Environmentalism 101: Global warming/Climate Change – Is there any difference?

Written By Asnycnow Editor Vicki Nikolaidis

The best concise definition I found on the web of ‘global warming’ describes it to be a noun, with the meaning “An increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere, especially a sustained increase sufficient to cause climatic change.” (http://www.answers.com)

First note that the two words “global warming” used together are considered anoun.  This is important because from this info we understand that “global warming” is some ‘thing’.  A ‘something’ that is probably a phenomenon indicating an increased temperature of the earth’s air.  Not of our hometown or region or country but the “globe” or the sphere that is our planet earth.

Next notice the phrase “An increase in the average temperature” and think about what that might mean in general.  When your local weather forecaster says the ‘average temperature of this month’s daily winter temperatures recorded at noon,” we can understand that every daily temperature of the month which was recorded at twelve o’clock noon

(1)  Has been added together and the (2) sum is divided by the number of days in the month.

Let's take the month of December, having 31 days, 31 recorded temperatures have been added together, and their sum divided by 31 to come up with one number: the average.

The average temperature is not the mean average temperature.  The mean average temperature refers to the temperature taken at noon on December 16^th.  The mean average temperature is important but it is not the data point described in the global warming definition.  The two numbers (average temp and mean average temp) may vary significantly so the difference between the two can be quite important when trying to understand atmospheric temperatures.

When we come to “climatic change” in the definition it is preceded by the word “cause” so we can expect that if there is a cause there is an effect.  Viola!

The phenomena termed global warming is the average of temperatures recorded around the earth (in the atmosphere above both land and sea) which under the right circumstances will cause a shift in climate (climate change).

Neither global warming nor climate change is easy to understand.  But don’t despair!  Step by step we will move on to greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide, chaos theory, ice cores and other important ingredients of the many faceted phenomena of Global Warming. And we'll take a peek at the variety of environmental organizations working for positive change.

For example, 350.org.

The two gorgeous photographs are from the organization 350,org. http://www.350.org

A portion of their mission statement reads "350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis--the solutions that justice demands. . . . Our focus is on the number 350--as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number--it's a symbol of where we need to head as a planet."

this Blog will be Updated Soon…..

Starting in 2010, this blog will be updated.

Stay tuned for more updates

ALERT| ‘Ferris Bueller’ Director Dies Of Heart Attack

John Hughes, prolific director of such culturally significant films such as "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Planes," "Trainsand Automobiles" and "Home Alone" has died suddenly of a heart attack while taking a morning walk during a trip to Manhattan to visit family.

  ABC News reports that John Hughes, director of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and producer of "Home Alone" and others, has died aged 59.

Opposition boycotts Ahmadinejad’s swearing-in

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been sworn-in for a second term of office as Iranian president. But, former presidents Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ali Khatami were among the opposition leaders who boycotted the ceremony in Teheran. However, most western embassies sent representatives.

In his address to the parliament in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said Iran must continue to resist oppressor nations. He also told Western leaders who had not congratulated him on his re-election that “no-one in Iran was waiting for them.”

Outside the parliament building, riot police were out in force to prevent any opposition protests.
The trial of about a hundred reformists who led demonstrations in the wake of the contested election is set to resume on Thursday.

Ahmadinejad now has two weeks to present a cabinet for parliament’s approval. While he has the formal endorsement of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the President may have difficulty getting his team through the divided parliament, where he faces attacks from both the ultra-conservative and reformist flanks.

William Jefferson, Ex-Congressman, Convicted in Bribery Case

A federal jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday convicted
former Representative William Jefferson, a Louisiana
Democrat, on 11 of 16 counts, including bribery in a case in
which agents found $90,000 in his freezer.

He was accused of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes and
seeking millions more in exchange for brokering business
deals in Africa. The jury deliberated five days before
returning the verdict.

Outrage Over 'Wrong-Way' Crash Revelations

How could she? That's what families of the victims want to know Wednesday morning as they prepare to meet with the Westchester County District Attorney after toxicology tests showed Diane Schuler was drunk and high as she drove the wrong-way on the Taconic State Parkway, leading to a crash that killed herself, four small children and three men. Toxicology reports released Tuesday painted a disturbing and dark picture of 36-year-old Schuler, a woman once perceived as a devoted mother and victim of a terrible tragedy.

