, I started wondering about life’s other great mysterious. Like whether or not the tale my Dad told me about a miniature man living behind the traffic lights is true or not. I pictured him to be roughly 6 inches tall and dressed like a lumberjack (why a lumberjack I have no idea). He wore overalls, a red flannel, a knit cap, construction boots and sported reddish/brown curly hair and a mustache - like the Brawny paper towels dude. He was in charge of turning the lights from red to green. He only switched them to yellow momentarily because he was a prankster and was just trying to see if people were paying attention. If we encountered a traffic light that wasn't working, it meant that one of the miniature men called off sick. This is the tale my Dad filled my head with, I more or less ran with the story and gave it so much detail that it was really believable. I was so sure this was true that I began telling my friends about the traffic signal phenomenon and wondered why their parents would chuckle at me.

Sadly though, not everything in life is run by midgets or occurs via a sprinkling of magic pixie dust. The only true miracle in life is the miracle of life itself, and even it is more or less a scientific process that evolves over a series of stages. So if you are thinking that an Ompa Loompa, MiniMe, WeeMan, Gary Coleman or even Webster is behind the magic of how your blog post gets published instantly the moment you click your mouse, you’re wrong. Perhaps you take the instant gratification of publishing your words on the web for granted, but I don’t. I’m rather curious about the life cycle of a blog post. Is a tiny lumberjack or the stork behind it? Think about it. I've looked into it and this is what I've learned...

You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents. From there it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web. Within minutes, if you've written about a timely and noteworthy topic, a small army of bots will get the word out to anyone remotely interested, from fellow bloggers to corporate marketers. Thanks to search engines and aggregators that compile lists of interesting posts, you can reach a lot of people. And thanks to the folks at Wired Magazine, you can see how the whole process unfolds - The Life Cycle Of A Blog Post

A Very Geeky Green Christmas

Ever since Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the whole global warming issue, people have been going ga-ga over Going Green. It’s all about protecting the environment by being eco-friendly. Whether it’s recycling everything under the sun, cutting out products that aren’t biodegradable, buying a hybrid vehicle, or just hugging a tree, people are hoping to save the world…or at least lend a helping hand in conserving planet Earth.

So now that the Christmas season is upon us, we turn to geeks to help us in dreaming of a green Christmas. There will be no chopping down of a white pine tree, even though I will admit it smells quite lovely. No, this year if the world is to Go Green, then that means we have to make some sacrifices. I suppose to really Go Green, you have to buy an artificial tree that’s made of recycled pine or something? I don’t know, but I do know that they now sell strands of LED lights to decorate your tree. LED lighting is an energy efficient replacement to the standard bulbs you are accustom to using. Also, LED lights actually give off more light, making your tree appear extra sparkly. And who doesn’t enjoy a little bling around the holidays?

But what good is a sparkly lit tree if there aren’t any pretty ornaments to hang from the branches? Don’t worry, the Green Geeks have you covered there too. You can take your old CDs and circuit boards lying around (and if you aren’t a geek, you probably don’t have any circuit boards lying around and you probably don’t even know what a circuit board is) and turn them into trees, Santas, stars, reindeer or whatever your little heart desires. Not only will you be saving money, but you’ll also be recycling electronic goods and creating art! Or just creating a tacky tree? You decide.

Blog = Save Paper = Save A Tree = Save The World

For those of you with a keen eye, you may have noticed a small banner ad that I placed towards the bottom right hand corner of my blog last week. It’s there to encourage fellow bloggers to untie for Blog Action Day. So what is Blog Action Day? Well on October 15th (today), bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind (as if it’s not there already) - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Then, for those of you that make a little cha-ching from your blog, you are asked to donate your day’s earnings to an environmental charity. The goal is to get everyone talking towards a better future. One issue. One day. Thousands of voices.

Now let me save you from the “granola guy” and “new age tree hugging hippie” remarks. I’m neither of those things and you'll never catch me wearing Birkenstocks. However, there is this little thing called global warming that Al Gore keeps harping on and it seems to be getting people’s attention. So much so that last week he won this tiny non-important award called the Nobel Peace Prize…or something. He was awarded it in recognition of his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming. Don’t get me wrong, just the sound of Gore’s voice puts me instantly to sleep. I swear he was born with the world’s most boring monotone voice ever! Although, like the guy or not, his global warming message has some weight behind it.

So what am I doing to combat global warming? Well I could list the things, but that sounds like a snooze fest to me. Instead, I’ll spare you the torturous reading and just tell you about the most obvious – I blog. Think about it. If you blog, you are saving paper because the writing is done digitally. And if you are saving paper, well then you just spared a tree from being chopped down. And if you can save a tree, you are well on your way to saving the world! Yes, blog and you will save the world. A bold statement, but one I’m getting put on a recyclable, biodegradable, carbon monoxide-free bumper sticker. Oh yeah…the glue will be non-toxic on it too. So go ahead and allow your children to eat it. No worries.

Remember, green is good. So go green. Now go do your part and post something for Blog Action Day.