Everyone has heard the song and dance accompanying global warming; the ice caps are melting, temperatures are fluctuating and the ocean temperatures are rising (or falling) beyond acceptable levels.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, there is more environmentalism concerns surrounding global warming that aren’t as well advertised, but can affect our day to day lives.

Everyone has heard the song and dance accompanying global warming; the ice caps are melting, temperatures are fluctuating and the ocean temperatures are rising (or falling) beyond acceptable levels.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, there is more environmentalism concerns surrounding global warming that aren’t as well advertised, but can affect our day to day lives.

1. Aggravating Allergies – If your allergies have gotten worse over the years, or you just recently developed allergies, global warming might be to blame. Research has shown that the higher carbon dioxide levels and warmer temperatures associated with global warming are also playing a role by prodding plants to bloom earlier and produce more pollen. With more allergens produced earlier, allergy season can last longer.
2. Moving to Higher Ground – It might be hard to notice, but chipmunks, mice, squirrels, and the slightly scarier polar bear are all moving to higher elevated ground due to changed in their habitat caused by global warming.
3. Always Sunny in… the Arctic – The melting of the polar ice caps is only one effect global warming is having on the arctic. Plants that are usually under ice for most of the year and starting to bloom earlier as the ice around them melt earlier in the year. Chlorophyll has been found in larger amounts than in ancient times, meaning a biological boom in the Arctic in recent decades.
4. Disappearing Lakes – Lakes in the Arctic have literally been disappearing, supporting the suggestion that global warming is working the fastest on our polar caps. Scientists are hypothesizing the ground under the lakes are thawing, and therefore allowing the water to seep into the land.
5. Sinkholes, Rockslides and Diseases, Oh My! – The ice caps are not the only places where land is thawing. The permanently frozen layer of soil beneath Earth’s surface. This may lead to seriously destabilizing effects which could develop into sinkholes, creating damage to thinks like houses, railroads and highways. There is even reason to believe that diseases like smallpox will reemerge as the ground around decaying dead bodies’ thaws.
6. Animals Miss Their Meals – Because spring is starting sooner, animals that migrate might miss out on the food supply. Ones that can reset their internal clock might stand a chance, but if animals miss their food supply, they will eventually die out and not be able to pass on their genetic information to future generations.
7. Forest Fires Increase – Along with the raging hurricanes and melting glaciers, global warming is also causing more volatile forest fires. In the past decade, the numbers of forest fires have increased, as have their lifespan and areas in which they can reach. Scientists have correlated the rampant blazes with warmer temperatures and earlier snowmelt. When spring arrives early and triggers an earlier snow-melt, forest areas become drier and stay so for longer, increasing the chance that they might ignite.

Even though more people are turning to energy-efficient spiral fluorescent light bulbs, which use 75% less energy and greatly reduce your carbon footprint, they still pose a threat of mercury poisoning.

According to an article in BostonChannel.com, spiral fluorescent bulbs are great ways to reduce your energy consumption because they last 10 times longer than regular bulbs, but since they require mercury in them to produce light, they can also be dangerous to your health if they are broken…

Even though more people are turning to energy-efficient spiral fluorescent light bulbs, which use 75% less energy and greatly reduce your carbon footprint, they still pose a threat of mercury poisoning.

According to an article in BostonChannel.com, spiral fluorescent bulbs are great ways to reduce your energy consumption because they last 10 times longer than regular bulbs, but since they require mercury in them to produce light, they can also be dangerous to your health if they are broken.

The Hazards of Mercury Poisoning

Spiral fluorescent bulbs only have about 1 to 30 milligrams of mercury in them, but if they are broken and you come in contact with the mercury directly or inhale the toxic fumes, you can greatly damage your central nervous system, your liver and your kidneys. This can be especially harmful to babies and pregnant women, who already have weak immune systems.

Check out the Wikipedia page for more about mercury poisoning.

How to Save Energy and Protect Your Health

Despite the risk of mercury poisoning, spiral fluorescent bulbs are still the best types of bulbs to use to save energy in your home. You can use this great page on the Aubuchon Hardware website that gives you a detailed list of name-brand spiral bulbs and how they compare to regular bulbs in efficiency and price.

Here are some ways that you can protect yourself and others from mercury poisoning:

• Don’t touch the mercury inside the bulb if it breaks
• Carefully sweep up broken glass and soak up the mercury with a paper towel
• Wrap any broken bulbs in cardboard or newspaper and tape the package together before throwing it away
• Keep the area ventilated so the fumes can be aired away

You can also recycle your mercury bulbs at certain specified businesses in your state, or you can find a complete list of mercury bulb recyclers on the LampRecycle.org Resource page.

