Natural and Sustainable

1. Plug your computer, fax machine, copier, scanner, TV, DVD player, and even your Ipod and phone chargers onto a power strip and then simply switch it off when you are not suing them.

2. Replace 10 incandescent bulbs in your home or office with CFLs. Carpool to the office; donate used gear and sporting goods and even well worn older shoes that are good condition as well.

3. Turn down your water heater, air-dry your dishes and even use rechargeable batteries when you can.

4. Replace your clogged car filter; recycle plastics, paper, metals and glass no matter what. Look for recycled products as well and keep them in circulation.

5. Remove your car’s roof rack when you aren’t using it, drink filtered tap water instead of water that has been bottled and BYOB, bring your own bottle to places and refill it. Eat vegetarian twice a week at your home or at the office. Turn off the lights with you leave a room and turn off the ceiling fan when you aren’t in a room as well. Bike to most of your in-town errands and walk to places close like a friend’s house, or the library.

6. Cut down on your car washing, and sweep your driveway off instead of using the hose to spray it. Accelerate your speed gradually in your car to help save gas as well. Use the cruise control on the interstate and open highways. Always drive the speed limit, it’s better to be late then over-use your gas and even get a ticket.

7. Take a Navy shower by turning off the water while you soap up. Shave in the sink and not in the shower to help save water as well. Don’t overfill the bathtub.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Use environmentally friendly insulation on your home. It will help cut your heating and cooling cost as well as helps with your impact on the earth as well.

I mentioned before on September 11 about some of the many species that are disappearing due to the rising temperatures and the warming world around these particular animals and breeds. The rise in temperatures in the Rocky Mountains will make it harder for certain species to migrate in a timely fashion in order to survive. Here are some species that will die off slowly if global change is not made soon.

• American Pika: This mammal survives in the Rockies and the Sierra areas and can not tolerate heat and this mammal is running out of high-elevation areas in order to survive. Because of global warming, this little animal could be the first to be extinct because of global warming. In the past 40 years, the pika population in the Great Basin (the area between the Rockies and the Sierra) have disappeared completely. And as the temperatures raise so will they existence in other areas as well.

• Wolverine: The rise in temperatures on this planet is causing this mammal to become an animal of the past. Their sanctuary is in the Rocky Mountains as well with the American Pika and they depend on deep snow pack to survive. They are one of the many mammals that are being affected by global climate change and they depend on wide open spaces in order to survive. As winters become milder, this mammal will soon become a thing of the past.

• Marmot: This animal is coming out of hibernation 38 days earlier in the spring than it did 23 years ago. When it does wake up, it is meet with more snow cover, about 22 inches deeper, and in turn has lack of food and can be forced back into hibernation. When it rises the second time from hibernation is burns muscles this time instead of fat, which makes it susceptible to starvation.

• Thrush: This song bird migrates from the Caribbean to the northern Appalachians. As global warming rises, so does the choice in their nesting trees, the conifer trees. A temperature increase of 1.5 to 6.3 degrees by 2100 could thin out the balsam trees in New England by 96 percent as some hardwoods like beeches and yellow birches crowd out their nesting trees one by one.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Boundary waters are disappearing as well. One by one. The Minnesota North Woods could go up in smoke if the Boundary Waters diminish. If this trend continues, more and more trees will disappear. To find out more, click here.

With climate change come changes within our animal species. Some species could become endangered or even extinct by the year 2030. Here are seven that could disappear forever if climate change isn’t controlled.

1. American Goldfinch: These little yellow and black birds could disappear entirely from 33 states depending on the CO2 emissions.

2. Bull Trout: Since they thrive in most glacier-fed streams, unless they are transported physically they won’t be able to survive and may be gone from the lower 48 states by the end of the century.

3. Warbler: Due to the hotter summers, the warbler has shifted its breeding to the north about 65 miles in order to survive in the last 24 years.

4. Sonoran Pronghorn: This desert antelope is already endangered and will be completely gone if situations continue, by 2050, due to lack of food, water and even thermal stress on the animal.

5. Cutthroat Trout: This fish survive in cooler waters and with the warming streams it will send this trout north out of Utah and the mountain streams around. 10 percent of the U.S. trout habitat will be gone by 2030.

6. Moose: Today there are fewer than 400 moose roaming the northern areas. Warmer summers cause the moose to be prone to parasites and due to this it will cause lower birth rates of the moose overall.

7. Bighorn Sheep: Lack of rainfall and temperature increase has caused a 37 percent decrease in the bighorn population. The bighorn sheep will disappear if the temperatures continue to rise in the next 60 years.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Growing grass helps to prevent the buildup of gasses. Switchgrass, which has been looked into for Biofuels production lately, helps store large amounts of carbon within the soil itself. This prevents in from being released into the atmosphere where it can cause even more damage.

As you plan to make changes in your house’s air inlets and outlets, consider these guidelines:

• Openings in opposite walls allow maximum air movement.

• Openings in adjavent walls create air turbulence, increasing the cooling effect.

• A combination of low inlets and high outlets can achieve the greatest scouring of room air. This strategy is especially useful for night cooling of thermal mass floors.

