The Earth Hour for saving energy

Based on a text from www.earthhour.org
Earth Hour is organized by WWF. With almost 5 million supporters and a global network in over 100 countries, it’s one of the world's largest and most respected independent conservation organizations. WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the Earth's natural environment and build a future where people live in harmony with nature.

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the, Sydney Harbour Bridge, The CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.

Earth Hour 2010 takes place on Saturday 27 March at 8.30pm (local time) and is a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community throughout the world. It is a call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Europe to Asia to the Americas will stand in darkness. People across the world from all walks of life will turn off their lights and join together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet. So sign up now and let’s make 2010 the biggest Earth Hour yet!.

Earth Hour has done a lot to raise awareness of climate change issues. But there’s more to it than switching off lights for one hour once a year. It’s all about giving people a voice on the future of our planet and working together to create a sustainable low carbon future for our planet.

The future can be bright
New economic modelling indicates the world has just five years to initiate a low carbon industrial revolution before runaway climate change becomes almost inevitable. But it can be done, and the long term benefits will be enormous.

So now's the time to take a stand and give world leaders the mandate they need to make the right climate deal.
It’s Showtime! Show the world what can be done.
Put simply, because our future depends on it!

Scary Christmas holidays

It was Christmas Day and John was enjoying his Christmas gifts at the time when the earth shook. His parents went to the window to see what was happening amd they saw it was an earthquake.

Instantly John and his parents left the house and went away as far as possible so that they would not have any problem. Suddenly, they realized that John was not there. His father was running home to see if he was there, but he didn't look for all possible sites.

Finally, John's father had a look in the hut over a small tree that was about to break. John told his father that he was afraid and he wanted everything to be over. They both left the tree house before it collapsed.

In the end, when everywhere was safe, they went to his grandparents' home in the city and told them what happened.

A volcano trip

It was an excursion with my parents to the volcano of Arquipa in Peru. We lodged in a hotel that was very near the volcano. We could see it from our room.

When my parents and I were going down to the restaurant to have dinner, we saw in a poster that the hotel organized very thrilled excurions to the volcano.

My parents asked if we could go, and they answered with hesitation that
this volcano was very dangerous and it usually erupts several times a year.

The following morning we took the bus to the volcano. Once there the tour guide was showing us the volcano, it suddenly and unexpectedly the volcano started to erupt in a second.

I think that there my death hour arrived but fortunately the bus was by there, we got on and ran away very fast. It was an unforgettable experience.

Tsunami in Mexico

Some years ago, my family and I went on holidays to Mexico and we were in a hotel near the coast.

In the hotel we usually watched the TV news but they didn’t say anything dangerous and we stayed very well during a week. But suddenly, one day we saw through the window a very big wave but the people didn’t think that it was a tsunami, so they continued with their lives.

However, the wave was bigger each day and all the people were very frightened. In the news they said that it was a possible tsunami and very strong. The fireman told that the people, who lived on the coast, must go to the centre of the city. My family and I went to the airport by car, very fast because all the coast was covered with water.

The police said that the tourists must come back to their country for security because it was very dangerous to stay there. We took a plane to Pamplona without the bags because they were in the hotel.

When we arrived to Pamplona, we told the story to our friends and family and they were very surprised.

By: Itziar

Stormy Sea by Adam

Last year I was working with my father on his fishing boat. One day we were about twenty kilometres from the port when the weather became stormy. There were six of us on the boat and we were all in the cabin, watching the sea.

Suddenly, I saw a massive wave. I was very frightened. When the wave hit us there was a lot of noise. The next moment there was panic.

People were shouting and things were falling and breaking everywhere.

Afterwards I was OK, but my father and his friend were injured, so we tried to help them. It was a terrible experience and when we arrived at the port, the next day, I felt lucky to be alive.

by Adam Degado

The volcano survivor´s story

Last summer I was on a trip when the night came and we camped in a mountain. We made a fire and set the tents and went to pick up something to eat. At about 2 am, we were sleeping when we heard a big enough noise which woke all us.

We looked around to see if it was some animal; what was our surprise, we were at the foot of a volcano, 2 minutes later we received a call from people telling us that the volcano was about to erupt and that if we stayed there we could die.

Right then we went down the volcano as fast as possible. When we reached the road my girlfriend turned his ankle and I had to help her continue, she told me that it would lead us problems, I said no and nothing would happen to think positive.

