JabberWocky!

I have heard about this Website for a long time from many of my friends that use it and have been going to blog about it many times but it seems that each time I was going to blog about it something else came up and they had to take a back seat!

I am speaking about the Freecycle Network. They started out in 2003 as a nonprofit organization that provided recycling services to downtown businesses and also provided transitional employment to the good people of Tucson, Arizona.

Soon after starting out they began to see perfectly good re-usable items being thrown away and found themselves calling and driving around to local nonprofit organizations to see if they could use any of the items.

After seeing how much time and fuel was being used doing this, the founder, Deron Beal, came up with an idea of an easier way of doing this and set up a Freecycle e-mail group that enabled Everyone in Tucson to give And receive and at that point ‘freecycle’ took off!

Now 6 years down the road, ‘freecycle’ has spread out over the entire World touching 85 countries and growing every day. There are thousands of local groups and millions of people helping people by…

“changing the world one gift at a time”

At this time they are also keeping approximately 500 tons a day out of landfills which amounts to 5 times the height of Mt. Everest in just one year alone.

Freecycle is a FREE, no strings attached network for giving and receiving, it also instills a sense of generosity, strengthens community ties and it promotes environmental sustainability and reuse.

People from all walks of life are joining together to turn their trash into treasure and if you have a bit of “treasure” that you would like to give Or if you are looking for a bit of “treasure” then I would suggest checking out the Freecycle Network and seeing if there just might be something you can give Or use to help sustain our environment!

freecycle

That’s all for me today, I hope to see you back here again soon for some more…

In just 4 short days, on March 29th between 8:00-9:00 p.m., Earth Hour, the global movement to shut off the lights for one hour in order to make a statement about climate change, will be here.

The momentum is really beginning to build as more and more individuals, businesses, and even cities are planning to participate.

Together, people around the globe are going to deliver a powerful message to the citizens and leaders of the world about the need for action on climate change, Now, as it is the greatest threat our planet has ever faced.

Earth Hour is going to give everyone the opportunity to take action and influence others to begin a change that will alter te course of climate change forever.

By turning off the lights during Earth Hour each and every one of us will signify the beginning of what just one person can do to help make a big impact on climate change.

To find out more about Earth Hour, sign up free for Earth Hour and be counted by committing to turn off your lights, create your own Earth Hour event, reduce your impact, know your footprint and more go to:

Earth Hour

I urge all of you to get involved for all of our sakes…after all, an hour in the dark on a Saturday night can’t be all that hard to fill!

That’s all for me today, see you back again tomorrow for more…

That is how the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society likes to see itself. Sea Shepherd was incorporated in the Untied States in 1981 and before that the idea of Sea Shepherd was formed in 1977 in Vancouver BC, Canada. The original mandate was marine mammal protection and conservation with an immediate goal of shutting down illegal whaling and sealing operations, but Sea Shepherd later expanded its mission to include all marine wildlife.

This conversation society is dedicated to investigating violations, enforcing laws and protecting marine wildlife worldwide.

At the moment some of their campaigns include Defending Whales, Galapagos Islands, Longlining and Shark Finning, Seal Hunts and Taiji Dolphins.

They also have an Eco-Crime Watch reward program offering $25,000 for any person or group that can provide the coordinates of the Japanese Whaling Fleet that successfully leads Sea Shepherd to the fleet and there are of course more rewards being offered also.

In this video it shows Sea Shepherd chasing the Japanese Whaling Fleet along the coast of Antarctica for 50 days and 4,000 miles. I must warn you though that the video is quite graphic and may not be suitable for everyone.

Pirates of Compassion

According to the presenter of this video, the one thing worth fighting for on this planet earth is life.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

That’s all for me today, see you back again tomorrow for more…

4.5 million children have asthma, there are 14 million missed school days each year and there are thousands of asthma related deaths across the U.S. alone, each year!

The EPA recently proposed new ozone levels for our air. But it didn’t listen to doctors and scientists calling for much stronger limits. And now polluters are lobbying for even weaker standards!

