Topic: What are the potential effects of global warming in terms of climate change and how can they be arrested?

Global warming is a serious ecological issue that has many negative effects upon our environment. Based on the film An Inconvenient Truth (2007), global warming is the rising of average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere due to greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect consists of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor insulating the Earth’s surface and helping it maintain warm temperatures. However since there is so much carbon dioxide filling the air, the Earth atmosphere absorbs almost all of the suns emission causing the temperature to increase and consequently causes global warming. There are various of consequences that have been arised in terms of climate change due to global warming.

The increases of carbon dioxide level each year is one of the factors that cause global warming. When there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect will be worsening causes the global temperature to rise. As the result, permafrost thawing, the glaciers and ice sheets around the world are melting everyday and this make the sea level rises. Arctic and Antarctica, the two regions of the world experience faster impacts from global warming. According to Chris Woodford (2006), currently, the world's sea levels are rising at 3cm (just over 1 inch) per decade.

Another affect of global warming is the increase in the ocean temperatures. When the oceans get warmer, stronger storms like hurricanes, typhoon and tornadoes will be formed because as the water temperature rises, the wind velocity and the moisture content also increases. Hurricane Jeanne, Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Katrina were among of them that killed a lot people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage (An Inconvenient Truth 2007). The rising temperatures will also lead to frequent heat waves. Same effect goes to the sea level, as oceans are heated, ocean’s water molecule will expand and this makes the sea level rise as the water takes up more volume. Holli Riebeek (2007) mentioned that this could leave low-lying nations awash in seawater.

Besides that, another effect of global warming is it causes more precipitation, often coming in big storms. Increasing temperatures tend to increase evaporation which leads to more precipitation. As average global temperatures have risen, average global precipitation has also increased. The evaporation off the oceans puts all the moisture up in the atmosphere and when storm conditions trigger the downpour, more of it falls down and may cause flood. It was stated in Mumbai, India on July 2005, 37 inches of rain in 24 hours the largest downpour that any city in India has ever received have caused a huge flood that killed almost 1000 people (An Inconvenient Truth 2007).

Global warming not only causes more flooding but also more droughts. One of the reasons of this is because global warming not only causes more precipitation worldwide but it also relocates the precipitation. Focus of all is on the Africa side where unbelievable tragedies have been unfolded there. Darfur and Niger were among of those tragedies and one of the factors that have been compounding them is the lack of rainfall and the increasing drought. Another factor of it is because global warming creates more evaporation off the oceans to seed the clouds but the problem comes when it sucks moisture out of the soil causing soil evaporation increases dramatically with higher temperatures (An Inconvenient Truth 2007).

There are many ways to overcome the problems caused by global warming. To cut off the effect of global warming, we can start by cutting down the emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. All countries should take part in the international climate-change treaty called the Kyoto Protocol so that emissions of carbon dioxide can be redressed. While for individuals, we can use more efficient electricity appliances such as replacing the incandescent lamps in our home and use energy-saving fluorescent lamps instead to reduce the global warming pollution that would otherwise be put into the atmosphere (Woodford 2006). If we use other end-use efficiency, higher mileage cars, environmental-friendly cars, renewable energy and technology, and carbon capture and sequestration, more and more global warming pollution can be reduced.

In general, global warming should be viewed as a serious problem. Global leaders and individuals must be concerned and step forward to solve this problem before it’s getting worse. If we cannot mitigate the potential effects now, regardless of the cost, then all of the species survival including us will be directly threatened by the consequences of our actions. We need to find a way to raise our living standards without destroying our own habitat.

Topic: What are the potential effects of global warming in terms of climate change and how can they be arrested?

Global warming is a serious ecological issue that has many negative effects upon our environment. Based on the film An Inconvenient Truth (2007), global warming is the rising of average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere due to greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect consists of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor insulating the Earth’s surface and helping it maintain warm temperatures. However since there is so much carbon dioxide filling the air, the Earth atmosphere absorbs almost all of the suns emission causing the temperature to increase and consequently causes global warming.