• If you install new openings, make sure the air moves around the people in the room in order to best cool them.

Here is a “Natural Cooling Checklist”:

1. Experiment with your existing windoes to improve airflow. If your house has casement windows, not only can you get the maximum ventilation area for a given glass area. but you also can use the windows to catch and direct airflow. For double-hung windows, you might want to try opening both sashes partway; this can let cooler air in at the bottom and warmer air out at the top. If you have operable transoms about doors and windows (interior or ecterior), use them to exhaust hot air that collects near the ceiling; you might want to add transoms if you don’t already have them. If your house has more than one level, try opening high and low windoes to pull the air through the house vertically.

2. Seal any cracks around the perimeter of your house.

3. Tune in to the breezes. When it’s hot, anything that amplifies your awareness of the breeze can have a psychological cooling effect. Hang a wind chime or bell, or plant bamboo or another “rustley” plant in the path of summer breezes, and enjoy the feeling of wind amplification.

More Advanced Steps, Things You Can Do Tomorrow: When you are ready to take on more substantial projects, consider the following.

• Add new openings in yoru home’s walls for natural ventilation.

• Create a thermal chimney.

• Landscape to redirect the wind.

• Create outdoor rooms; depending on where it’s located and hot it’s designed, an outdoor room can be an island of calm when it’s too breezy, or it can put you in the path of cooling breezes when it’s hot.

**Over at Genre Fiction, Janet has a posting about “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”. Read the whole story here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Choose reusable instead of disposable products (diapers, razors, cups, pens, etc.)

Think about the breeze and winds around your home:

• At what time of day and year are the winds stronger?

• From which direction does your prevailing wind come (the one that blows most of the time, when there are no storms)?

• From what direction do storms come?

• Is there a noticable breeze or wind most of the year? Does it vary much from season to season?

• Do your local breezes shift daily?

• Is your local air movement influenced by geographic features or landscape elements?

There are several ways to learn about local wind dicretion and intensity, such as observing from yourself (at different times of the day and year), accessing eather data and asking local farmers or other people who work outdoors what they observe.

Ceiling Fans change wind directions within your own home. People tolerate higher temperatures when the air is in motion, and celing fans are a relatively energy-efficient, affordable way to enhance your house’s natural airflow.

Here are some tips to maximize your comfort when using ceiling fans, while minimizing your enery usage:

1. Turn off the fan when nobody’s in the room: Air movement coole people, not rooms.

2. Adjust the controls seasonally: In the summer, use the ceiling fan in the downward (counterclockwise) airflow direction and position yoruself in the path of the moving air; the high the air speed, the greater the ceiling fan in a clockwise direction at low speed to bring warm air near the ceiling down into the occupied space.

3. Whole house fans: These fans often can be the most cost effective way to cool a home in moderate climates. Whole house fans circulate air by pulling cool bressze in from lower floor windows and venting air out through the roof. The fans typically cost about $500 to install and have low operating costs.

4. Evaporative coolers: In the western United States where humidity levels are low, new designs for evaporative (swap) coolers are a high-preformance alternative to convetional air conditioning systems. They use less than one quarter as much energy as air conditioners, and don’t require toxic chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) or other regrigerants. They cool air by drawing warm outside air over a wet filter pad. The water then evaporates from the pad to reduce the air’s temperature. A fan circulates the moist, cool air into the room, and pushes warm air out through open windows.(Source: M.E.N. 2007)

**Need some advice when it comes to your poetry? Allena Tapia has five for you over at Writers Unbound. Read them here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Check the air pressure in your tires since underinflated tires reduce fuel efficiency greatly.

Natural ventilation makes the most of air motion already in your home and around it. This is th primary passive cooling strategy used when air condition did not exist. Harnessing this passive cooling strategy will save you money and time, as well as the waste of energy in the long run. These tips will help you slash (or eliminate) you air conditioning bills.

Understanding seasonal wind patterns will help you adjust your window openings, outdoor spaces and windbreaks to increase your comfort without relying on nonrenweable fuels and energy.

Consider the following points:

• What knid of windows does your house have: casement, double-hung or fixed?

• Does your house have other centilation openings (this means vents, exhaust fans or turbine ventilators, or a cupola?)

• Are there operable windows or other vents on opposite ends of your house? Are some high and some low?

• Can you open enough windows to provide good ventilation in hot weather?

• Does your landscape funnel breezes to your house in the sunner and protect it from cold winter winds?

• Does your house’s enclosure have cracks that admit cold air in the winter or hot air in the summer?

• How high are your ceilings? Do they allow warm air to collect high in the room, which can be a blessing in the summer but a problem in the winter.

• Do vents or fans exhaust unwanted air, such as unpleasant smells and excess moisture?

• Even with windows open, are there “dead air” spaces in your home?

Best Best for Passive Cooling:

1. The minimization of indoor heat generation. For example, using energy-efficient light bulbs, reducing hot water use, using smaller and more efficient appliances and scheduling heat-producing tasks (such as clothes drying) for cooler hours of the day.

