Climate change is affecting our world in ways that can only be attributed to Global Warming.

The World Is A Ghetto
- WAR. Circa 1972

When this song first came out in the 1970’s, its seemed as if it was right on point. I was 17 years old, in New York City’s Spanish Harlem. The wounds from race riots through-out the country were still being felt. Most did not realize that there were still more riots and civil disobedience to come. In those days, citizen’s (although the establishment of the period did not consider any male with long hair a citizen) would organize and protest for basic necessities. Blacks for civil and voting rights, immigrant farmworkers for equal pay and better living conditions and women for equal rights. Slogans were plastered on just about every public wall and surface available. Black Power! Burn your Bra. You’ve come a long way baby! and others. Yet in retrospect it seems that the hippies and the ecologist had it right all along.

We humans, the guardians of this wonderful, mystical blue planet have been slowly destroying it. The giant factory complexes dump all sort of waste into our waters. For years many buildings throughout the world were heated by coal and the smoke that emanated from them was nothing but poor toxic soot. Also, millions of automobiles throughout the world continuously release toxic exhaust into the air.

People killing animals for sport, they call it hunting, to the point that several animals species are extinct or in danger of becoming extinct. And despite the knowledge of all this, it continues.

I remember being 14 years old and participating in the first earth day ceremony. I often laugh now because the organizers of this mass event had everyone release helium filled balloons into space. I guess back then no one thought about the effects all these balloons were going to have once the helium dried and they fell back to earth.

Woo ah, mercy mercy me
Ah things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east
- Marvin Gaye, Mercy Mercy. circa 1971
(click here to listen to the song and read the lyrics)

Climate Change, Global Warming, the rising costs of energy, food, the transporting of goods, Willie Nelson, and the failing housing market. Why do I feel like these things are all tied together somehow?

Seemed like everyone was eager for the year 2008 to end. We were looking forward to a great new year, after all, we assumed nothing could be worst than what we all experienced in 2008. Right, WRONG!

2009 came in like a thief in the night, but soon began to roar loudly. 2009, it seems, was a Tyrannosaurus Rex in disguise. A VERY scary beast!

But speaking of dinosaurs, here we are, the end of Fedbruary 2009 and we are all reciting words that were never heard of three to five years ago. Words like ’Carbon Footprint’.

Is there anything we can do about this? Seriously, What can be done? This is way beyond a bad joke already!

There are many things that we as a society and or a Government can do, but what about we each as individuals. What can we do? Actually, the concept of ‘saving electricity’ is looking pretty good right about now, don’t you think?

The whole idea of “Going Green” is no longer viewed with derision and pointed jokes that it sadly was twenty, ten, or even five years ago.

How the World Turns

Funny but in today’s reality, “Going Green” and “Energy Saving” are finally being viewed as “good, responsible business practices”.

Yes it’s true, it is finally seen as good business sense to save the environment, who wood ‘da thunk it?

So what can we as individuals do? Well, as costs of energy and related products or services continue to rise, you may be among the millions of people the world over that are looking for ways to save money. For many of those millions one sure bet toward saving money is by conserving electricity, especially within their own personal environments, i.e., their home.

All is not gloom and doom though, in fact, following are some ideas that can save you small amounts of money, that can add up and turn into significant savings when they are taken altogether.

Tip #1: If only preparing meals for one or two people, use the smallest burner on your stovetop. The smallest burner uses less energy, and generally won’t take any longer to prepare your meals.

Tip #2: If you want to save even more, get a hot and tasty winter meal started in your crockpot before you head off to work. That way, it will be ready to eat when you get home, and you will have saved a surprising amount of electricity in the process.

You don’t always have to save huge amounts of energy to see a drop in your electric bill.

Tip #3: The simple act of leaving your computer monitor on all the time can cost you nearly $18 a month (approximately 60 cents a day). It’s not too friendly to your monitor, either, as I found out about 12 months ago, when I had to buy a new one!

