Take Action!
There are many simple things you can do in your daily life — what you eat, what you drive, how you build your home — that can have an effect on your immediate surrounding, and on places as far away as Antactica. Here is a list of few things that you can do to make a difference.
1) Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs - Replace 3 frequently used light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.
2) Inflate Your Tires - Keep the tires on your car adequately inflated.
3) Change Your Air Filter - Check your car's air filter monthly.
4) Fill the Dishwasher - Run your dishwasher only with a full load.
5) Use Recycled Paper - Make sure your printer paper is 100% post consumer recycled paper.
6) Adjust Your Thermostat - Move your heater thermostat down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in the summer.
7) Check Your Water heater - Keep your water heater thermostat no higher than 120°F.
8) Change the AC Filter - Clean or replace dirty air conditioner filters as recommended.
9) Take Shorter Showers - Showers account for 2/3 of all water heating costs.
10) Install a Low-Flow Showerhead - Using less water in the shower means less energy to heat the water.
11) Buy Products Locally - Buy locally and reduce the amount of energy required to drive your products to your store.
12) Buy Energy Certificates - Help spur the renewable energy market and cut global warming pollution by buying wind certificates and green tags.
13) Buy Minimally Packaged Goods - Less packaging could reduce your garbage by about 10%.
14) Buy a Hybrid Car - The average driver could save 16,000 lbs. of CO2 and $3,750 per year driving a hybrid.
15) Buy a Fuel Efficient Car - Getting a few extra miles per gallon makes a big difference.
16) Carpool When You Can - Carpooling with friends and co-workers saves fuel.
17) Don't Idle in Your Car - Idling wastes money and gas, and generates pollution and global warming causing emissions.
18) Reduce Garbage - Buy products with less packaging and recycle paper, plastic and glass.
19) Plant a Tree - Trees suck up carbon dioxide and make clean air for us to breathe.
20) Insulate Your Water Heater - Keep your water heater insulated.
21) Replace Old Appliances - Inefficient appliances waste energy.
22) Weatherize Your Home - Caulk and weather strip your doorways and windows.
23) Use a Push Mower - Use your muscles instead of fossil fuels and get some exercise.
24) Unplug Un-Used Electronics - Even when electronic devices are turned off, they use energy.
25) Put on a Sweater - Instead of turning up the heat in your home, wear more clothes.
26) Air Dry Your Clothes - Line-dry your clothes in the spring and summer instead of using the dryer.
27) Bring Cloth Bags to the Market - Using your own cloth bag instead of plastic or paper bags reduces waste and requires no additional energy.
28) Joining the Virtual March - Add your voice to help stop global warming
Global warming is the most urgent issue of our time and we must all be part of the solution. Joining the Virtual March is a first step to joining the movement to demand solutions now.
Economists Help Climate Scientists To Improve Global Warming Forecasts
Climate scientists are collaborating with experts in economic theory to improve their forecasting models and assess more accurately the impact of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Although there is broad consensus that there will be a significant rise in average global temperature, there is great uncertainty over the extent of the change, and the implications for different regions.
Greater accuracy is urgently needed to provide a sound basis for major policy decisions and to ensure that politicians and the public remain convinced that significant changes in consumption patterns and energy production are essential to stave off serious consequences in the coming decades and centuries.
The climate modelling community has become increasingly aware that some of the statistical tools that could improve their modelling of climate change may already have been developed for econometric problems, which have some of the same features. The European Science Foundation (ESF) brought these two communities together for the first time in a recent workshop, sowing the seeds for future collaboration.
"We achieved our goal of bringing together people from two very distant but equally valuable fields," said the workshop's co-convenor Peter Thejll. "It was designed as a one-way session whereby econometricians were supposed to convey knowledge of econometric methods to the climate researchers." This has already proved highly valuable because economic and climate models require similar kinds of statistical analysis, both for example involving serial correlation where the aim is to predict the future value of a variable based upon a starting value at an earlier point in time.
In economics such a variable might be the price of a commodity, while in climatology it might be temperature or atmospheric pressure. In both cases the variables change randomly during successive time intervals subject to varying constraints within a closely defined zone, and therefore can be analysed using similar "random walk" techniques. For More Info
The aim is to introduce greater statistical sophistication into climate analysis, partly by understanding better the correlation between different aspects of change, for example how one region impacts another.