I think that if you are safe about how you handle the spiral fluorescent bulbs and dispose of them correctly, then you can protect both your health and the environment at the same time. Not every product can be totally 100% safe for the environment, but if it can cut energy consumption by 75%, then I think that it’s worth our effort to keep it in production’until something better comes along!

With all the information out there about green living, we’ve all been hearing about the benefits of green jobs lately. A new Reuters survey found that green workers like the work they do, feel secure in their jobs, and are paid well, earning an average salary of $76,000.

With all the information out there about green living, we’ve all been hearing about the benefits of green jobs lately. A new Reuters survey found that green workers like the work they do, feel secure in their jobs, and are paid well, earning an average salary of $76,000.

There’s no doubt that creating a substantial number of new green jobs has the potential to help revive the economy and solve environmental problems. The government stimulus package alone is expected to create millions of green jobs. Climate change legislation, if passed, will likely add even more.

The jury is still out on whether the reality of green jobs will live up to all the hype. But for now, here are answers to some very basic questions about what kinds of green jobs are being created and how to land one.

What exactly is a green job?

There’s no official definition, but the Middle Class Task Force, which recently announced more funding for training and the creation of green jobs, loosely defines it as “jobs that help to improve the environment in some way.”

The task force says the term includes:

• “Blue-collar workers building out the smart grid to efficiently move the wind power (green, renewable energy) across the land.
• ‘Weatherizers’ who can diagnose and repair the energy inefficiencies in your house or business.
• The green manufacturers who made those wind turbines or the scientists and lab technicians who developed those renewable energy sources and weatherization materials.”

You’ve also probably heard the term “green-collar jobs.”The clean energy jobs organization Green for All describes this work as blue-collar jobs that contribute to preserving or enhancing environmental quality.

What kinds of jobs are being created?

Here is Green for All’s short list:

• Energy auditors
• Green carpenters
• Insulation installers
• Civil engineers
• Rail-track layers
• Bus and train systems operators
• Wind turbine machinists
• Solar panel installers
• Iron and steel workers
• Recycling center operators
• Water quality consultants

It’s not all about the face of the green economy, says Timothy O’Connor, at the Environmental Defense Fund. New companies are starting up because of the stimulus package, and those companies are going to need accountants, managers, human resources folks, and other professionals. As a result, high-end salaries are increasing. “We now see more jobs paying six figure salaries, particularly as climate change has started to pull in senior managers from other areas of business,” says Andy Cartland, managing director at Acre Resources.

With billions of overlapping leaves, stretching sometimes for hundreds of feet above the ground, the canopies of the world’s rainforests act like giant umbrellas – catching rain before it has a chance to reach the forest floor. It turns out that these arboreal umbrellas intercept almost 2 trillion gallons of rain each year, a new study that could improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change finds.

With billions of overlapping leaves, stretching sometimes for hundreds of feet above the ground, the canopies of the world’s rainforests act like giant umbrellas – catching rain before it has a chance to reach the forest floor. It turns out that these arboreal umbrellas intercept almost 2 trillion gallons of rain each year, a new study that could improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change finds.

That’s about 20 percent of the rain that falls from the sky over the world’s forests. The massive amounts of rain essentially puddle up on the leaves before evaporating back into the atmosphere. While scientists have estimated rain interception for specific forests before, Diego Miralles, a researcher at VU University in Amsterdam and lead author of the new study, says this is the first global estimate.

“The model that we use, known as Gash’s Model, has been successfully applied in different forests around the world since the beginning of the ’80s,” Miralles said. “The uniqueness of our study is that we have taken satellite observations of precipitation and forest cover and adapted this well-validated model to create global results for the first time.”

The Real Life Applications

These estimates could be used in global climate models to improve predictions, Miralles told OurAmazingPlanet. While two of the three parameters of water-cycle models (part of the overall climate models) are well-known, until now, the evaporation piece was the “weak link.”" Estimating the amount of water collected by tree canopies could also help predict the impact of deforestation on climate change, Miralles added.

The Procedure

Miralles and his colleagues used NASA satellite data for rain amount, intensity (volume of rain per hour, for instance) and canopy cover. Intensity matters, because if, say, 10 buckets of water fall in two minutes, more of it will likely drip off the already saturated leaves than if it were to fall in two hours. The longer time period would allow some of the falling rain to evaporate.

The rain intensity was calculated using lightning data since certain types of clouds, in particular cumulonimbus clouds, which dump large amounts of rain in a short period of time, send lightning bolts through the sky.

So far, they team has made monthly maps of the volume and percent of rainfall intercepted by blocks of canopy-covered forest, each with an area of 150 square miles (400 square kilometers). Forests made up of needle-leaf trees captured 22 percent of the rainfall, while broad-leaf deciduous forests intercepted 19 percent and evergreen forests came in at 13 percent.