Tip #4: If you leave your cell phone and battery charger plugged in, you’ll pay $1.50 a month for the privilege. That might not seem like much, but small things like that represent a giant energy drain on the country when you think of the millions of people that do it.

More than $8 billion a year, according to the Alliance to Save Energy.

Tip #5: Insulate your water heater, or “geyser,” with a special insulating blanket. This can save you about 2KW hours a day, possibly more in cold climates. Also put insulation around your hot water pipes, to further reduce heat loss and lower your family’s energy usage. Another way to save money and be kind to the environment!

Tip #6: Setting your thermostat a little lower in the winter and a little higher in the summer can also save money, and not just pocket change, either, significant amounts of money are simply wasted, every day.

Tip #7: If you’re going to be out of the house for any length of time during the day, Turn Your Thermostat Down.

Even a few degrees up or down will save more than $100 a year on heating and cooling costs, according to Alliance to Save Energy calculations.

President-elect Obama’s “New Energy for America” plan correctly cites energy efficiency as the “cheapest, cleanest, fastest energy source” and calls for new energy efficiency policies and substantial federal investment in energy efficiency to help reduce U.S. oil dependence, create new jobs, and curb climate change, the Alliance said.

All in all, it won’t take a huge effort or sacrifice to save yourself significant amounts of money on your electric bills every month.

Tip #8: Look at your lifestyle and the things you use around the house every day. Do they really need to be on all the time? Can you do the various things you do on a daily basis in a different way that will use less electricity? All it takes is a little commitment to begin paying attention to the many small energy-draining details that can make a noticeable difference in your overall energy usage.

Tip #9: Utility companies offer energy audits, tips, and other help for customers who want to reduce energy consumption.

Call your local utility or log onto their website to see what they have to offer.

Tip #10: Consider How to Save Electricity by increasing your energy efficiency when buying new appliances. Appliances are labeled with energy usage comparison tables. Look at these figures. Also, you may be able to buy an adapter to make your older appliances more energy efficient.

Tip #11: Turn off appliances that no one is using. Turning off TV’s, lamps, computers, VCR’s, ovens, and other appliances that no one is using can reduce electric energy consumption. Even turning them off for short periods can produce noticeable results.

Tip #12: The ‘stand by’ mode, on most appliances uses about 60% as much electricity as when the appliance is being used. This electricity is a total waste, but YOU ARE STILL PAYING FOR IT. Something you don’t even use!

Your home will need LESS electricity, the wasted energy will be conserved and re-disbursed through out your home. This will result in a LOWER ELECTRIC BILL!

Tip #13: Make sure the refrigerator door seals are tight. Test them by closing the door over a piece of paper or a dollar bill so it is half in and half out of the refrigerator. If you can pull the paper or bill out easily, the latch may need adjustment or the seal may need replacing.

Tip #14: If you have an electric oven turn it off 5 minutes before the food is done. The heat will stay in the oven and will continue to cook your food.

Not to painful right?

Following even one or two of these tips will make a significance in energy conservation and your pocketbook.

For more tips on energy conservation and on how to save money from your efforts, click on the image below.

Lyrics | Marvin Gaye lyrics - Mercy Mercy Me lyrics

Many governments around the world have begun legislating greener practices relating to a lot of industries in response to public feedback and concerns for environmental damage.  As more companies scramble to find ways to comply with legislations and also find ways to meet public approval, green research and environmentally friendly products are on the rise.

This means many green companies are increasing their market share over time, but it may not necessarily make it a good green investment.

As with any other investment, it’s wise to check the individual company for how they generate revenue and whether the company is performing well in terms of available cash flow and overall profitability.

For example, a new green start-up company specializing in green energy research might be funded by government loans, grants and investor money, but may not be producing any revenue of its own, so trying to calculate investment returns on a green investment like this would be difficult at best.

Overall, green investing is a great way to have your investment money aligned to your personal preferences but it’s still important to consider the total investment package and how your money would be put to work before jumping in.

