This is pretty interesting, as all of the global warming skeptics will now have to face this study from a former skeptic.

Climate change deniers thought they had an ally in Richard Muller, a popular physics professor at UC Berkeley.

Muller didn’t reject climate science per se, but he was a skeptic, and a convenient one for big polluters and conservative anti-environmentalists — until Muller put their money where his mouth was, and launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, in part with a grant from the Charles G. Koch foundation.

After extensive study, he’s concluded that the existing science was right all along — that the earth’s surface is warming, at an accelerating rate. But instead of second-guessing themselves, his erstwhile allies of convenience are now abandoning him.

“When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Muller wrote in a Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections. Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate.”

This does not speak to the issue of whether humans are causing the warming, but it’s another persuasive set of data on this issue of warming itself.

Online classified ads are the best thing to happen to the Earth since the hybrid. With a classified ad, resources can be reduced, reused, and recycled with minimal fuss or difficulty. Let’s look at how online classifieds are saving the planet in more detail.

The average item’s lifecycle consists of many stages:
1. Gathering raw materials
2. Shipping materials to a factory
3. Producing a new item
4. Shipping item to stores
5. People taking the item home
6. The item’s usage
7. Item disposal
8. The item being shipped to a junkyard
9. If the item is not biodegradable (think plastic or metal), it will sit in the junkyard indefinitely

When items are sold in classifieds online, or ‘reused,’ their lifecycle is different:
1. Gathering raw materials
2. Shipping materials to a factory
3. Producing a new item
4. Shipping item to stores
5. People taking the item home
6. The items usage
7. Item given to new owner
8. The items usage
9. Item given to new owner
10. The items usage
11. Repeat

The joy and excitement people feel when they crack open the packaging of a new electronic device or open the box that contains a new bed frame is often the only reason people are willing to pay much more to be the first to own an item. Pragmatically, is there a reason to pay 100% more for something ‘new,’ when gently used electronics or furniture serve the same purpose?
Here are some great points to consider before you go to a store to buy something that could be obtained from a website like eBay. Remember: you can always package your gently used item in plastic wrap and open it like a ‘new’ item.

Reducing Waste
Classified ads save tons of waste every single day, literally. Every time someone decides to sell or give away a piece of technology, a bicycle, or an article of clothing, more space in a landfill stays open. While it might not seem like a few sweaters and a laptop computer or two will make any difference, the small things in life add up.

Cutting Down Paper Usage

Paper takes up a lot of space in a landfill (about 28 percent!), and paper production kills trees. Because the factories and other equipment used in harvesting and processing wood into paper use petroleum-based fuel, using paper is bad for the environment. When you use online classified ads, you save a lot of paper-production pollution.

Saving Fuel
Raw materials have to be delivered, items are produced in pollutant-expelling factories, and then items are shipped to stores (often across the globe) for consumption. That’s a lot of fuel usage for your new iPod!

In Conclusion
The online classified ad is a beautiful thing. With it, you can make friends in the forest by saving paper, and you can save a lot of fuel that’s wasted in the production of new goods. Overall, online classified ads are good for the environment in every possible way. Rather than adding to a landfill when you’re done with an item, pass it on to the next owner who will love it, and find yourself something affordable and gently used in turn!

Do you sigh when you think about all of the lifestyle changes that you would need to make in order to truly go green? There’s no reason to fret, though. In fact, these three ways to go green without even trying will make the world a better place without even forcing you to make huge changes in your lifestyle. That’s something worth exploring.

Reduce Your Office’s Paper Use

Offices can waste a lot of paper. All of those receipts, faxes, and printouts eventually have to go somewhere. Even when you take care to recycle your office’s paper waste, you still place a burden on the environment. It does, after all, take a lot of energy to recycle that paper.

You can reduce your office’s impact on the environment by using the new MetroFax mobile app. This app lets you receive faxes on your mobile phone. That means you don’t have to print out the fax to read it. The app is even more convenient than printing faxes because it allows you to search the last 200 documents that you received.

Make Walking Easier Than Driving

Motor vehicles often seem too tempting to avoid. The tendency is to hop in your car for every errand, even if you’re just going down the street to pick up lunch for your colleagues.
The PedNav app appeals to the lazy part of every person by providing the most time efficient way to get from point A to point B without using your car. When you make walking easier by finding the best route, you could find that the car becomes an unnecessary burden, especially when you consider all of the time that you spend looking for parking spots and sitting at red lights.