You can make your voice heard by signing the petition for cleaner air now And adopting a square mile of sky, FREE!

My “Little Bit of Heaven” is in the sky above Arizona; where will yours be?

Adopt the Sky

Thought of the Day
We must be vigilant, active defenders of our natural resources and prompt our leaders and fellow citizens to join us as such…Jimmy Carter

That’s it for me today! Hope to see you back again tomorrow for some more…

If any of you remember Friday I was talking about how burping or the appearance of burping cows cause a lot of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and even though I was making it a little light story for Friday the more I read the more interesting it became!

As I read more I found out that 65% of the methane in the atmosphere is attributable to agriculture, with a significant portion arising from dairy cows. Methane is about 23 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Greenhouse gases, (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone), are components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Some greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, while others result from human activities such as burning of fossil fuels such as coal.

The Greenhouse Effect is when sunlight reaches the surface of the Earth, some of it is absorbed and warms the Earth. Greenhouse gases naturally blanket the Earth and keep it about 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would be without these gases in the atmosphere. This is know as global warming.

Methane is a colorless, odorless, flammable gas. Cows, sheep, goats, buffalo, termites, and camels produce & release methane naturally. When these animals burp, methane is released and in one day, a cow can emit ½ pound of methane into the air. Now multiply that by 1.3 billion cattle each burping methane several times per minute, I don’t have to tell you that is an incredible amount of methane released into the atmosphere every day!

In the UK the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, (DEFRA), has begun a $1.5 million study examining how to curb methane emissions from cows, pigs and sheep.

They are not only trying to develop a new diet, as I mentioned Friday, but also investigating cows that are bred to live longer and thus reduce the number that are needed to produce the same amount of milk as before.

Sheep will be used in some studies because their digestive systems are similar to cows and they are considered more manageable.

As far as animal manure goes the project will look into breeding cows with more efficient stomachs, which then produce less waste. (Inventing a new cow and then cloning it, sort of)?

In Germany they are working on a pill which would trap more energy in the first of a cow’s four stomachs, thus cutting down on emissions.

In 2003, New Zealand went as far as proposing a “flatulence tax” on the large diary industry but was forced to back down because of a popular outcry. (How this is suppose to make the cows stop flatulating,(?), is way beyond me)!!

As you can see, in the past few years an international campaign has been waged against cow flatulence and how to solve the problem!

Whether or not any of these ideas will work…who knows, but certainly many different avenues are being investigated!

That’s all for me today, I hope to see you back again tomorrow for some more…

If any of you are hanging out or keeping company with cows a lot then you know that they are not known for their manners; in fact they seem to burp,* (according to U.K. scientists),…a Lot, get close to one and it will invariably burp right in your face! But! Did you know that if we used modern plant-breeding methods to find new diets for cows that make them burp less than it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

It seems that the key is to develop new varieties of food that are easier for the cows to digest as well as provide a proper balance of fiber, protein and sugar.

Farmers have been looking for ways to cut methane emissions amid warming climates and scientists seem to think that this could be an alternative solution.

The average dairy cow belches out about 100 to 200 liters of methane each day, making diet changes a key potential factor in reducing this greenhouse gas. There is a common misconception though about how methane gets into the atmosphere, scientists seems to think that it is actually through belching rather than the other end!

Greenhouses gases are widely blamed for causing global warming. By introducing easier-to-digest legumes that tend to reduce methane emissions is an example of what scientists are beginning to explore.

Farmers will also need to learn to balance cows’ legume intake with other food and to develop different species of grass that are also more digestible.

After reading this I started thinking about last week-end and the Live Earth Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, I wonder if all of the singers knew they were singing to reduce Cow Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

*According to another reliable source of mine: “They do have burp like behavior when they chew their cud, (Looks like burping). Their normal eating behavior is to quickly chew and swallow as much feed as possible, then lay down, regurgitate and re-chew the food later. This is called chewing their cud. Their digestive system takes advantage of fermentation to digest food, so they do give off a fair bit of methane and other gaseous byproducts. Some out one end, some out the other.”