Green investing is a great way to not only find some healthy investment returns but also make sure your money is funding socially responsible companies. Green investing means your money is earning you an investment return while you’re helping to back the companies who are doing the right thing by the environment or by the community.

With green investing you could be making money while you’re helping the environment. An example of green investing could be to invest your money into companies researching and developing alternative energy sources or by investing into companies that make a positive impact on the environment.

Socially responsible investing began by appealing to investors who preferred not to have their money funding companies involved with things like tobacco, gambling or alcohol.

In more recent times green investing now screens out companies who are abusive or irresponsible toward the environment or their communities, companies who might practice poor labor relations or lack corporate integrity. This also means their green investments advocate companies that are making a positive impact on the environment or the community.

So how do you get started in Green Investing?

The simplest way to put your money to work in green investing is to invest it into an SRI mutual fund. A Socially Responsible Investment mutual fund does all the management of choosing green companies with decent returns for you.

A side effect of green investing is that over time as more people pour money into socially responsible companies, this action is sending a message to those companies who are guilty of extreme environmental pollution or poor labor practices that the community has become less tolerant of their corporate practices.

Tomorrow: Are Green Companies a Good Investment?

Did you ever arrange fruit or vegetables into your icebox simply to return the following day they’ve already become a disgusting color, have blemishes on them where you should not find them? There’s a lot of refrigerators that contain particular compartments in them simply for the conservation of these type of nutrients, however they never actually appear to be keeping the freshness of the foods as advertised. Today there are what is known as green bags that you can purchase to allow your fruits and vegetables to last longer once put in the refrigerator.

The concept for green bags, which were invented by a lady named Debbie Meyer is a revolutionary product in that they allow your fruit and vegetables last days, and sometimes even weeks longer than other produce put into the refigerator at the same time. The green bags come in a variety of sizes ensuring that there is no more waste. With the state of the economy being what it is today, and the cost of food soaring like never before it pays to use a product that could make your produce last twice as long if not longer.

The way these green bags work is by controling the humidity, which is the factor in making your fruits and vegetables go bad. These bags can actually help prevent along with keeping away any mold, bacteria, fungus, and decay that may occur. These bags will save you money in the long run due to the fact that they make your fruits and vegetables last so much longer and you can reuse them up to a total of ten times which also saves you money. Many people can’t even stock up on fruits for their kids because they go bad so fast but not with these bags.

You can go to the store and buy apples, oranges, melons, carrots, peaches, and many other types of fruits and vegetables and store them in these green bags so that whenever you or anyone in your family wants to have a fresh bite, they know that what they choose will not be rotten or bad. These bags work really great when you have a green vegetable garden growing because usually you grow more than what you can eat in a week. These bags are a way to make sure that none of your hard work with your garden goes to waste.

There are numerous things that folks don’t acknowledge on fundamental cleansing supplies that they’ve used for almost their entire lives. However because of the new “Green” consciousness that seems to be everywhere, people are quickly learning. Although cleaning with these products simply because one always has, may blind one to recognize that one may, in reality, be making one’s home a great deal worse. Many of these cleaning products are petroleum based and contain many toxins that are not good for the atmosphere or the environment.

Today, there are several products in the marketplace, and numerous websites that one could visit to get tips and suggestions on how best to clean using natural products. It just doesn’t make sense why anyone would chose to continue to use these toxic products. Why is it that as a species humans are so destructive? Why, pray tell, would one not want to help save the environment? The recklessness of our species is causing a chain reaction, a domino affect, if you will. The climate has been altered drastically, many animals have become extinct while many more are on there way toward extinction. But the main reason we should be concerned about the toxins we use that wind up in our water ways and the very air we breathe is that if we do not do something about while we still can, the human race itself could become extinct.

Starting with little things and slowly progressing towards larger things may be a good place to begin. For example, by using the new energy efficient light bulbs one would not only be helping to save the environment, but also as an individual you would be saving money. Also, if one were to begin using less toxin riddled cleaning supplies the asthma rate would go down significantly, lung cancer may be partially eradicated, and again, one would be saving money..