Find the Greenest Route for Your Vehicle

Motor vehicles spew a lot of carbon into the air. Reducing the amount that you drive could simultaneously reduce your carbon footprint. The truth, however, gets a little more complicated than choosing the shortest route. You have to consider traffic congestion, speed limits, and other factors to choose the greenest route for your vehicle.

Ecorio does all of that for you. This smart phone app uses GPS technology to keep track of how much carbon your vehicle emits. It does more than just make you feel guilty, though. You can also use Ecorio to find routes that will result in decreased carbon emissions. You don’t have to do anything but ask the app to tell you the best route to take. You can even keep track of your daily habits to make long-lasting changes in behaviors that might harm the environment.

These three apps represent some of the latest technologies that can help you go green without even trying. Sure, you could stop using the fax machine or give up your car, but you don’t have to become an extremist to make positive changes in the world. What are some of ways that you have gone green without doing much more than lifting a finger and touching your smart phone?

How do we know that sustainable energy, also known as alternative energy, is necessary? It’s right there in the description – it’s endlessly available. Fossil fuels, and any fuels provided by a process that takes a very long time, are finite. That means they will run out.

Long before anyone pumps the last gallon of oil-based power, humans need to find, and implement, energy that will outlast the species. Perhaps in the long distant future, people will utilize a method of power production that has not yet been discovered.

In the meantime, several options for sustainable energy already exist; like those provided by www.texaselectricityproviders.com. As a bonus, most options emit less pollution during their usable lifespan than present power generation methods. Following is a smattering of what is available today.

1. Wind power

Harnessing the strength of the wind is something that’s been done for centuries. The concept has been enlarged in the modern era to the point that entire tracts of land are used to hold vast fields of enormous windmills.

These are visible from roads across the country, and many proposals have been put forth to locate even larger wind farms in ocean waters. Many power companies offer a wind subsidy option, whereby people merely pay a bit extra to offset the higher cost of wind power.
But that’s large scale stuff. Did you know that you can purchase, install, and benefit from a ‘personal sized’ windmill also? These mini-mills easily compliment an environmentally friendly home, harnessing the wind’s energy when appropriate.

2. Solar Power

Solar has been viewed for generations almost as poorly as a proverbial black sheep. That has been due in large part to its low power output compared to its cost. In an age of cheap electricity and power, people frown upon anything that costs extra. But solar is poised for a major comeback in coming years.

With per watt prices dropping at the same time that conventional power prices are wobbling, but generally increasing, the two will intersect at price equilibrium in the near future. In the meantime, it’s easy to start building a private solar array by building the battery storage infrastructure and wiring.

The genius of a panel display is that it can be begun with just one panel and expanded as funds become available. This ensures participation in future panel price drops, too. Solar may come with a high cost, but it’s not difficult to participate in future price decreases. In fact, as power consuming children are added to a household, it’s easy to expand a solar power system.  Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be if you wanted your home to be clean and free of germs you had to resort to exposing yourself and others to harmful chemicals and toxins. The products used to kill those germs and clean your house were not only dangerous to yourself but to the environment. Luckily, thanks to the green movement people are saying good-bye to harmful cleaning products and cleaning their homes in a cleaner, greener way.

Everyone has to start somewhere when it comes to learning house cleaning using the green method. To start cleaning the green way, here are some suggestions that will help get you started.

Avoid Harmful Toxins and Chemicals

Cleaning products can be very misleading when it comes to how they are labeled. Just because it says it is natural or environmentally safe does not mean that the ingredients inside are actually natural or safe to use.

If you wish to clean your house using the green method, you will want to keep an eye on the ingredients inside your cleaning products. Look for ingredients like grain alcohol or plant oils as these are natural cleaning solutions. If you are unable to find products of this nature consider making your own cleaning products at home so you are 100% certain your cleaning products are safe and environmentally friendly.

Stop Water Waste From Happening

Reducing your water consumption is one of the easiest ways to go green while cleaning. Try to change your habits while cleaning. Instead of leaving the water running while doing the dishes or cleaning the cupboard, shut it off and save the water. When you are washing floors and other areas, try to use as much water as possible before you change the dirty water to clean water. When you’re done with the dirty water, use it for watering the plants outside.

