Blog Action Day

Today is worldwide Blog Action Day, where bloggers have been asked to write about the environment. I moved pretty much all of my environment type posts to my other blog at Wannabe Hippy, but I can say a bit about it here:

Don’t take the world for granted, and don’t think nicer weather now means that climate change is a myth. I don’t fully subscribe to either theory of global warming: that humans are the sole cause for it, and that humans have had no change on the world climate. Scientific theories are always being argued back and forth but there’s plenty of evidence to support both extremes – it just comes down to how much you believe, and ultimately your feelings about taking responsibility for your effect on your surroundings.

Anyway, that is all – check out my Wannabe Hippy blog 🙂

Perseid meteor shower this weekend

It’s too bad it’s late on a Sunday night but it might be definitely worth staying up late for.

The beauty of these meteor showers is that they are annual, and come on a regular schedule. If you can find a clear piece of sky out in the country, away from the lights of the city, you should be able to see about one meteor per minute. Stay for an hour or two and you should be able to see some low ‘earthgrazing’ meteors that stay lit up for several seconds or more.

My new blog – Wannabe Hippy

So I’ve started a new blog.

It’s called Wannabe Hippy, and it’s at http://www.wannabehippy.com

Basically it’s a blog about living simply, in a low-impact, low-stress way, in the modern world. I’ll be collecting and commentig on various articles that I check out online, and going through what I experience as I try to transition my life even more towards this type of existence. I just thought ‘wanna hippy’ was a cool name for it, even if I don’t plan to follow Phish on their summer tour and sell bead necklaces or whatever 🙂

Many of my posts about what I think about the environment and whatnot, that I would normally put on this blog, I’ll put over there. I was thinking about starting a different blog a couple of months ago, which is why I registered sheepfrenzy.com (which points to this site), but it would just be mainly a ranting blog, and this wannabehippy.com is more my speed right now 🙂

So anyway, please visit Wannabe Hippy, I hope you like it! Let me know what you think about it!

OK one more time on the climate change thing

Whether or not you’re ‘taken in’ by global warming, the facts are clear that temperatures are rising, sea levels are rising, etc., etc. Most scientists agree that people are the cause of the recent accelerated rise in temperature, but believe what you will.

I’ll put it like this, then: decide what to do to protect the environment by protecting yourself.

• Don’t want to continue paying high prices for gas/petrol? Drive slower, drive less often, ride a bike, walk to the shops, buy a smaller car (listed in increasing levels of effort )
• Don’t want to pay more for garbage/rubbish collections? Recycle and encourage others to do so.
• Want to lower your water bills? Use a rainwater collection barrel for watering your garden/lawn.
• Want to lower your electricity bills? Turn off things when you leave a room, use more LED or flourescent lighting, try solar-powered water heating and lawn lighting.

If you don’t want to ‘Save Our Planet’, try saving some money 😛

Posted on socialdiscussion.com by me earlier today.

Grow your own house!

Well, that’s the potential anyway.

Researchers have found a way to use mushroom spores to make fireproof wall/ceiling insulation to grow cheap and ‘green’ insulation that’s as good or better than synthetic (i.e., made from oil products) insulation.

Apparently this can lead to possibly growing our homes in the future. Very cool!

Interesting study on reusable drinking cups

I suppose I think about the waste of disposable cups a lot, at least compared to the average person. My office at work has the upstairs water cooler in it, and some people come by to drink water and use the clear plastic cups once, then toss the cup. Personally, I hate that. It’s just completely wasteful.

I use one of a couple of insulated plastic mugs or a plastic pint glass to drink water out of, plus I have a tea mug that I use for hot drinks. I really have become British, in the sense that when it’s chilly or cold a hot drink really does the trick for me!

Anyway, this scientist did an interesting study comparing the various ecological effects of using disposable or reusable cups for drinking, taking into effect not only the manufacture of the cup but the washing of the reusable cups, which I had never considered. Making the soap and supplying the heat (electric or gas), etc., take energy, just as making the cups in the first place.

Here’s the results.

global warming…or climate change

Don’t get my wrong. I’m an environmentalist. I’m not rabid about it, but I consider myself more aware of the environment than most people. I think most people are like that. Most people think they’re a better than average driver, when in reality they’re probably just an average driver. No one wants to think of themselves as ‘average’.

But I digress.

Recently I watched a program called ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’. See the whole thing YouTube, or see it below.

The show provides some really compelling evidence, even refuting the primary claims in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

The only thing that I didn’t like about the program was that it didn’t provide any contrary opinions. I know it’s not meant to be a debate, but if you’re going to say something like ‘Global warming and everything related to it is a scam, it’s normal for the Earth and is ’caused’ by the Sun and clouds!’ then there really should be some equally high-level scientists refuting the claims made by the scientists in this program.

I did find a YouTube response here that has many links to sites directly refuting the points put across in the program. This one in particular is good, although like most scientific data it might be over the head of the average person.

But it’s an interesting program to watch. I think it will influence people who don’t bother to do post-watching research that global warming is nothing to worry about (so that’s most people then), but if you’re an environmentalist or consider yourself concerned about global warm…errr climate change, you should watch this. I think it’s good to occasionally question and challenge your views.

Me? I’ll continue to recycle and strive to get better fuel economy out of my car, enjoy the outdoors when I can and ‘do my bit’ – it makes good sense, no matter which scientists you believe.

Silly, stupid people

The University of Berkeley wants to build something that will require moving a few trees, and some wannabe environmentalists (scruffy people who want to live in trees) and nudist activists get together to ‘make something happen’.

Check it out here

I’m all for environmentalism and everything, but when crass publicity stunts and people-who-should-have-a-job-but-decide-to-live-in-trees-and-survive-on-handouts get in the way of the actual issue (which, according the link above, isn’t really an issue in the first place!), it all starts becoming white noise and easily ignored.

Annoying.