Us humans must share this planet with other living things; we are all in this together. The argument that many people use to avoid going “Green” is that the so called green products are twice as expensive as the products they’ve been using. One can go to the local stores and see some of the products that are emblazoned with the big, bold word “GREEN” printed on them signifying that these are safe cleaning products.

If once you found these products you compared them to the prices of the cleaning products you have been using you will be surprised by the amount of money that could be saved. As consumers we were never informed about the toxicity of certain products. In fact, there may be products in your house right now that are “Green,” and clean just as good as your non green products as mentioned above, there is a vast database of information on the Internet these days. It is rather easy to get into involved with the going green movement. There may be some type of save the environment entity in your community already. If not, simply go online and using your favorite search engine type in the query “Going Green” once you are presented with the listings, try to narrow it down to your area. There you will find plenty of information that you should take advantage.

Now that you have a basic idea of how we are poisoning the earth and killing ourselves in the process, perhaps you’d like to do your part in helping to clean the environment and making mother earth green, healthy and beautiful once again. You may want to dispose of all of your non-green cleaning supplies, the correct way of course, and get a list of safe products to use to clean your home with. By doing this, you are giving back to the mother earth, the environment and possibly your health.

Senator John McCain, the original flip flopper, thinks he has found a weak spot in Sentaor Obama’s bid for the White House. The weakness he feels he has identified is called off shore drilling. Off shore drilling is a short term solution to a large, long term problem. Fossil fuels have been depleting our ozone layer since John McCain was first elected. Why did he not move to end our dependency on foreigners for our oil. John McCain is to old and old thinking to move the USA forward.

We need a fresh start, and bold, fresh ideas. Senator Obama brings that. Because he is charismatic and speaks well, he invigorates people and gives people hope he is being attacked. Young people, a niche that has never been penetrated has been for the first time, by Senator Obama. This is the era of Youtube and Twitter, Obama gets it. John McCain’s staff still uses typewriters.

The solution is not as simple as off shore drilling or not off shore drilling. The solution lays in the long term effects. Weather you believe in global warming or not, the truth is irrefutable we are totally dependent on the Arabs for our oil, and we are depleting the ozone layer. We had eight years of Republican Leadership in the White House. In that time we have been attacked by terrorist, gone to war, the war was declared won by the president but we are still there, instead of bringing our troops home the President initiated a “Surge” and sent in even more troops. The real estate/housing industry is in the lowest slump ever, unemployment is high, the price of gasoline is outrageous, and the President says all is well. John McCain says that the surge worked.

Please people of America do not vote for John McCain it will be more of the same. The Republican Party needs a rest, lets give it to them.

According to scientists the answer is yes!

I was watching the history channel the yesterday, May 28, 2008. The segment I watched was called Natural Disasters and had to do with the Dust Bowel of the 1930’s. I learned that during the late 1920’s until about 1938 the Midwestern part of the United States underwent a horrific drought and it is from whence that the term Dust Bowel comes. From that documentary, it was stated that certain things in life are cyclical, including certain climatic patterns. To explain that ten year drought, the scientist had to look back hundreds and maybe thousands of years in order to plot a weather graph or chart.

The process by which the weather anomalies are explained is by using pieces of old trees that they get from the region in question. They get a wedge of old tree and read the circles. But instead of counting the lines like they do to measure age, they measure the with of each line in each circle and the distance between one and the other. The bigger the gap between one circle and the other tells them one thing, and the width of each line in the circle tells them another. By measuring these two items, they can pinpoint the weather conditions on any given date in our history. That in and of itself it truly fascinating. But that is not what this blog is about.