Go High-Tech Green Cleaning

The use of ultraviolet light as a cleaning solution has become extremely popular over the years. The UV light has the cleaning power of bleach but is considered environmentally safe and non-toxic to yourself and your family. UV lights can be used to clean almost any surface in your house from kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms.

Reuse Your Cleaning Products

Going green isn’t just about what types of chemicals and toxins you are exposed to. It can also be about how much waste you produce while cleaning. To avoid environmental waste, try converting to cleaning products that allow you to reuse the packages and products or even using cleaning products in ways that they aren’t necessarily meant for. These products can include cleaning products that let you refill bottles after use and sponges that can be rinsed and reused multiple times. While you will eventually have to replace these items, the ability to reuse them numerous times before replacement will help you reduce your environmental waste.

Going green is a lifestyle change and by implementing some of these green home cleaning tips you will be taking that all important first step to change! How do you clean the green way?

If you are a designer, then you already know about saving planets. As you design and advertise in a digital world, you’re also reducing the amount of paper you’re using.

What happens when you’re working with graphic design that needs to be physical and not in the online environment?

Bring your planet-saving techniques into the office to help make print jobs more environmentally friendly.

Printing Alternatives

Want to show a co-worker your latest project or report? Try emailing them a screen shot instead of printing out the page. Cartridges and ink are definitely unfriendly for the environment, and printing also uses up paper. If you really must print something, conserve ink by using smaller fonts for words and by printing in black and white instead of color whenever possible. You can also use programs like Skype that will let you video chat and share your screen with others, which helps reduce printing jobs. Set up an electronic office network so you can reduce printing for office announcements.

Use Environmentally Friendly Printers

Although you might do your best to reduce your print jobs, there are times when you will have to use a printer. Try to use printers that are designed to help save energy and reduce ink. Some printers on the market are designed with the environment in mind. They use soy ink and allow for double-sided printing. Some will merge pages so you can print several pages of a report onto one piece of paper.

Of course, you can always consider scanning as an option for reducing print jobs. Instead of using ink, just scan an image or document, and then send it to a co-worker or client by email or through a social networking site. You can also use scans instead of faxes.

Consider using digital printing when you have to do a print job. Digital printing reduces waste since the ink won’t get absorbed by paper with a digital press. The print stays on the top of the paper.

Reduced Printing Can Save Energy

Help the environment by cutting down on the amount of energy you use. Turn your printer off until you need to print a specific project. You might find that this is just annoying enough that you will find reasons why you don’t need to print certain papers. This is a double-help since reducing print jobs reduces pollution. To make shut-downs and start-ups easier, consider plugging your computer and printer into power strips that you can shut off with the click of a button.

Reduce Paper Usage in Printing

When you use paper, make sure you use both sides of a page, and fill the pages up. Try to use recycled paper whenever possible, and when you purchase new paper, look for a lighter stock. Don’t forget to recycle your own papers when you have finished using them.

When you’re working in graphic design, you’re already a step ahead of most people. You know about strategic planning and proactive maneuvers. Take this information into your office to reduce print jobs. Develop strategies to minimize printer usage. Take your creativity and talent and put them to use in the office as you help save the planet.

It’s not exactly what anybody wants and it’s not the ideal situation for the American people, but it is looking more and more like there will be a government shutdown in the United States of America.

Online wagering fans have been betting back and forth over the last couple of weeks while keeping a close eye on the situation, but as of now, it looks like the two main parties of government can’t come to an agreement on the budget and there will be a shutdown.

Leaders in both Chambers of Congress spent the last few hours pointing fingers and trying to win a public relations battle rather than trying to settle the situation.

And with both sides offer different versions of the story, it’s unclear what is exactly happening amidst the talks.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggests that the problem stems around ideology and claims that both sides have actually made plenty of progress as far as the actual budget is concerned. The Republicans, on the other hand, suggest that this is solely based around the numbers and they are trying their best to cut down the American debt, which is currently at $14 trillion.

In the mean time, it doesn’t look like a short term bill will be an option. President Obama has vowed to veto any such temporary solution, calling it a distraction from a long-term solution, which is obviously what is really needed to remedy this mess.

As it stands now, the government shutdown will begin at midnight Saturday – that is unless the two sides can agree on a budget for the rest of the year.

Stay tuned as the we are going to find out more about this situation very shortly. Hopefully cooler heads prevail but as of right now, it looks like both sides are too far apart to prevent a shutdown.