While needle-leaf forests captured the most water, it turns out that it’s not because of their leaf structure.

“There isn’t a clear relationship between the amount of water that a tree can hold and the leaf that the tree has,” Miralles said.”It’s assumed right now that the main factor determining how much [rainfall] the tree can hold is the total projected area of the canopy,” Miralles said.

Miralles is now working on 30-year maps in the hopes of identifying trends in rainfall collection and evaporation. If the Earth is warming then this rainfall collection should show signs of acceleration over the past few decades, Miralles said.

The research was published in the Aug.31 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.

This article originated in LiveScience.com. LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.

There are plenty of products out there for cleaning the bathroom or kitchen that claim they’re a green product. When you get it home though, it never works as well as the cleaners filled with harmful ingredients! How do you balance eco-friendly with hard working?

There are plenty of products out there for cleaning the bathroom or kitchen that claim they’re a green product. When you get it home though, it never works as well as the cleaners filled with harmful ingredients! How do you balance eco-friendly with hard working?

The following products are not only great for the environment by helping decrease your carbon footprint, but (and here’s the kicker…) they actually work!

Don’t believe us? Try them out for yourselves and let us know what you thought about them! Do you know of any green products that we missed?

Not only are these great around the house, but around the dorm or apartment as well.

All Purpose

• Orange Oil Concentrate – D Limonene Extract ($19.99)
• AFM Super Clean ($9.99)
• Biokleen All Purpose Cleaner ($9.99)

Kitchen

• Citrasolve Degreaser Cleaner ($10.99)
• Ecover Ecological Automatic Dishwashing Powder ($7.99)
• Biokleen Produce Wash – Concentrated ($5.99)

Furniture

• Citrasolve Degreaser Cleaner ($10.99)
• Furniture Polish – Earth Friendly Products ($5.99)

Bathroom

• Enviro-Magic Mildew Stainaway ($10.99)
• Bac-Out Drain Care Gel ($9.99)
• Ecover Ecological Cream Scrub (3.99)

Did you know that the average American lifestyle is kept afloat by nearly 2,000 gallons of water a day? This is double the global average. Most of your daily water consumption is consumed without you even realizing it – 95% is hidden in the food you eat, energy you use, products you buy and services you rely on.

Did you know that the average American lifestyle is kept afloat by nearly 2,000 gallons of water a day? This is double the global average. Most of your daily water consumption is consumed without you even realizing it – 95% is hidden in the food you eat, energy you use, products you buy and services you rely on.

How can you decrease this huge waste of water? Pledge to decrease your water footprint! The National Geographic came up with a water consumption calculator for people to take, then pledge at the end to decrease their water consumption by specific amounts.

How does it work? The calculator asks a number of questions pertaining to your home and lifestyle. Some of the questions include:

• What year was your home built?
• How many showers do you take a week, and for how long?
• How much pork, chicken, milk and coffee do you consume per day?
• What is the fuel efficiency of the car you drive, in miles per gallon?
• How much do you spend on clothes and shoes, including jeans, T-shirts and running shoes, suits and dress shoes?

To figure out how much water you consume, and to pledge to decrease, go to the National Geographic’s Water Footprint Calculator.

Can you get sunburn through glass? The short answer is no. The more detailed answer is maybe. Confused yet? Don’t be.  We’ll tell you how you can tan while driving, and how to protect your skin from anything more harmful.

Can you get sunburn through glass? The short answer is no. The more detailed answer is maybe. Confused yet? Don’t be.  We’ll tell you how you can tan while driving, and how to protect your skin from anything more harmful.

The regular windows in your car and home will protect you from UVB rays, but they do not protect you from UVA. Most times in home none of us stay in direct sunlight long enough for that to matter, but the car is another matter. The question is – so what?

UVA rays do not affect your skin like UVB rays do. Whereas UVB rays will immediately show up on your skin if you’re overexposed (in the form of a tan or burn), UVA rays increase signs of visible aging such as wrinkles and brown spots, and can also lead to skin cancer, including melanoma, the most deadly form. While UVB rays can also lead to cancer and photo-aging, they diminish during the winter. UVA rays are present, and harmful, year-round.

At least two studies have shown that commuters and others who spend a lot of time in the car have an increased risk of developing skin cancer on the left side of their bodies — the side that gets the most exposure through the car windows for U.S. drivers.

How to Protect Yourself

We don’t want to scare you. There are ways to avoid harsh UVA exposure. Yahoo Green offers these tips and pieces of advice to prevent skin damage year round.