Once we came to town, the volcano erupted. We took the car and ran away from there, but a rock damaged the rear of the car. When we arrived in Pamplona, we went straight to hospital for ankle to heal my girlfriend and oxygen for us because we had breathed a lot of gas.

When they finished we went home and we remembered that we had forgotten our backpacks and tents in the volcano.After 6 months, we recall the experience we had in the volcano, and we have decided that next time we will go to the beach.

Floods in the U.K.

THIS IS A MODEL OF WRITING FOR STUDENTS 3ºESO AS A STORY IN EXTREME WEATHER. TRY TO USE SOME OF THE VOCABULARY UNDERLINED AND DO NOT HESITATE TO USE THE LINKS.

This story happened some years ago when I was living in a smallholding in Greaves Lane in High Green, near the Chapeltown area of Sheffield in the U.K.

I think we must learn from this experience. In the area where I lived there was a stream called Blackburn Brook which runs directly past his house and that night it burst its banks, with 2ft of water washing over his garden and then inside.

Suddenly I woke up as I noticed my feet were wet in the bed! I realized my bed was floating in my flat, so I spent the day digging trenches to try to keep the water away, although I could not keep it out of my home and some of my carpets were ruined. The extreme weather must be treated with respect.

It was terrible, I thought we were going to lose the house. The river broke its banks and about 2ft of water ran over the garden. We've got away quite lightly compared to some but we have lost carpets, the kitchen units and decorations. We have had flooding before but never anything like this.

It was very quick when it came. I was frantically trying to stop the water coming into the house. We dug ditches out and to a large degree it worked as we would have been under about 3ft of water - it was awful." We were also affected by flooding just two years ago, but water did not come into the house then. I was coming out of my basement window.

The day after the flood was even worse. There wasn't any electricity and it was not expected to be restored until at least two days later as the sub-station was under 5ft of water. My utility room and entertainment room were completely destroyed, and I spent the following day pumping water out. I think I spent another two days before I could get all the water out. I managed to save about 10% of my belongings, but the rest I had to throw away.

All our phones were down and our computers didn't work at all, and people were trying to contact the rescue teams while the power was off and not many of them were coming down for help to the hospitals. Some patients were coming down with things like chest pain, but anything worse than that and they were sending back home as the hospital was a chaos in the floods.

The roads around the city weren't too bad, but people were evacuated from the Winn Gardens Estate, which is where many of the affected people lived.Some people left their cars at the streets there and went home last night and ran back in that morning, because all the roads where they lived were under water. Nobody could drive after the floods.

Nobody died then, but this is the most extreme weather experience I have had in my life, and now I am very worried about the climate change in the world as I think this isn't any normal at all.

Ten things everyone should know about Global Warming

BEFORE I START VISIT THIS WEB LINK FOR FUN
Learning Vocabulary Fun (Test Preparation & Vocabulary Building for K-12 & ESL Students)

With all the hype about global warming and climate disasters filling the journals and air waves, here are some facts that need to be more widely known:

The climate is never just "average"; it changes all the time, from season to season, year to year, and over the millennia. And that includes not only temperature, but rain, snow, droughts, storms, and every conceivable feature of the weather. So watch out when you read about the "hottest year", "longest drought", or "biggest hurricane".

Is it getting warmer or is it getting colder? The correct answer is: Yes. It all depends on the time scale you choose. The global climate has warmed over the last 100 years, but not appreciably over the last 50 years. And it is colder now than it was 1000 years ago. And did you know that over the last 50 years the frequency of hurricanes has been dropping?

Are human activities influencing climate? Yes, of course. The rise of agriculture and the growth of cities have changed the local climate significantly. With rising populations and rising industrial activity there have also been some worldwide changes: Temperature extremes have softened, the stratosphere is cooling, the frequency of hurricanes has been diminishing -- all of these are thought to be human influences on the atmosphere. But this does not mean that there will be a catastrophic or even a substantial warming of the climate in the next century.

Isn't there climate warming already because of the increased burning of fossil fuels -- oil, gas, and coal -- that creates more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? True, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are rising, but the climate seems not to be warming. It did warm greatly between 1880 and 1940 -- long before CO2 increased significantly. But since 1940, weather satellites, tree ring data, and corrected thermometer readings all agree that climate has not warmed -- even though CO2 levels rose.