This blog is about the extrapolations that were drawn from those findings, namely that the next “dust bowel”, which can occur within the next thirty to fifty years, can last up to 100 years! That is utterly freighting. People will begin to die from various illnesses, not to mention dehydration. Plants will not grow, animals will die food will become scarce or worst, not existent. The following paragraph is form the History Channel’s description of the documentary:

Recent warming trends in seawater and air temperature point to a possible mega drought in the next thirty to fifty years. Could we be facing a replay of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s on an even bigger scale? Scientists working with government authorities are highly cognizant of the need to conserve. Is it too late? Jump ahead to a scenario seventy years into the future–a twelve-year drought has left the country unstable and economically depressed. Cities across the west lie abandoned, states fight over limited water supplies and we are now dependant on other nations for food. Society has devolved into a desperate battle for survival as individuals fight over the scarce resource.

Global warming is affecting our climate in all sorts of ways. The weather fluctuates from one extreme to the next. Tsunami, to much water. Drought not enough water. What happened during the late 1920’s and 1930’s was man made as well. Because of an abundance of rain, the wheat crops were growing rich and yielding a lot of grain. Farmers would not grow it fast enough, the demand was to great. Many farmers became extremely wealthy. They continued to buy up land and plant more wheat. Since wheat was paying more that any of the other crops, the farmers continued to growth wheat. Then the rain stopped. At first they thought is was just a passing phase. But it wasn’t. It took them fours years to realize that they were in a drought because so much wheat was stockpiled from when it was in abundance. Once the rain stopped and the earth started to crumble because it was so dry food started becoming scarce. Even scarcer was water. To make things worst, because of the vast expansion that so many farmers made on their farms for wheat, the was nothing buy sea’s of dry, poor soil. Then the tornadoes came.

It picked up the dry soil or dust, and blew it all over the Midwest. It couldn’t be cleaned fast enough for as soon as it was, more was blown. This drought occurred at the same time that the US was experiencing the stock market crash, or the depression.  This is the era that Stienback wrote “Grapes of Wrath.”

Many people reading this will be dead when and if this mega drought were to occur. However, our children and grandchildren will be alive. What kind of planet will they come to know and call home?

I must admit that all the rhetoric spewed by the non Global Warming Believers is really damaging. It’s damaging to the children growing up that know no better and begin to repeat what they hear. It’s damaging because they get more “air time” than those that do believe that the worlds climate has been altered by man and his quest for the “ultimate” in comfort. It’s damaging because the people that have the decision making power then to listen with their wallets rather than their ears. It’s damaging because their inactivity is actually perpetuating, nay exacerbating the situation.

We’ve teamed up with ThinkHost to provide you with this very special offer. Who says earth friendly full featured hosting has to cost an arm and a leg - ThinkHost offers huge packages for $9.95 a month!

Here’s the package:

ThinkHost would like to offer you a $20 discount on their plans!

Some of the features:
- 100 gigabytes server space!
- 1000 gigabytes bandwidth!
- Unlimited MySQL
- Host unlimited sites!
- FTP access
- File manager
- SSH
- Microsoft FrontPage extensions
- Unlimited mailboxes, forwarders
- Unlimited autoresponders
- Webmail
- PHP 5 + Perl 5
- WML & Ruby on Rails support

- FastCGI support
- Python support
- Full .htaccess capabilities
- Free software, templates and tools!
- Free email filtering
- Dedicated, caring support team
- Comprehensive knowledge base
- Multi-stage backups & generator
- 24/7 server monitoring
- 100% uptime guarantee!
- Powered by wind & solar energy!
- A tree planted on your behalf!
- 28 day money back guarantee!

Plus a stack more goodies including a bonus pack valued at over $400!.

What do I need for this offer?
This coupon code which is entered on the secure package signup form : THD20 will save you $20.00

What’s so different about ThinkHost?

ThinkHost, based in Portland, has been providing quality web hosting services to the world since 1999. Aside from providing everything most site owners would need; ThinkHost has a very serious commitment to progressive business principles and ensuring their services are as earth-friendly as possible. In fact, they are powered by 100% renewable energy - a solar and wind power mix! ThinkHost also sponsors many non-profit organizations - 10% of their revenue value is plowed directly back into community projects!