The increases of carbon dioxide level each year is one of the factors that cause global warming. When there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect will be worsening causes the global temperature to rise. As the result, permafrost thawing, the glaciers and ice sheets around the world are melting everyday and this make the sea level rises. Arctic and Antarctica, the two regions of the world experience faster impacts from global warming. According to Chris Woodford (2006), currently, the world's sea levels are rising at 3cm (just over 1 inch) per decade.

Another affect of global warming is the increase in the ocean temperatures. When the oceans get warmer, stronger storms like hurricanes, typhoon and tornadoes will be formed because as the water temperature rises, the wind velocity and the moisture content also increases. Hurricane Jeanne, Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Katrina were among of them that killed a lot people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage (An Inconvenient Truth 2007). The rising temperatures will also lead to frequent heat waves. Same effect goes to the sea level, as oceans are heated, ocean’s water molecule will expand and this makes the sea level rise as the water takes up more volume. Holli Riebeek (2007) mentioned that this could leave low-lying nations awash in seawater.

Besides that, another effect of global warming is it causes more precipitation, often coming in big storms. Increasing temperatures tend to increase evaporation which leads to more precipitation. As average global temperatures have risen, average global precipitation has also increased. The evaporation off the oceans puts all the moisture up in the atmosphere and when storm conditions trigger the downpour, more of it falls down and may cause flood. It was stated in Mumbai, India on July 2005, 37 inches of rain in 24 hours the largest downpour that any city in India has ever received have caused a huge flood that killed almost 1000 people (An Inconvenient Truth 2007).

Global warming not only causes more flooding but also more droughts. One of the reasons of this is because global warming not only causes more precipitation worldwide but it also relocates the precipitation. Focus of all is on the Africa side where unbelievable tragedies have been unfolded there. Darfur and Niger were among of those tragedies and one of the factors that have been compounding them is the lack of rainfall and the increasing drought. Another factor of it is because global warming creates more evaporation off the oceans to seed the clouds but the problem comes when it sucks moisture out of the soil causing soil evaporation increases dramatically with higher temperatures (An Inconvenient Truth 2007).

There are many ways to overcome the problems caused by global warming. To cut off the effect of global warming, we can start by cutting down the emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. All countries should take part in the international climate-change treaty called the Kyoto Protocol so that emissions of carbon dioxide can be redressed. While for individuals, we can use more efficient electricity appliances such as replacing the incandescent lamps in our home and use energy-saving fluorescent lamps instead to reduce the global warming pollution that would otherwise be put into the atmosphere (Woodford 2006). If we use other end-use efficiency, higher mileage cars, environmental-friendly cars, renewable energy and technology, and carbon capture and sequestration, more and more global warming pollution can be reduced.

In general, global warming should be viewed as a serious problem. Global leaders and individuals must be concerned and step forward to solve this problem before it’s getting worse. If we cannot mitigate the potential effects now, regardless of the cost, then all of the species survival including us will be directly threatened by the consequences of our actions. We need to find a way to raise our living standards without destroying our own habitat.

Topic: What are the potential effects of global warming in terms of climate change and how can they be arrested?

Global warming is a serious ecological issue that has many negative effects upon our environment. It is the rising of average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere due to green house gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect consists of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor insulating the Earth’s surface and helping it maintain warm temperatures. However since there is so much carbon dioxide filling the air, the Earth atmosphere absorbs almost all of the suns emission causing the temperature to increase and consequently global warming.

The increase of carbon dioxide level each year is one of the factors that cause global warming. As the result, permafrost thawing, the glaciers and ice sheets around the world are melting everyday and the rising temperatures will also lead to frequent heat waves. Arctic and Antarctica, the two regions of the world experience faster impacts from global warming. Scientist expected that within the next 50 to 70 years, the ice cap will be completely gone.