Why hasn't climate warmed, when theory clearly expects this to happen? The answer must be that even our best current models of the atmosphere are incomplete and leave out important features. Only in the last few years have modelers started to include ocean currents, atmospheric aerosol particles and dust into climate models. Most now suspect that clouds are the reason why models and observations do not agree.

What about climate calamities, like sea-level rise and the spread of tropical diseases? Well, since the climate is not warming, there is no immediate reason for concern. Diseases are not just spread by mosquitoes, but nowadays more by human contacts -- which have been increasing markedly with the tremendous rise in global transportation. Many scientists predict that sea level will drop if oceans warm; the evaporated moisture may simply turn to snow and increase the thickness of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps.

Would a global warming be good or bad? Probably both, but warming is definitely better than cooling. It is certainly better for agriculture and therefore for basic human existence. All historical evidence shows that during the warm periods of the Middle Ages people were better off than during the hard times of the "Little Ice Age" (1650-1850) when crops failed and people starved.

What can we do about climate warming? We can do little about the climate itself, but we could try to stop the increase of atmospheric CO2. Even that task is daunting; it requires that we cut emissions -- worldwide -- by 60 to 80 percent. In effect, this means cutting energy consumption by comparable amounts -- including all transportation, heating, air conditioning, and electricity use. It would have an enormous negative impact on people's welfare -- particularly for the poor and those in developing countries.

How would one reduce energy consumption by 60 to 80 percent? There are basically two ways, short of drastically reducing population itself: energy rationing or energy taxes. Rationing means a political allocation, with governments and bureaucrats deciding who may use energy and who may not. Energy taxes are almost as unpalatable; just try to picture $3-per-gallon gasoline.

Should we ruin our economies and cause tremendous hardship for people to counter a phantom threat? That's a leading question; climate warming does indeed seem far away and a minor problem at that. There is a sure threat to human existence, however, and that is the near-certainty of a coming ice age. Geologists tell us that the present interglacial warm period will soon come to an end. Perhaps greenhouse warming can save us from an icy fate.

Made available through The Science and Environmental Policy Project.About the Author: S. Fred Singer is the founder and president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project.

Vanishing Arctic ice shows no sign of return

A summary from an article of Reuteurs Agency

Out in the Arctic Ocean, about 200 miles (322 km ) north of the nearest human settlement, the future of the world's climate is written in the patterns of ice patches on the water's surface.

Old, "multiyear" ice -- the glue that holds the polar ice cap together and forms the Arctic's defense against encroaching warming -- is slowly disintegrating, a process that is plain to see from the air.

Thick ice floes used to be kilometers (miles) wide just over a decade ago. Now the narrow floes -- with bright-white tops and a blue underwater glow -- are just meters (yards) wide. The dense, high-quality ice is not coming back.

While there was broad awareness of the harmful effect of sea-ice loss on polar bears and other Arctic animals, its impact on weather elsewhere in the northern hemisphere and the rest of the world was potentially more critical.

A warmed Arctic Ocean emits heat into the atmosphere that drastically alters weather patterns. Who cares about the Arctic? Well, it's going to change the whole heat engine of the planet.

Scientists have voiced concern for years about the alarming decline in the size of the Arctic ice cap, which functions as a giant air conditioner for the planet's climate system as it reflects sunlight back into space.

As a greater portion of the ice melts, larger expanses of darker sea water are exposed, absorbing more sunlight and adding to the global warming effect attributed to rising levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by human activity.

SMALL CHANGE, BIG EFFECT

Arctic ice cover this year was 23 percent greater than the record-low levels of 2007, according to the latest data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, which has been keeping records for 30 years. But it was the third-lowest coverage on record, after 2007 and 2008.

For the Arctic, incremental temperature changes have multiplied effects.
An increase of just a few degrees -- or even fractions of degrees -- can mean the difference between freeze and thaw. Thaw leads to more thaw, as dark-colored sea surfaces absorb solar radiation that would bounce off white snow and ice.

The additional warming caused by the melt itself, along with the greater absorption of solar heat into the now-uncovered northern waters, amplifies the warming in the polar region.

That feedback phenomenon is why the Arctic is warming at about three times the global rate and its ecosystems are changing so much, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.

Total summer ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is only about half the level it was in 1950. This year's summer minimum was 20 percent below the 30-year average.

Winter is already encroaching just days after the autumnal equinox. Evidence is in the thin film of new ice appearing between existing multiyear and single-year chunks. But the seasonal build-up will be slower than in the past.