• Consider having your car’s side and rear windows tinted or laminated with a UV-filtering material such as UV film.
• Roll up your car windows — open windows let in even more UVA rays as well as UVB rays.
• Drive wearing long sleeves.
• Install a rear window and passenger side window sun shades to protect your children.
• Consider using UV film on home or workplace windows. It is readily available at building supply stores. In addition to blocking harmful rays, it also helps prevent curtain and upholstery fabrics from fading.
• Wear a broad-spectrum sunscreen that blocks both UVB and UVA rays year-round.

Farmers markets are great resources to promote on or around your green campus. They not only promote an eco-lifestyle, but keep the local economy stimulated. If these simple, straight-forward reasons aren’t enough to support farmers markets, read on to find out more.

Farmers markets are great resources to promote on or around your green campus. They not only promote an eco-lifestyle, but keep the local economy stimulated. If these simple, straight-forward reasons aren’t enough to support farmers markets, read on to find out more.

The following was put together by organic farmer Nigel Walker, Chef Bryant Terry, author Anna Lapp.

1. Enjoy food at its freshest and most flavorful. Food that is grown, produced, and sold locally taste better — and is better for you — than food that has traveled thousands of miles from farm to plate.
2. Try new foods. Many farmers let you sample before buying. If you’re not sure how to prepare a particular fruit or vegetable, ask the vendor for suggestions.
3. Get in tune with the seasons. When you shop at the farmers market, you discover the excitement of spring’s first cherry harvest and the first sweet potatoes of fall. Farmers markets educate us about what foods are local and when they’re at their peak.
4. Create relationships. Farmers markets offer a safe, outdoor space to meet and mingle with neighbors and food producers. More than just a place to shop, the farmers market is a place to build community around food.
5. Learn the story of your food. By meeting farmers and food producers face to face, you can ask questions about how your food was grown, when it was picked, and what items are special or in season this week.
6. Invest in local farms and businesses. By enabling farmers to sell their produce at retail cost, farmers markets help sustain businesses and families in your area, and provide a venue for new and small-scale farms.
7. Preserve farmland and the environment. Farmers markets keep local farms in business, which reduces sprawl and protects farmland and open spaces. By encouraging local food production, they also reduce the use of fossil fuels and natural resources.
8. Give back. By shopping at farmers markets, you nourish your community. Help your market thrive by volunteering as an organizer, promoter, or greeter. If you don’t have a farmers market in your area, consider starting one (see the resources below).

Now that you’re pumped to go purchase foods from your local farmers market, the next step is knowing where to look! Farmers markets tend to be seasonal occurrences because they are outside markets that only occur during peak veggie season and when the weather is warmer.

President Obama recently talked to the union on Libya, Japan, education, and how America gets our oil and energy.

President Obama recently talked to the union on Libya, Japan, education, and how America gets our oil and energy.

During his speech, held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he set up some items he thought the American public should address, or at least keep in mind.

1. American oil imports will be reduced by 30%
2. America does not have the oil supplies to fuel our country without outside help
3. Natural gas holds extreme potential… if used right
4. Battery production is key to promoting electric cars
5. Nuclear power is still a very real part of America

To read more, click here.

New York City, home to the creative minds of Broadway and frugal minds of Wall Street, has done it again. They’ve combined creativity with an eco-friendly way for people to recycle and/or reuse other people’s recycled goods!

New York City, home to the creative minds of Broadway and frugal minds of Wall Street, has done it again. They’ve combined creativity with an eco-friendly way for people to recycle and/or reuse other people’s recycled goods!

Materials for the Arts, or MFTA, is part of NYC’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Many reporters are calling it a glitter-covered Goodwill store, a compilation of Christmas ornaments, clothing, books, craft supplies, and creepy naked mannequins that every good dorm room needs.

Here’s how MFTA works:

1. Donors, either individuals or organizations, drop off their recycled goods
2. MFTA separates the recycled goods into loose categories
3. Only certain individuals and groups are allowed to apply for membership
   1. Nonprofit arts and cultural groups
   2. NYC Department of Education art teachers
   3. Government agencies
   4. Social service, health and environmental organizations with art departments
4. If you fit the qualifications, you can apply for membership and then make an appointment for shopping

Reads the MFTA website: “Recipients who use supplies from Materials for the Arts help to protect and sustain the environment by making use of hundreds of tons of materials that would otherwise end up in our landfills. Recipients use these materials to teach our children, invigorate our museums, and delight audiences throughout New York City.”

Although there are strict requirements on who can receive the piles and rows of recycled goods, anyone can contribute. So, if you’re moving apartments, or just trying to get in a little spring cleaning and live in the New York area, check out the MFTA and make an appointment!