Another affect of global warming is the increase in the ocean temperatures. When the oceans get warmer, stronger storms like hurricanes, typhoon and tornadoes will be formed because when the water temperature increases, the wind velocity and the moisture content also increases. Not only that, as oceans are heated, ocean’s water molecule will expand and this makes the sea level rise as the water takes up more volume. This could leave low-lying nations awash in seawater.

Besides that, another effect of global warming is it causes more precipitation, often coming in big storms. The evaporation off the oceans puts all the moisture up in the atmosphere and when storm conditions trigger the downpour, more of it falls down and may cause flood. It was stated in Mumbai, India on July 2005, 37 inches of rain in 24 hours the largest downpour that any city in India has ever received have caused a huge flood that killed almost 1000 people.

Global warming not only causes more flooding but also more droughts. One of the reasons of this is because global warming not only causes more precipitation worldwide but it also relocates the precipitation. Focus of all is on the Africa side where unbelievable tragedies have been unfolded there. Darfur and Niger were among of those tragedies and one of the factors that have been compounding them is the lack of rainfall and the increasing drought. Another factor of it is because global warming creates more evaporation off the oceans to seed the clouds but the problem comes when it sucks moisture out of the soil causing soil evaporation increases dramatically with higher temperatures.

There are many ways to overcome the problems caused by global warming. Firstly, to cut off the effect of global warming, we can start by cutting down the emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Secondly, if we use more efficient electricity appliances such as energy-saving fluorescent lamps, we can reduce the global warming pollution that would otherwise be put into the atmosphere. If we use other end-use efficiency, higher mileage cars, environmental-friendly cars, renewable energy and technology, and carbon capture and sequestration, more and more global warming pollution can be reduced.

In general, global warming should be viewed as a serious problem. Global leaders and individuals must be concerned and step forward to solve this problem before it’s getting worse. If we cannot mitigate the potential effects now, regardless of the cost, then all of the species survival including us will be directly threatened by the consequences of our actions. We need to find a way to raise our living standards without destroying our own habitat. Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Oliver Sartor From: The Australian February 23, 2010 12:00AM

RATIONAL climate change policy is essentially about finding the least economically disruptive and fairest possible way to ensure our way of life against the risks of climate change.

At the moment, the most accomplished scientists from the most accomplished scientific institutions are telling us that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically during the next 10, 20, 40 years.

To achieve this, a significant restructuring of the way modern economies produce goods and services will be required. And this means providing sufficient incentives for businesses and consumers to change their behaviour in a way that can de-link economic growth from emissions levels, and in an acceptably fair way. But how to do that?

Across the world governments facing this question are developing a variety of policy measures, but there is an unmistakable trend that comes through the noise: mandatory carbon pricing is indispensable.

Most notably, 27 European Union member states began the EU emissions trading scheme for greenhouse gases in 2005, and New Zealand will start one in July this year. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, 16 US states and four Canadian provinces, and even the US congress, are at various stages of legislating their own cap-and-trade schemes. Similarly, the Norwegians and Swedes have put in place (and the French, Irish and Spanish soon will) direct carbon taxes for certain economic sectors not covered by the EU's ETS.

So if Australia is alone in wanting to price carbon emissions, why are so many other developed countries imposing "great big taxes on everything", as Liberal leader Tony Abbott calls it?

The theory is no doubt appealing: that is, that carbon pricing harnesses market forces to internalise low-cost incentives to abate. Consider how emissions trading works.

First, the government sets an emissions budget or target for the year. Next, it limits the supply of emissions to the market by requiring firms to hold a permit to emit a tonne of CO2 and it allocates that number of tonnes' worth of emissions permits to key industries.

Finally, since firms want to emit carbon to produce stuff, they need to decide how to allocate the permits among themselves, so they enter a market to start trading with others. They trade based on their relative costs of abatement. In particular, each actor will look at the carbon price in the permit market to decide whether it is cheaper to reduce emissions and sell excess permits or, if less costly, to simply pay the carbon price and buy a permit to emit.