2. Weatherizarion. Caulking, sealing and weatherstripping all building envelop seams, cracks and openings reduces heating and cooling energy requirements.

3. Insulation. Insulating your home or installing heat-reflective foil reduces heat conduction into your living space.

4. Window shading and glazing. Solar radiation passing through windos can contribute 20 precent to heat gain in hot, humid climates. Window shading devices and glazing technology minimize heat gain while transmitting daylight, which reduces electrical lighting needs.

5. Roof whitening and attic ventilation. There are two effective measures to reduce heat gain by either reflecting heat away from the roof or flushing heat out through the attic.

6. Trees and landscaping. Planting broad, leafy shade trees that block the sun will reduce the amount of solar radiation absorbed by your house.

**Are you a Star Wars fan? Over at Toy Bender, Paul has posted some of the latest and greatest Star Wars toys Lego has posted in their catalog. Check it out here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Never charge your cell phone overnight. It only takes a few hours to fully charge a totally dead battery on a cell phone, once it is charged you waste the other hours of it charging plus it can weaken your battery on your cell phone as well.

You can cut your own gasoline use by following these recomendations from the U.S. Department of Energy:

1. Drive sensibly (obey the speed limit and avoid rapid acceleration and braking).

2. Replace your car’s air filter when it’s dirty, boosting gas milage by 10 precent.

3. Keep tires at the recommended air inflation; 3 precent improvement.

4. Use the recommended grade of motor oil; 1 to 2 precent improvement.

5. Buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle. Drive less; carpool; plan car use. Or better yet take the train.

Looking for more alternatives seems to be the topic of conversation in most environmental circles. Natural and Sustainable has posted many posts before stating the urgent reason an alternative needs to be found. Of the various plant materials that can be used to make ethanol, cellulose (found in the plant leaves and stems) is the most promising. Nonfood perennial “bioenergy crops”, such as switchgrass or fast-growing trees, can be grown on subprime leand using much less fertilizer, water, and pesticides than used for corn. Switchgrass potentially yields about four times the amount of energy needed to produce it. They also generate a good income for farmers as well.

Trying to boost national energy security without giving consumers access to the information they need to avoid compromising national soil, water and air security is unacceptable. Using bioenergy crops as ethanol sources would likely result in less soil erosion. But changes to these crops would not rule out the use of fertilizers (although at lower rates than from corn) and synthetic herbicides.

**Over at Writers Unbound, Allena Tapia has a way for freelance writers to find their minimum rate and their ideal rate. Read how by clicking here.**

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Install dimmers or motion sensors for your lights indoors and out. They will help ward off unwanted criminals when you are on vacation as well.

The polar bear is one of nature’s most beautiful and fascinating creations, but global warming and oil drilling threaten its existence.

It may be the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning. Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of their time hunting and raising their young on ice floes. As the sea ice goes, that will directly, to a very great extent, be what happens to polar bears.

Coca-Cola began airing commercials featuring polar bears in 2004 to try to get the word out about how important it is to save these polar bears. These commercials continue to air as of today. But, a lot of people that view these commercials, don’t know what they are all about.

Although the magnificent creatures are well adapted to the water, and can swim scores of miles to solid land, the distance is getting ever greater as the Arctic ice diminishes. They just kind of float along and kick. But as the ice gets farther out from shore because of warming, it’s a longer swim that costs more energy and makes them more vulnerable.

Climate change is a very real threat. It not only threatens us as humans is it treatening everything that lives and breaths. Climate change is threatening polar bears with starvation by shortening their hunting season. If you think it is just little animals getting threatened by global warming, it isn’t. This threat is only the beginning. Positive changes have to be made NOW!

Here are 5 changes in your lifestyle you can do to help, remember, every little bit helps:

1. Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket.
You’ll save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple action. You can save another 550 pounds per year by setting the thermostat no higher than 50°C.

2. Cover your pots while cooking.
Doing so can save a lot of the energy needed for preparing the dish. Even better are pressure cookers and steamers: they can save around 70%!

3. Take a shower instead of a bath.A shower takes up to four times less energy than a bath. To maximise the energy saving, avoid power showers and use low-flow showerheads, which are cheap and provide the same comfort.

4. Use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible.You can save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide when you air dry your clothes for 6 months out of the year.

5. Reuse your shopping bag.
When shopping, it saves energy and waste to use a reusable bag instead of accepting a disposable one in each shop. Waste not only discharges CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, it can also pollute the air, groundwater and soil.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE TIPS TO HELP SAVE THE POLAR BEAR.

**Having matress issues? Catherine Neal over at San Jose, CA. blog here at 451 Press is and boy, does she have a commical story. Read her funny air mattress mishap here.**

(Sources: Wal Street Journal, Daily Mail)
*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: After you finish baking a cake or a holiday meal in the oven, turn the oven off and leave the door open to help heat your home. If your kitchen is already warm, don’t open a door to the outside, just turn your heater or furnace down and let the heat from the oven wrap up the warmth. Why open a door and let the heat out and waste more energy when you can cut the energy source off completely. Let common sense be your guide to conserving energy.