Clinton, 2 Freed Reporters Return Home

Two U.S. journalists held for 5 months in North Korea returned to the U.S. Wednesday as a plane carrying former President Bill Clinton and them landed in California. Clinton held rare talks with reclusive leader Kim Jong Il, who pardoned the women sentenced to hard labor for entering the country illegally.

ALERT|Missile Strike Near Us Embassy

Missiles strike near US embassy in Afghan capital Kabul. More soon…
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ALERT

 

BULLETIN -- Reports: At least 2 people killed, 8 others injured after gunman opens fire at gay bar in Tel Aviv.

Saudi TV sex boast man arrested

A Saudi Arabian man who went on an Arabic television talk show to boast about his sex life has been arrested.

The man, named as Mazen Abdul Jawad, prompted more than 200 complaints from Saudi viewers.

He was arrested for "publicising vice", police said, after he spoke about his experiences and displayed sex toys and a sex guide at his home in Jeddah.

Mr Abdul Jawad had publicly apologised, saying producers at the TV station had tricked him into some of his accounts.

During the show on Lebanon's LBC, the father-of-four told how he first had sex with a neighbour when he was 14.

He also described how he used the Bluetooth function on his mobile phone to pick up women in the kingdom.

A police spokesman in Jeddah said Mr Abdul Jawad's appearance had violated Saudi Arabia's Islamic sharia law code and was against Saudi customs.

He was detained at his apartment at the Red Sea port city before being fingerprinted and turned over to criminal investigators, according to media reports.

Passenger 'Acting Crazy' Forced LaGuardia Evac

 

 

People were being allowed back inside the main terminal at LaGuardia Airport that was evacuated Saturday morning over fears of a possible bomb. While the Central Concourse has been re-opened, Terminal C was still considered a crime scene and was to remain closed for hours after the incident.

Authorities: Device Found At LaGuardia 'Harmless'

 

Terminal C in LaGuardia Airport is considered a crime scene and will remain closed for hours Saturday. John Kelly, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said the airport's central terminal building was evacuated this morning. A man was taken into custody and an NYPD bomb squad searched his bag. They found a device, but deemed it to be harmless. The man was considered to be emotionally disturbed.

LaGuardia Terminal Evacuated In NYC, 1 In Custody

 Authorities said a main terminal of LaGuardia Airport in New York City was evacuated and a police bomb squad arrested a man and searched his bag. John Kelly, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said the airport's central terminal building was evacuated Saturday morning. He didn't know how many passengers were there at the time or what airlines are served at the building.

‘Fake co.uk Sites’ Trick Consumers

Trading standards officers say that consumers are being tricked into buying fake goods on the internet by companies pretending to be based in the UK.

The websites are often based in China, but use "co.uk" as part of their domain name, giving shoppers a false sense of security, they say.

It is thought that there could be as many as 480,000 websites which carry "co.uk", but which are not UK based.

The sites sell a range of goods from trainers to hair straighteners.

Al-Qaeda supporters 'joined MI5'

A senior Tory MP has asked the home secretary whether al-Qaeda sympathisers were mistakenly recruited by MI5.

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Home Affairs counter-terror sub-committee, said he was told six recruits were ejected after worries about their past.

Two allegedly attended al-Qaeda training camps while the others had unexplained gaps in their CVs, Mr Mercer told the Daily Telegraph.

A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment on the claims.

'Took advantage'

Mr Mercer said he had learned that MI5 had dismissed the six recruits some time between 2005 and 2007.

The MP said he feared that, in the aftermath of the bombings on London's transport network in July 2005, the security services had rushed to try and take on Muslim recruits, and that had potentially allowed al-Qaeda sympathisers to infiltrate the security service.

He has written to the Home Secretary Alan Johnson asking for further details.

Mr Mercer said the Commons Home Affairs committee may investigate the issue next month.

He told the newspaper that the government should have been prompted to expand the security services following the attacks on New York on 11 September 2001.

"In fact it took an attack on this country for such measures to be started," he added.

"But at this point it was an unseemly rush of which our enemies, not unsurprisingly, took advantage."

NBC O&O sites clean up layout, mess up header

The NBC O&O stations have rolled out a redesign for their sites.

For the most part, the new design is a significant improvement over the old layout and takes a big step in cleaning up the clutter. Also gone is the annoying iTunes-style showcase area that always seemed to be a bit slow to load and had so many items crammed into it that it become impractical.

More commentary and a poll after the jump.

However, the new look uses, quite unexplainedly, a bizzare, geometric font for the header. Not only does the font seem completely out of place among the clean typography found elsewhere, it’s not a very well rendered typeface and seems like something that came from a free font site (we couldn’t identify the font using MyFont’s What the Font? tool).