In other words, global economic cost is minimised by letting firms choose, based on their own, privileged, private knowledge and investment strategies, the cost of abating v the price of emitting.

The sum of those decisions is confined to the global goal through the emissions cap. The idea is that the cap is then tightened gradually through time in line with medium and long-term national emissions goals.

The carbon price in an ETS is therefore the stick business needs to move the economy, through time, towards key investments in less carbon-intensive modes of production.

So the theory seems plausible enough, but what about the practice? In fact, a joint research project by France's CDC Climate Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and University College Dublin recently completed the first comprehensive ex-post analysis of the first three years of the EU ETS. The results, published this month under the title Pricing Carbon, suggest that despite some significant flaws in the way the ETS was initially designed, the evidence points to the following conclusions.

First, the trial phase did significantly reduce emissions. Using careful econometrics, the authors estimate that the ETS actually reduced emissions below business as usual by between 120 million tonnes and 300 million tonnes of CO2 during the three-year trial phase. That is to say, emissions were 2.5 per cent to 6 per cent below a (conservative) estimate of where they would have been without the scheme. This is an impressive result given that the EU started with very limited emissions data for some countries and so it accidentally set a cap that was above business-as-usual emissions for the period.

Second, the trial phase highlighted the importance of government initially auctioning emissions permits to industry. The study noted that where firms participating in imperfectly competitive markets received permits for free, they gained windfall profits. This is because these firms are able to pass on at least some of the market price of permits to consumers anyway and so they reap a reward for no abatement from the free allocation.

Free allocation also implies that the atmosphere belonged to the polluters in the first instance, when most people would argue it is a public good and they should pay the public through buying permits from government to use it. Europe is in the process of shifting to auctioning of permits for all but those industries exposed to international competition. The carbon reduction pollution scheme, by the way, proposes to start with full auctioning to all but trade-exposed industry and, less gloriously, some power generators.

Finally, it is worth noting that auctioning a high proportion of permits also allows government to realise a double dividend with the revenue. Other taxes can be removed; deficits reduced; workers in strongly affected industries can be compensated and retrained; and public investments in complimentary emissions reductions that are not suitable for carbon pricing can be made.

Thus, looking at the Australian debate on climate policy from Europe, it appears very strange indeed that the debate seems to be over whether to have carbon pricing, or so-called "direct action" measures instead.

The emerging evidence from the EU, the lessons from economic theory, not to mention the global policy trend, is that carbon pricing is an indispensable pillar of equitable, effective and economically responsible climate policy for the long term.

But you need to be flexible, prepared to learn from mistakes and get the policy design right to create incentives for those long-term structural changes.

Oliver Sartor is a research economist specialising in carbon policy at CDC Climate Research in Paris. Pricing Carbon: Lessons from the EU ETS, is published by Cambridge University Press and is the product of years of joint work between CDC Climate Research in France, MIT and University College Dublin.

Adopted from: http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/games/game-designers-contemplate-controllers-future-20100222-opc1.html?autostart=1

In this newspaper article, the writer discuss on the game designers contemplate controller's future. With the modern technology, huge company such as Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. can develop more advance controller that enables gamers to experience and feel the game lively. But the existence of advance controller won't mark the demise of traditional controller because "Consumers want variety, and they want a range of experiences," said Fils-Aime.

Based on ‘Australia’ movie, the main character in this movie is Lady Sarah Ashley (played by Nicole Kidman). She is a beautiful and charming female from England. She has a short blonde curly hair with a pair of mesmerizing blue eyes and a fair skin. She travels to Australia to force her husband, Lord Ashley to sell his cattle station, Faraway Downs however she faces a lot of challenges since she goes to Australia.