(Looks like Cows are Real Pigs to me)!

I need to say a special thanks to The Wandering Cowboy turned Graphic Designer, HDW, for the extra lessons he gave me last night on Cow Etiquette!

That’s it for me this week! Hope to see you all back here again on Monday for some more…

WELL! Was that something or was that something? I’m talking about Live Earth, The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, of course! It was so good to see so many of you there! The buttons on my Live feeds from my blogs were just about wore with all of the clicks!

I went to a Sub-Concert here in Amsterdam with a couple of friends of mine, which I really enjoyed very much, (even had decent weather, the first in a couple of weeks!), and when I rolled in the door at home and tuned in again on Sunday around 3:00 am my time, 9:00 pm Saturday New York time, history had already been made with more than 9 million live online streams to users viewing the worldwide music event aimed at promoting awareness of climate change.

That was also my Favorite time of Live Earth because when I tuned in again at 3:00 am, the fantasy love of my life, the devilishly handsome, John Mayer sang “Waiting On The World”, which happens to me my song of the moment for the last month!

The concert series opened in Sydney and then moved across the globe to all 7 Continents reaching up to 2 billion people!

And I am Very Happy to announce that as far as the 2nd attempt to close the Rio concert down…IT FAILED!! AND RIO DID ROCK AFTER ALL!!

Personally I think they should have locked , prosecutor Denise Tarin, from the office of the prosecutor, up for a while in an institution for trying to stop it not once but twice!! (She tried to get the show canceled siting insufficient security for the 700,000+ people expected. Hello! How about Carnival…it draws more than a mere 700,000 Every year, or the Rolling Stones concert held on the same Copacabana Beach last year that drew more than 1 million people, which she tried to stop, by the way and failed!)?? I don’t know, maybe she was just upset because Brazil was the only country hosting a Live Earth concert that was entirely free and open to the public!

I mean lets face it people, London would have been the place to hit if anything was going to happen! What with all of the BIG events held on the same day, Live Earth, Wimbledon, Tour de France starting there, the Santander British Grand Prix And the 2005 Memorial Bombing Ceremony, those good old Londoners were snubbing their noses up at the “bad guys” and telling the world “Bring It On! We don’t care, we aren’t going to allow you to stop us from enjoying ourselves!”, even after having 2 terror attacks less than a week before! Good for you guys, London!

Of course let us also not forget that we now have 7 New Wonders of the World also! In case you missed my post yesterday announcing them…they are:

• The Taj Mahal, regarded as the symbol of love
• The Roman Colosseum, originally called the Flavian Amphitheatre
• The Pyramid of Chichen, Itza, located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula. Chichen Itza was built by the Maya civilization
• Machu Picchu, a pre-Columbian city created by the Ruby/Prabhjot. Located on a mountain ridge
• Christ the Redeemer (statue), a symbol of Christianity, the statue has become an icon of Rio and Brazil.
• Petra, the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is famous for having many stone structures carved into the rock
• The Great Wall of China, built to protect the northern borders of the China. Several walls, referred to as the Great Wall of China, were built since the 5th century BC, the most famous being the one built between 220 BC and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.

Beginning on Sunday, after the concerts, you were able to watch concerts and video on demand, show highlights, search by artist if you happen to have a favorite & create and share your own Live Earth playlists on the Live Earth Website.

Everywhere on the Live Earth Website you can find tips on how to help our disparately in need Mother Earth and it does not have to be much you know! You can help by something as simple as using reusable drinking glasses, (which most of us do already), or lower your thermostat by just one degree and you will not only help our Mother Earth but you will save 3% on heating costs!

See! I TOLD YOU SO! Everyone of us can help without much effort at all!

Well, I hope you all enjoyed your week-end as much as I did! That’s all for me today, hope to see you back here again tomorrow for some more…

Click here: LIVE EARTH LIVE HERE! and you will be magically transported, Energy Efficiently of Course, to the Concert of the Century!

That’s all for me today; hope to see you back again soon for some more…