That said, the new site has a Facebook-style status line directly under the logo that seems to be fed by a poll on an individual story. For example, this morning it read “New York is furious about letting kids drive trains.” It seems the feature is meant to reflect the overall feeling of the entire city.

It’s a nice human touch with a social networking flair, but it will be interesting to see how much opinion and attitude finds its way into the feature.

China Protests to Japan Over Uighur Tour

China has protested over claims that nearly ten thousand people are missing after ethnic rioting earlier this month.

It has called in Japan’s ambassador in Beijing to complain about the Tokyo visit of exiled leader of the Uighur community Rebiya Kadeer.

Violence broke out between native Uighurs
and Han Chinese on July 5. Rebiya Kadeer is demanding an international team looks into the trouble and claims close to 10,000 people disappeared in one night in the city of Urumqi.

Beijing has accused Ms Kadeer, who now lives in the US, of inciting the vioelnce, an allegation she denies.

The trouble began after police tried to break up a protest against fatal attacks on Uighur factory workers in south China. Ethnic tension remains high in Xinjiang province after the violence.

Shining some light on sunbed risks

Many of us want to look bronzed and healthy all year round, but the latest warnings should give pause for thought. Experts now believe that the risks of sunbeds may be as high as those of asbestos and smoking. The World Health Organisation has ranked sunbeds at Level Two risk since 1992, but has now raised that to Level One – a danger to human health.

“UV rays are radiation which penetrate the skin, and can cause lesions within the skin,” said cancer researcher Beatrice Secretan. “These lesions can cause the development of cancer.”

According to the research, exposure to artificial UV rays by people under the age of 30 raises the risk of melanoma, or skin cancer, by about 75 percent.
With UV rays being acknowledged as posing a risk, it is perhaps surprising that so many people still want to get brown no matter what.

“I can’t stop myself!” said one woman. “It is like sweets: you can tell people they are going to get fat, but they keep on eating. For me, it is not sweets, it is getting a tan.”

Sun-lovers defend artificial tanning by pointing out that the sun itself has been classed as a cause of cancer since 1992.

“The dangers of the sun are everywhere, on the beach, anywhere where we expose ourselves to the rays without taking precautions like suncreams,” said Dominique Baumier, from the French sunbed association. “Natural sunshine is far more harmful than the rays we find in sunbeds.”

For the time being there is no question of banning sunbeds. It is more important to find out about the risks, and to train people better in sunbed operation to warn their clients of possible dangers.

“Banning sunbeds outright would not work,” said
Georges Reuter, from the French association of dermatologists. “There are ways of getting around such a thing. It is more important to have proper information and training for sunbed operators, which is not always the case at the moment.”

Skin experts say ten sunbed sessions a year should be the maximum. But they prefer the use of bronzing lotions, in cream or shower form.
However, as always, the advice must be: “Everything in moderation!”

ETA aimed to kill with barracks bomb, says minister

Seeing the devastation of the Burgos barracks bombing for himself, Spain’s Interior Minister said ETA undoubtedly intended to kill.

Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba stressed that the car bomb had been left to go off next to family quarters. He told reporters that 120 people had been sleeping in the barracks and 41 children could have died.

“We, Spanish democrats, know that when we are dealing with ETA, we are faced with a gang of murderers,” said Rubalcaba. “We have always known that. As we have always known that they are murderers and savages. From the beginning. But from today onwards we know that they are crazed murderers and savages, which does not make them stronger but which, nevertheless, makes them more dangerous.”

Dozens hurt in Spanish barracks bomb blast

An amateur cameraman captured the moment that a powerful car bomb blamed on ETA exploded outside a paramilitary police force barracks in Spain.

More than 60 people were hurt, not only Civil Guards but also their partners and children.

The bomb, 200kg according to reports, miraculously caused only slight injuries, with glass flying from broken windows. And all those needing medical treatment have now been released from hospital.

There was no warning but for Spanish authorities there is no doubt. Armed Basque separatists ETA were behind the early-morning attack in the historic city of Burgos.

The Civil Guard is a favourite target of the group which is blamed for killing more than 800 people in a long-running campaign to carve out an independent Basque homeland.

ETA is seen as under pressure to show it can still strike despite its ranks being decimated by arrests.
The Burgos bombing comes just ahead of the 50th anniversary of ETA’s creation.