Lady Sarah is a brave person, after her husband died, she runs Faraway Downs by herself with the help of Drover. She also very brave when decided to drive 2000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles to Darwin to sell to the Government. She faces a lot of difficulties when drives the cattle, but she still continue with her decision and brave to take the risk although the journey is very dangerous. Her Bravery can also be seen when she fires Neil Fletcher, the one who suppose to run Faraway Downs after the death of Lord Ashley. She fires Fletcher after she discovered that Fletcher is cheating in her husband business and trying to gain control of Faraway Downs.

Besides that, she is a caring and kind person. She willing to take care of Nullah after his mother dies. She becomes surrogate mother to Nullah and treat him like her own son giving her love and care to Nullah without discriminate him although Nullah is a half cast child. When everyone else is trying to take away Nullah to the Mission Island, she protect Nullah from being taken away. Later when she knows that Nullah is going to be send to the Mission Island, she quickly get to Nullah and tried to take him back before he is sent to the Mission Island but she failed to do so. She then said to Nullah that she will try to get him back out from the Mission Island no matter what it takes.

She is also a courageous person. Although her husband died before she can meet him, she accept his husband death and continue her life. She also decided to take place her husband job that is to run the Faraway Downs although she doesn’t know much about running a cattle station. She also is very courage when she decided to drive her cattle across thousand miles although she is being sabotage by Fletcher on her way to Darwin. Her courageousness can also be seen when she keep on with her own life after Drover left her after they having some misunderstanding.

The film ‘Coach Carter’ is based on a true life story of Coach Ken Carter (played by Samuel L. Jackson). Ken Carter was the one of the top basketball player back in his time so he has been offered to coach his former school, Richmond High School in Richmond, California as the school’s basketball team didn’t performed well and always been defeated. It all started when Coach Carter first meet with his basketball team, he has made an agreement with all of the teammates. It is stated in the agreement that all of his basketball players must maintain their academic performance and their grade point average must be not lower than 2.3. All of the boys must also sit in front of the class during class lesson. Some of the boys agreed with the agreement, some are not and left the team. Starts from that day, they keep on practicing hardly everyday for the tournament. Coach Carter is a smart coach, he coach his team very well, providing his team with great tactics, inspires the boys with motivation and useful encouragement. As the results, their team become unbeatable and continuing their winning streak. Then the boys started to lose their focus in study and they get bad results that is not qualify the agreement. So, Coach Carter decided to lock the gym and benched his team. He also decided not to open the gym and continue their daily basketball practice. Worst, they also suffered their first defeat as Coach Carter decided not to participate in any match until the boys get better results in their study. His action has also attract the media attention and he received less praise compare to criticism for his decision. Things get worst when the society want Coach Carter to be dismissed from the coaching the school. All of the boys feel sorry for Coach Carter and they start to study harder. They fill their time more at school library and as the result of their hardworking, they all get better marks and get back with their game until the state playoff.

This movie isn’t just about basketball, it has moral messages hidden in it. The first message that we can learn from this movie is that the important of education in our life. We can’t get far in sport unless we are very good in it, but education will definitely can get you anywhere as long we have the right spirit. That was in Coach Carter’s mind, he want his players to be good in both sport and education, that’s why he make the agreement and regulation for the boys to obey, it’s for their own good. Another message hidden in this movie is that we need to be respectful to everyone around us doesn’t matter who they are. In the beginning of the movie we can see the disrespect of some of the boys towards Coach Carter. They just ignore and playing around when Coach Carter ask them to line up. Some of the boys also use rude words to the elder, that is Coach Carter. To make things right, Coach Carter ask them to use the word ‘sir’ when introduce other people. He also provide useful advice when telling stories to show the important of respect. Moreover, another message in this movie is about the social problems occur in society. In this movie, we can see many social problems occur in the society such as drug abuse, unprotected sex and foul mouths. We should stop all of these social problems from continuing so that we can live in a better surrounding. Overall, the film 'Coach Carter' is a nice movie to watch.