In today’s exploding world of technological advances we have seen the development and introduction of so many different programs that can help us perform just about any computing need. These new programs can include digital photography, file sharing and video playback and editing.

Users around the world have seen many different digital formats introduced into their computing realms. It can be understandably confusing, and often times very frustrating. This seems especially prevalent in video players. It seems you just find a video play back program so you can watch that video that your brother sent you and then you receive another one that is in a completely different format and unfortunately your playback software can’t read that format.

Fortunately, open source software is free, and most of their media players, such as VLC player, KM player, and BS player have all the correct codecs in order to play most formats on a number of different platforms. As with any open source software, to download vlc or any of the other popular media players, there is no risk of corrupting any present files or your computer.

You should consider trying a program called BS.Player. BS.Player is considered to be one of the most popular multimedia players in the world. Within the computing world BS.Player has received numerous awards and accolades. In fact some 70 million users around the world use it. Its popularity globally could be due in part that the program has been translated into 90 different languages.

Other positives about BS.Player are that it is free and it doesn’t take a huge computing platform to work. It is free due to its open source background and the fact that it is part of the GNU General Public License. In addition, the player does not require large amounts of RAM or CPU space.

BS.Player will allow playback of just about every popular video format including:

-QuickTime
-MPEG2
-XviD
-DivZ
-WMV
-Flash

BS.Player can also be used as an audio player as well. This great program also provides the capability of managing all of your multimedia content, and it can also make media compilations of your choosing.

There are millions of users who use their internet connections for communication — whether it be emails or instant messaging or both. In the past few years we have experienced an explosion of instant messaging, not only on our computers but our mobile devices as well. We enjoy that “instant” communication. We login and start chatting away — we could be communicating personal information and happenings or even conducting business transactions.

Many users start out by choosing a single instant messaging platform such as Yahoo or MSN Messenger or Google Talk. All of these platforms generally do not allow other users on other services communicate. This means that if a user has many friends and family on disparate services and networks, he or she may have several different chat clients installed. And imagine if that person wants to communicate with different people on different networks simultaneously? It’s a frustrating and time consuming process.

However because of two Open Source instant message platforms, these contacts and services can be brought together on one single application.

Miranda IM and Pidgin IM are two Open Source programs available to users to bring all their separate messaging contacts onto one easy-to-use platform. Not only are these two programs easy to use, they are free to download and use. Both Miranda and Pidgin are part of the Open Source initiative and as such, are licensed under the GNU General Public License. Both programs were developed by a group of like-minded programmers and developers who want to produce strong software programs for Open Source users. These programs are easy to download and install. They will both collect the current contact and chat buddy information and consolidate them into one easy to navigate list.

But chatting isn’t where the sharing has to stop. Aside from all the current social networking sites, businesses and their clients or friends and their family can share music, videos, files, photos, and more using another open source program called Ares Galaxy. This program helps you share and unshared only what you select over a secure, virus free platform. Between the multi-chat platform and a single program that can help you securely transfer multi-media business as we know it could evolve to internet dependent.

It’s become a core part of web marketing to use media — whether that’s audio, image, or video media — to spread word about your group. From bands spreading album preview to mega-corporations releasing made-for-web advertisements, this new arena is both plainly visible and obviously important. However, many new companies will have trouble breaching the media marketing front, in part because of an inability to effectively spread large media files. FileZilla is one of the best FTP solutions to this problem.

There are multiple ways to resolve the media sharing issue. The first, and most common, is to send out videos through video sharing sites like YouTube, audio through audio preview widgets like Podcast Player, images through Flickr or Picasa, and so forth. However: users who aren’t especially web-savvy won’t be able to easily download the file for later use, and won’t be able to access the media at all while offline; advertisements may well be shown alongside or even over-top of your media; and, of course, you lose almost all control over distribution.

FileZilla provides an alternative for direct distribution of larger files, but it requires neither heavy investment nor advanced learning. As an FTP program, FileZilla will allow its users to upload large files — up to hundreds of megabytes in size — to a single web location, allowing users to download the file just by visiting the appropriate destination URL. Since this program is open source, it’s completely free to use. All you will need is a domain name and a web host that lets you store files on the server, and provides bandwidth for your uploads and downloads.

The exact directions will be different for each specific instance, but the basic summary of this procedure is: download File Zilla, upload your file to a web server, and provide the URL to anyone who you want to have access the media file.